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Still in NIRVANA Fans of British 1960s pop/psych wonders, NIRVANA (best remembered for their super-phased summer '68 hit 'RAINBOW CHASER'), get a welcome treat this month (November 2001) with yet more from the group's catalogue in a first time reissue of 1973 project 'ME & MY FRIEND' (Market Square MSMCD111) including a mass of bonus tracks from the group's last album, 1972's 'SONGS OF LOVE & PRAISE'. ABOUT ME & MY FRIEND ME AND MY FRIEND marks a distant starshine of the solar flare that was Nirvana - the collective of musicians formed by Patrick Campbell Lyons (an Irishman) and Alex Spyropoulos (a Greek) in the still swinging London of the late 1960s. Rainbow Chaser, the Nirvana single charted in 1968 and set the agenda, with its tale of cloud-travelling and good-time seeking. Campbell Lyons took the band on without Alex in 1970 with "Local Anaesthetic", 1972's "Song Of Love And Praise" (a hard to find record today) and in 1973, his first solo album, "Me & My Friend" - copies now as rare as hen's teeth! All of "Me & My Friend" is here for the first time since 1973 with almost all of "Songs Of Love And Praise" plus a previously unreleased extra track. The lavish "Songs Of …" sessions - with their 60-piece orchestra, augmented by members of Jade Warrior together with some of the finest sessions men around including drummer Barry Morgan and bassist Herbie Flowers, complement the laid-back summery rock of "Me & My Friend", featuring support from Snafu, and former Nirvana cellist Sylvie Schuster, amongst others. But if you thought this to be the last gasp from the Nirvana partnership of Patrick Campbell Lyons and Alex Spyropoulos, you would be mistaken. Nirvana, accompanied by a string section of violas and cello, were asked by Morcheeba to support them at London's Shepherd Bush Empire, where they regaled fans with a run-out of their 60's work including 'TINY GODDESS', 'PENTECOST HOTEL' and the gorgeous 'WORLD IS COLD WITHOUT YOU'. "Morcheeba are big fans and we got a great reception from their audience," says Patrick, who adds that DJ Shadows is another fan. His sampling a track from their third album hass resulted in the Nirvana duo being up for a Universal Platinum Award for 'LOVE SUITE - STEM' from his "ENTRODUCING" album exceeding 300,000 sales. Studio-bound on the Greek island of Aegina for the summer of 2001, the two are now putting the finishing touches on a album of new material for 2002, which finds the writers busy sampling themselves! "We've got ideas on how to work samples of our former work into this project," says Patrick, who defines the result as "Donovan meets the Beach Boys and everyone chills out". Additional work is underway on a Nirvana DVD project. "We're after some specific footage at the moment," says Patrick. "There's a film of us in Paris with Salvador Dali called 'Improvisation On A Sunday Afternoon' plus Beat Club footage from Germany and a BBCTV show with Jimi Hendrix." Even more intriguingly, Patrick and Alex are trying to source a film made for Danish TV in the 1970s that tackles the rigours of making a hit record. Patrick and Alex are the song-writers, jazz rock act Colosseum play the band, and George Martin no less is the … well, you can guess the rest. Anybody know about it?
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