The Five Day Week Straw People | en

The Five Day Week Straw People were a one-off, studio-only British psychedelic band that did one rare album in late 1967 (actually released in 1968) for the budget Saga label. Its ten songs were loosely centered around the concept of a typical weekend in the life of typical working British people. For a fee of 25 pounds per musician, The Five Day Week Straw People -- comprised of singer/guitarist John Du Cann (of the obscure psychedelic pop group the Attack, who did four singles for Decca), bassist Mick Hawksworth, and drummer Jack Collins -- were assembled. The album was recorded in about four hours in a London schoolroom, a remarkable achievement given that Collins had not heard any of the songs prior to the session.

The Five Day Week Straw People While the album (simply titled The Five Day Week Straw People) has attracted some fanatical praise among collectors, it's average-period British psychedelia. It leans a little more toward heavy rock than toward mod, although there are some strong pop elements in the vocal harmonies and the British storytelling lyricism. At times, it's reminiscent of the most pop-oriented material that Cream recorded. The same could be said of some of the stuff done by Andromeda, the group that Du Cann, Hawksworth, and Collins decided to found after cutting The Five Day Week Straw People, although Andromeda was definitely in a heavier, hard rock vein. A two-fer featuring The Five Day Week Straw People and The Attack was reissued on CD by Angel Air in 2000, with nine unreleased songs by the Attack added as bonus tracks. .