Been having a dig back through some oldies this month, helped by a mysterious white cat.
1. Ed Bruce – “I’m Gonna Have A Party” (1964)
According to Wikipedia, Ed Bruce is a country music songwriter and singer best known for his 1975 hit “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys”. I’ll have to listen to that one in bit but around here he’s best known for a couple of big voiced, string laden singles for Wand including this morose mid-tempo mover where he invites only heartache, blues, misery and memories of you to his party.
2. The Graham Bond Organization – “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?” (1965)
Bond, Baker, Bruce and Heckstall-Smith all hurtle headlong into Jimmy Smith’s instrumental desperate to steal the limelight. Bond wins of course, managing to play organ and mellotron simultaneously, and then organ and alto simultaneously. Magick.
3. The Distant Cousins – “Let It Ring” (1965)
I always imagined The Distant Cousins as a groovy moptopped beat combo a la Standells. They weren’t. Raymond L Bloodworth and L Russell Brown actually looked disappointingly square, not that you’d ever have guessed from this infectious and irresistible would-be Merseybeat stomper.
4. Etta James – The Same Rope (1967)
The indomitable Ms James has a message for her wayward lover: “The same rope that pulls you up – sure can hang you”. Consider yourself warned, boy.
5. The Us Too – “The Girl With The Golden Hair” (1967)
Like countless others, Cincinnati band The Us Too served up covers to the local kids at the hop. What those kids made of this moody garage rocker with a wonky organ and a runaway flute is anyone’s guess.
6. Powder – “Gladly” (1968)
I’d forgotten how brilliant Powder were until revisiting their Biff! Bang! Powder compilation the other day. The closest thing the US had to The Who in their pop art pomp.
7. Big Joe Turner – “Two Loves Have I” (1969)
“Two loves have I, and both of them are you”. Big Joe’s ode to his schitzo girlfriend was a big hit around Shoreditch and Old Street back in the halcyon days of 2002. “Shoobie-doo, shoobie-doo”.
8. The Stairs – “Fall Down The Rain” (1992)
Seems appropriate.
9. The Coral – “Two Faces” (2010)
Sounds more like an amalgamation of The Byrds, The Hollies and Buffalo Springfield than even Crosby, Stills and Nash.
10. Pocketbooks – “Sweetness and Light” (2010)
Who or what replaced yuppies? Pocketbooks sound like a bunch of them who, when collecting Joshua and Honeypot from playgroup, pinch their kids’ instruments and tunelessly lisp passages from their novels-in-progress over the backing of toy drums and Bontempi organ. I can find no rational explanation for playing their Flight Paths album at least twenty times this month but I have, and bizarrely love it.
