However clichéd it may sound, this is another one of those genuinely Beatle-sounding records that deserves more than just a minor collectors’ item status.
After keeping the “flame” alive in South Africa for some five years (’64-’68), The Flame relocated to UK in 1968, releasing their British debut on Page One the same year, and before almost “going out”, Carl Wilson was impressed enough to offer his producing services, re-lighting them for another brief moment or two during ‘69/’70.
As a result of their Californian sessions, The Flame was released in October 1970, on The Beach Boys’ Brother Records, providing us with a handful of Macca-through-Badfinger flavoured tunes, ranging from the power-pop-rockin’ crunch of the opening See The Light to the shoulda-been-classic ballad as Another Day Like Heaven.
Even with the more rootsy, r’n’b derived rockers as Make It Easy, Get Your Mind Made Up and I’m So Happy, there’s always more than enough of those FABulous harmonies and guitar licks around, for them to be considered genre defining power-pop efforts, while Hey Lord finds them somewhere between Led Zeppelin and McCartney himself, and even more distinctive Macca-influence is audible in Don’t Worry Bill, which is of the “by-way-of-Emitt-Rhodes” kind, as well as in Lady, with a touch of Tony Hazzard’s post-Tin Pan Alley, singer-songwriter daze.
Another one of the highlights must be the late’60s Beatlism Highs And Lows, which doesn’t really seem as if it would’ve been thrown out of the “bathroom window”, had it been recorded during the White Album or Abbey Road sessions.
Running out of fuel to keep it burning, The Flame disbanded soon after, halfway through yet another attempt to record a follow up album, with both Ricky Fataar and Blondie Chaplin joining The Beach Boys, while appropriately enough, Ricky also took part in The Rutles.
[Released by Fall Out 2006]
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