Episode Six were an English rock band formed in Harrow, London in 1965. The band did not have commercial success in the UK, releasing nine singles that all failed to chart, but they did find minor success in Beirut at the time. Group members
Ian Gillan and
Roger Glover left in 1969 to join Deep Purple, while drummer
Mick Underwood founded
Quatermass and later collaborated with Gillan.
This double CD is a testament to the outer limits of 1960s rock archivism, presenting 51 songs -- unreleased during the 1960s themselves -- by a band who never had a hit record and never became especially popular even on an underground or cult level. Of course, they did have a couple of future members of Deep Purple in the band, which guarantees some sort of specialist audience. It's a pretty amazing package insofar as the sheer bulk of obscurities it unearths, spanning 1964-1969. There are home and studio demos, alternate versions, a couple 1967 German TV cuts, and mucho British radio broadcasts, those U.K. radio sessions providing the bulk of the source material.
