Colours
 One of scores of LA bands who briefly flourished then slipped
back through the cracks in the late 1960s, Colours took the
ornate, harmonic breakthroughs of 1967 Beatles and ran with
them.
Formed around the central partnership of Jack Dalton and Gary
Montgomery (one-time Motown songwriters The Dalton Boys), the
consciously Anglo-centric Colours counted members of Derek and The
Dominos and The Beach Boys among their various line-ups.
The group signed to the Dot Records label on the basis of their
sitar and bagpipe-hued novelty 45, Brother Lou's Love
Colony, and went on to release two albums for the
label.
Virtually every track on their superbly orchestrated
self-titled debut album (1968) can be traced to the Fab Four,
although with subject matter ranging from botched liquor store
hold-ups to catalepsy, the parallels sometimes turned
weird.
Sadly, neither the debut album or their follow-up, Atmosphere
(1969), made any commercial impact at the time.
Brother Lou's Love Colony may be antiquated, but its
mix of sitar, bagpipes, strings, wispy harmonies and screaming
guitars is blindingly ambitious for a band often dismissed as a
knockoff.
After the group disbanded, Jack Dalton returned to his native
Detroit and started a jingle company with Jeff Parsons. The Road
Company quickly became the largest jingle company in Detroit, with
Jack writing, arranging, playing, and singing on most of the
commercials.
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