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.
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. ~ Richie Unterberger