The Golden Hour record label was a budget offshoot of the Pye label, and – at least as I remember it – tended to concentrate on novelty compilations by has-been singers or TV actors trying to be crooners.
Man had been signed to the Dawn record label – also a subsidiary of Pye – in 1968 to what now seems like a ludicrously unfair deal where the band would receive a mere 0.75% royalty rate on the sales of their recordings.
Needless to say, this probably didn’t constructively persuade the band to conjure up their ‘best’ material.
“Golden Hour of Man” is no more than a shoddy repackaging of the group’s first two albums; the whole of “Revelation” plus all but three cuts from “2 oz of Plastic with a Hole in the Middle”
As if to highlight just how little Pye Records thought of – or knew about- Man, the label actually managed to miss off the strongest cut from “2 oz…” the badly named but impressive “Spunk Box”
There’s little on this album for me to recommend otherwise. Man’s glory years were certainly from 1970 onwards, when they were signed to United Artists. Once again, I probably bought this album based entirely on the price, misguidedly believing that it would provide me with the same listening pleasure as the band’s other releases which I was enjoying.
I wonder how long it would take me before I cottoned on to the fact that, most times, it’s on a budget label for a reason?!
Excerpts from a 70's Teenage Rock Opera 