In the 20th century, there were two topics you had to avoid if you wanted BBC radio airplay: 1.) sex and 2.) drugs. You know…the fun stuff.

You could still beat the ban on your song and make the charts based on sales alone if you were a huge band (The Stones) or you enjoyed a massive amount of publicity and novelty (The Sex Pistols), but as a new, unknown act? Well, good luck.

The Smoke were a new, unknown act.

Built from former members of two unsuccessful bands who had recently moved to London, The Smoke developed a hard-edged R&B/rock sound and gained notice around the clubs in the mid-1960s — enough notice to be approached by a fledgling management team who offered representation, twin brothers who owned four nightclubs around the city and wanted to dip their toes into the performing side of the biz. Their name was Kray. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?

For those who don’t know, the brothers Kray were a pair of murderous gangsters who somehow managed to hobnob with the Swinging Sixties elite for a couple of years. At the time The Smoke signed with them, The Krays possessed a kind of anti-authority, up-by-their-own-bootstraps celebrity, so there actually was some cachet in joining with them. But the band soon got into a dispute with their managers, who then filed for an injunction to stop the group from performing anywhere — better than stopping them from having kneecaps anywhere. (Luckily for the band, the twins had other things to keep them busy, like their forthcoming murder charges.)

This ban on performing gave The Smoke a very long time to focus on writing and recording songs, one of which was a pretty explicit reference to the mind-expanding journey one might take by consuming cubes such as the ones “Jack” possesses. In 1966, that wasn’t a good idea. Their record label, EMI, wouldn’t even allow the song to be heard, much less released, until the group made lyrical changes. It didn’t help.

Finally allowed out as a single in early 1967, as the first vibrations of psychedelia moved into the mainstream, the tremelo-laden “My Friend Jack” survived on the radio for about three weeks until the BBC banned it. Clearly, someone explained to them the popular method of dosing people with LSD via sugar cubes and the powers that be shut it down right quick. It stalled at #45 on the UK chart but sailed up to #2 in Germany. Based on their success there, and in order to perform live — and continue to stay alive — the band wisely moved to Germany before eventually breaking up.

Thirteen years later, Smoke bassist Zeke Lund was working as a sound engineer for Boney M when they decided to cover “My Friend Jack.” Released as a single in 1980, it did almost exactly — but not quite — as well in the UK and Germany, respectively, as the original.

So see the hawk fly high to hail the setting sun …. with The Smoke.