Little Games
The 1967 album by this British guitar-university band was its only studio LP with final graduate Jimmy Page — and he sounds ripe to start Led Zeppelin. His whirlpool-folk instrumental “White Summer” went into that group’s early shows, and Page road-tested his bowed-guitar groan in the slow bridge of the high-speed “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor.” But for a band nearing its end, the Yardbirds summoned strong psychedelic nerve here: the title song’s go-go pop; the wild-raga turmoil of “Glimpses”; singer Keith Relf’s plaintive ballad “Only the Black Rose.” Little Games, back in its rare mono form, is a mixed bag — but, man, what a bag.
Listen to “I Remember the Night”: