Nirvana’s Story Of Simon Simopath (1967) is sometimes regarded as the first concept album in pop and rock proper – that is, a fully developed and thematically inter-linked song cycle. Thus, pedant pop-pickers, Sgt Pepper doesn’t count! Patrick Campbell-Lyons and Alex Spyropoulos were ahead of the trend, beating the growing competition by several months. By 1971, however, Campbell- Lyons was alone and, though Local Anaesthetic is credited to Nirvana, it’s really a solo album in a band’s clothing.
So what’s it all about? Campbell-Lyons’ prosaic sleevenotes give little away, but the deranged cry at the start of the 16-minute Modus Operandi suggests a mind teetering on the brink. Along with the 19- minute long Home, the album leaps from rock, boogie, baroque pop, folk, jazz, sub-Hey Jude-style extemporisation, atonal caterwauling and ersatz ethnic rhythms like a demented grasshopper. Essentially a sequence of disparate snippets whose unifying factor is their presentation as side-long pieces, this is a sprawling, hammy and often messy tour though a maverick pop mind. That said, hailing from a time when album covers were often just as evocative as their contents, the startlingly eerie gatefold designed by Keef is one of the best.
