[ERA : 60s / Pop, Psych ]
First-ever issue of unknown Summer-of-1967 album by cult UK psychedelic pop group Living Daylights. Mono and stereo mixes of the album are joined by their brace of highly collectable singles, including their near-hit recording of Let’s Live For Today. Led by Garth Watt-Roy and his younger brother (future Blockhead) Norman, five-piece Harlow band Living Daylights signed with Beatles publisher Dick James in 1967. Paired with a studio production team that included Caleb Quaye, the band were given a song that James published, Let’s Live For Today, as their debut single. Released in April 1967, it entered Radio London’s Fab Forty after being championed by the pirate station’s DJ John Peel. Also issued in America, the song showed significant sales potential, and Dick James decided the band should record an album that would be rushed out if the single became a success. Unfortunately, Let’s Live For Today lost out to a cover version by American band The Grass Roots, who scored a US Top Ten hit. Without a hit to support it, the Living Daylights’ album failed to appear, and the band split after a second single failed to find favour. 55 years later, that album finally gains a release, with mono and stereo mixes joined by their UK singles and American and Japanese versions. Let’s Live For Today : The Complete Recordings is a vital addition to the pantheon of British psychedelic pop albums from the epochal year of 1967. This release includes a booklet that tells the band’s story for the first time, with quotes from both Garth and Norman Watt-Roy as well as the first-ever accurate band line-up and their tangential link to another Dick James project, Elliots Sunshine. /
MONO ALBUM : Let’s Live For Today * It’s Real (aka I’m Real) * Cos I’m Lonely * Up So High * Say You Don’t Mind * Jane * What’cha Gonna Do About It * Getting Better * I’ll Be Back * If I Had My Way * Always With Him/ SINGLES : Baila Maria * Let’s Live For Today (US single edit)/ STEREO ALBUM : Cos I’m Lonely *Up So High * Say You Don’t Mind * Jane * What’cha Gonna Do About It * Getting Better * I’ll Be Back * If I Had My Way * Always With Him/ BONUS TRACK : Let’s Live For Today (Japanese single version – rechannelled stereo)