Small Faces - From the Beginning-Deluxe Edition Review

From the Beginning was released between the Small Faces’ first (1966, Decca) and second (1967, Immediate) proper albums, both of which were eponymous. Though it rounds up almost all their chart successes thus far, From the Beginning (Decca, also 1967) is not a greatest hits as such, for it also includes previously unissued material scraped from the bottom of the session barrel. Two of its tracks are earlier versions of songs that appear on the Immediate album, with whose release its own coincided.
The band made their displeasure with From the Beginning publicly known. Behind this confusing discography lay a story rife with politics, From the Beginning being the cash-in of the unwanted record company and even more undesired manager from whose clutches the group had escaped....full text Small Faces began coalescing in east London in early 1965 and their first single, “What’cha Gonna do About it” was an instant hit that August. Fourteen Small Faces singles and four albums were issued during their life. The final 45, “Afterglow (of Your Love)”, hit the shops in March 1969 the day after they played their final show. In the three-and-a-half years of releasing records they never stopped touring, never stopped raving, never stopped creating.
They emerged in an era when the single defined pop. The album as a unified piece of art is, by most measures, a post-Sergeant Pepper development in pop. Small Faces were on board for that with their May 1968 landmark Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, but do their first three albums work as albums, as individual bodies of work? Yes, despite the second being compiled from left overs and singles by Decca as a spoiler when Small Faces moved to Rolling Stones's manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate imprint. Hilariously, although over a year separates them, that second Decca album bears a cover photo from the same session used for the first....full text These four albums capture The Small Faces during their short initial lifetime between 1965 and 1969. At the height of the swinging sixties their music captures the mood, or should we say mod, so well, that is easy even now to understand why they were so revered at the time. The years have been good to The Small Faces, with musical history showing they had an influence on many bands and artists over the years and even today.

Small Faces (1966) is unsurprisingly the weakest of the four albums and contains the classic pop song Sha La La La Le, but there is little to distinguish them from the crowd at this stage. But even within just twelve months there are signs on From the Beginning (1967) of career progression as Steve Marriot’s voice begins to find its feet. That Man and You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me point towards the psychadelia that was to come later, as does parts of the crisper Small Faces (1967).
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