The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party is the debut album by psychedelic pop band The Idle Race, released in 1968. This quasi-concept album was the first to be composed almost entirely of songs by a young Birmingham guitarist/singer named Jeff Lynne. The LP came in a gatefold sleeve. The inside sleeve art included a mock birthday feast attended by many British celebrities, including most of the Radio 1 disc jockeys, the Beatles, the Duke of Windsor, actor Warren Mitchell in his role as Alf Garnett, and group leader Jeff Lynne as an eight-year-old schoolboy. In the U.S. the cover art was different with a rather psychedelic-styled paisley pattern behind the band. 18-year-old Liberty Records label-mate Mike Batt contributed string arrangements for "Follow Me, Follow" and "The Lady Who Said She Could Fly", and played accordion on "The Skeleton and the Roundabout" and "Don't Put Your Boys In The Army Mrs Ward". While warmly received by critics, the record failed to chart in the U.K. or the U.S. The album was re-issued in 1976 by Liberty on their budget-price label Sunset, although in a non-gatefold sleeve with different design, to capitalise on Lynne's success with Electric Light Orchestra. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bir...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)