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Lords of London


Lords of London - Cornflakes and Ice Cream / Time Waits for No One - 7

Cornflakes and Ice Cream / Time Waits for No One - 7"
Apex - 1967


Michael Panontin
Lords of London are best remembered for their bubble gum hit 'Cornflakes and Ice Cream', which was one of the very few Canadian records to top the prestigious CHUM-AM charts.

The Toronto five-piece were certainly a precocious bunch, with a median age of about 16 when they formed in the mid-sixties. One can only imagine what the knob-twiddlers at RCA Studios made of the boys when they walked in to record their future hit. That late '66 line-up included bassist/singer Greg Fitzpatrick, guitarists John Richardson and Hughie Leggat, drummer Danny Taylor and keyboardist Sebastian Agnello (who, at barely 14, had just picked up his instrument the month before).

'Cornflakes and Ice Cream' was issued in late spring the following year. And though it was sheathed in a two-sided picture sleeve - a definite rarity in North America at the time - it would take the public until the summer to warm to it. The record entered the CHUM lists at #34 for the week of July 24th and by August 28th had assumed the top spot, just ahead of Bobby Gentry's 'Ode to Billie Joe' and Diana Ross and the Supremes' 'Reflections'. As an added bonus, there was the groovy 'Time Waits for No One', with its Monkees guitar riff and Agnello's deft organ licks...that is, if any of those teenyboppers could be bothered to flip the record over.

When 'Cornflakes ...' was rush-released south of the border on Decca, the young lads must surely have thought that they had it made. They made appearances on CTV's After Four and It's Happening, as well as on Cleveland's hugely influential Upbeat program (which featured Chatham (ON)-native Don Webster as its host, by the way). Decca even took out a full-page ad in the bible of pop music, Billboard magazine, with the record reportedly receiving airplay in Boston, Hartford, Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit.

Unfortunately, what the industry had labelled a 'sleeper' - a disc that takes time before the listeners take notice - never really woke up. Lords of London issued two more singles on Apex, 'The Popcorn Man' and 'Candy Rainbow', neither of which caused much of a stir. Agnello left in February '68, to be replaced by Bob Horne. But times were changing fast, and it was clear that the group was well past its best-before date. The nucleus of the band issued an album in 1969 as...um...Nucleus, while Leggat, Taylor and Horne would find longer-term success in the seventies as members of A Foot in Coldwater.

'Cornflakes and Ice Cream' is cloyingly cute, and for obvious reasons is mostly ignored these days by the cratedigger set. A mintish copy might set you back a hundred bucks or so, but that is mostly for the picture sleeve. Still, it does have its admirers: Gary Pig Gold, for one, has sung its praises, calling it "a hurdy-gurdy wash of carnival surrealism [that] neither time nor fashion has yet to penetrate or reduce one iota of its in-grown, dayglo magic".
         
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