Royal Purple
Spearmint Experiment

(Umbrella)

Royal Purple is a two-man project, both men coming from popular East Coast 1960s revivalist bands. Stu Rutherford, best known as the bassist for The Creatures Of The Golden Dawn, teams up with Mike Sinocchi, drummer of popular New Jersey mod-sters, The Insomniacs. Though they have yet to release a full length CD, they have offered up a six song EP, Spearmint Experiment. With Stu handling guitars, bass and keyboards, Mike playing a wide variety of percussion instruments, and both on vocal duty, the twosome take on a half-dozen 1960s nuggets, all combining the ingredients of the original recordings with ideas of their own.

The disc begins with a stab at The Generation Gap's "Too Far Gone," which wraps its catchy chorus in a psych-garage icing, adding harmonica and twelve-string guitar for flavoring. The end result sounds like something that, had it been recorded 36 years earlier, would have been a strong contender for Nuggets 2. For as with many of that collection's gems, this one has that borderline rock/psych feel. It delightfully sounds like an old record by a British beat group that's only tried acid once...they still haven't lost their pop grounding and their world hasn't yet been completely rearranged, but they certainly have had a look over the fence.

Next comes "The Way I Feel," originally by Texas bred The 12 AM. On this, Royal Purple present the most rocking track of the six. The song successfully merges "Can't You See That She's Mine" with "I Saw Her Standing There," with, tucked in there somewhere, maybe a little of the Batman theme as well.

Mike takes lead vocals on Track Three, a tip of the hat to Lord George by way of a cover of The Beatles' "The Inner Light." Royal Purple sticks closely to the arrangement of the original Harri-song, but paint it with organ and guitars where the Indian instruments weren't available, and it's a nicely tackled approach of what is probably one of The Beatles' least covered songs of all time.

Speaking of The Beatles, Royal Purple's cover of The Back Alley's "Soda Pop Man" won me over for its "Rain"-ish sunshine pop psych attributes to the point that as you listen you can almost picture John Lennon with his yellow grannies, paisley shirt and Epiphone Casino. And kudos to any band that can give me a sunshine feeling on a day of snow and sleet, like the one happening as I type.

Mike and Stu swap leads on "Made Of Soul," originally "made" by The Underground Balloon Corps., where "Tobacco Road" and "Shapes Of Things" bump into each other on a London street corner.

The disc closes with another interesting choice of cover...Pink Floyd's "Cymbaline." Always a sleeper Floyd favorite of mine, I'm glad to see someone has seen fit to breathe modern air into it. Royal Purple gives it a bit more power and explore its more psychedelic possibilities, adding backwards guitars and wah-wah. The end result is the answer to the unasked question of what would the song have sounded like if Floyd had tried it two albums earlier.

Spearmint Experiment was a joyful and colorful listen. I eagerly await the full Royal Purple LP, currently in mixing stage and expected for release in April. In the meantime, their EP can be obtained by writing to royalpurplesound@hotmail.com

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