Gary Walker & The Rain - Album Number 1 (1968)

Gary Walker (real name Gary Leeds) was by far the least prominent of the Walker Brothers; nominally the drummer, he apparently played on few if any of the group's records. When the Walkers split in 1967, he formed his own band, Gary Walker & the Rain, which played a far more guitar-oriented brand of pop/rock than his previous outfit. Also including future Badfinger guitarist Joey Molland, the group managed to release an album in Japan in 1968 before splitting in the late '60s. Leeds surfaced again as part of the mid-'70s Walker Brothers reunion.

The sole LP by Walker & the Rain is a middling slice of late-'60s British mod-pop/rock with mild psychedelic influences, like phasing and slight guitar distortion. Not at all similar to the balladeering of the Walker Brothers, Leeds deserved credit for trying to reinvent himself within a straightahead rock group, although the results weren't that impressive. The LP on Shanghai that surfaced in the States in the '80s and '90s, incidentally, is probably not the original Japanese article, but an unauthorized reissue.

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