This is a guest post from Tara Murtha, author of Ode to Billie Joe.

Fifty years after Bobbie Gentry first recorded it, “Fancy” ain’t done bad.

It’s still in regular rotation on TV singing contests, down the local karaoke bar, and at the cabaret. It even inspired an off-Broadway show in 2017.

Beyond popular longevity, the subversive nature of the classic rags-to-riches story-song has helped it achieve a unique place in country music and American culture at large, where “Fancy” is simultaneously an anthem for the country music establishment—and the very artists the industry has historically shut out.

To wit, Reba McEntire performed “Fancy” as the highlight of the 2019 Country Music Association awards show. Reba’s performance was meant to “celebrat[e] legendary women in country music,” a theme chosen to acknowledge if not explicitly address the industry’s well-documented sexism problem.

At first blush it seems strange that a proud sex worker’s anthem is one of the most cherished and enduring songs in a genre typically thought of as conservative. But take a moment to examine the tradition of country songs celebrating all manner of Saturday night sins and you realize that’s only true if “conservative” is just a euphemism for systematically denying women, queer artists, and people of color equal opportunity for mainstream success.

Reba’s CMA performance opened with The Queen Of Country primly poised in the center of an illuminated labia-shaped tunnel. The icon peeled two layers of costumes off and flung them to the floor off as she unspooled the familiar tale of a young girl whose mama encouraged her to escape poverty by selling sex with the famous line, “Just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy, and they’ll be nice to you.” By the time Fancy got herself a Georgia mansion and a New York townhouse flat, Reba was stripped down to a tight red sequin pantsuit, the audience berserk with applause.

Reba McEntire performing “Fancy” at the 2019 CMA Awards

When you see that kind of performance, you really can’t blame people for thinking that “Fancy” is Reba McEntire’s song. After all, McEntire has been performing it at every single concert since releasing her version on 1990’s Rumor Has It. She wanted to record it even earlier than that but her former producer Jimmy Bowen feared it’d sully her reputation.  “Oh no,’” he told her. “You don’t need to be singing about a prostitute.’”

Now Reba calls it the biggest song of her career.

It was not, however, the biggest song of Bobbie Gentry’s career.
 

 
It was the summer she turned 27 when Gentry flew to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to make a record steeped in the swampy, soulful sounds she heard on New Orleans radio stations while growing up on her grandparents’ farm in Mississippi.

Just two years earlier, Gentry’s smash hit debut, Ode to Billie Joe had transformed her from an unknown musician into an international star. She followed Ode up with The Delta Sweete, a concept record about life in the South. It’s considered a masterpiece today but didn’t meet sales expectations back in 1968.

Gentry was unbothered.

“No one bought it,” she said, “But I didn’t lose any sleep over it.”

Nonetheless, Gentry proceeded to release several soft-focus radio-ready pop records that felt unduly influenced by businessmen looking for another jackpot. Then in 1969, Gentry decided to shake up the status quo and return to her roots by heading to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to cut a record with legendary producer Rick Hall.

Gentry’s decision shook up her brand and the recording industry at large. According to Andrew Batt, who compiled and engineered The Girl from Chickasaw County: The Complete Capitol Masters, Fancy shifted the status quo by marking the first time Capitol Records worked with an outside producer.

Batt, who interviewed Hall for the essay accompanying the Bobbie box set, says Hall asked Gentry if she’d write a narrative song like “Ode in the Billie Joe” to function as the centerpiece of the record, which is otherwise stuffed with carefully curated covers.

Two weeks later, Gentry delivered “Fancy.”

“Fancy” showcased Gentry at her best—writing character-driven narrative story-songs exploring themes resonant with her own life through vivid vignettes set in the rural South of her early childhood.

Like all great literature, “Fancy” translated Gentry’s experiences and observations into fictional elements to create a uniquely compelling tale that holds a fundamental truth about humanity more than the sum of its parts. It was also deeply subversive to write a story about an unapologetic woman who seized her power through sex work in an era when women weren’t even allowed a credit card without a male co-signer.

The most obvious way Fancy’s story echoes Gentry’s life is the rags-to-riches storyline. Born into poverty and raised on her grandparents’ farm, Gentry headed to California when she was 13 years old to live with her mother and stepfather, a journey referenced in “Chickasaw County Child” but obscured in her official Capitol biography at the time in which she was presented, as Gentry dryly noted, as if she “just sort of arose out of a swamp fog and appeared on television.”

Another resonant theme between “Fancy” and Gentry’s life was the essence of the mother-daughter relationship. Gentry’s earliest teenage gigs were duo performances with her mother, a beautiful and talented woman with creative aspirations stunted by her circumstances.

Gentry’s mother encouraged her daughter’s success and in return, Bobbie fulfilled her mother’s dreams.
 

Bobbie at the Grammy Awards, 1970. Courtesy Andrew Batt / bobbiegentry.org.uk
 
In the summer of 1969, the girl raised on a Mississippi farm without electricity arrived in Alabama on a personal jet.

“Of course we all couldn’t wait for her to come in! I mean, it was Bobbie Gentry,” laughs musician Clayton Ivey, who played keys on the track in a session and was gracious enough to tell me about it. “She was pretty way ahead of her time, put it that way. Bobbie did her thing and it was a smash, man.”

Ivey says it didn’t take long to nail the take. Bobbie played “Fancy” on her parlor guitar for Rick Hall and studio musicians and they cut it to tape.

“She knew what she wanted,” says Ivey. “She did not sit in the corner. She didn’t get involved, she was involved. You know what I’m saying?”

“Fancy” only climbed to number 28 on the charts but it brought Gentry critical respect and a new persona. The innocent barefoot girl in a white tee-shirt and blue jeans presented on Ode to Billie Joe was replaced by Bobbie’s self-portrait—a grown woman in a tight red dress split clean up to her hip, elegantly poised with a cigarette, daring you to try and get one over.

The men at Capitol did indeed try just that. There’s never been an official story, but talk to enough people and you get the sense that a new slew of suits at Capitol weren’t keen to promote the opinionated lady who wanted something uncommon for a woman: credit for her work.

Bobbie Gentry’s career includes a long list of accomplishments without credit, either from a studio or in the culture at large. For example, Gentry recorded “Ode to Billie Joe” with a guy named Bobby Paris who then brought the tape to Capitol, where Jimmie Haskell’s strings were added on top during sweetening sessions. The original 45 only gave producer credit to the men involved.

When she pursued hosting a TV show in the late 1960s, American media executives advised Gentry that a woman simply couldn’t carry a program. Undeterred, Gentry became the first woman to host her own show on the BBC—where she was denied credit as co-producer.

We may never know the final straw in the disintegrating relationship between Capitol and Gentry but after Fancy, Gentry made one final record—which includes an explicit farewell to the industry—abruptly cut all ties to the record business, and headed to Las Vegas to reinvent herself once again.

Though Gentry’s Vegas period is mostly forgotten, it was more than twice as long as her Capitol career and arguably even more successful. Gentry’s elaborate stage productions broke records for earnings and attendance.

In the early 1980s, Gentry managed one seemingly final act of reinvention when she vanished from the public eye altogether without ceremony or announcement.

We never did get to see the “Fancy” screenplay she co-wrote, or the Christmas play, or the project about homelessness she mentioned to family in the 1980s.

Gentry just never appeared or performed in public again. 
 

Courtesy Andrew Batt / bobbiegentry.org.uk
 
It’s ironic that “Fancy” was the highlight of the 2019 CMA awards show meant to celebrate legendary women in country music, because Bobbie Gentry wrote “Fancy” as a cynical commentary on her experiences as a woman navigating the male-dominated music business, according to former colleagues I interviewed while researching Ode to Billie Joe, my book that tells the story of Bobbie Gentry’s career through the prism of her debut record.

“‘Fancy’ is my biggest statement for women’s lib, if you really listen to it,” Gentry told After Dark magazine in 1974. “I agree wholeheartedly with that movement and all the serious issues that they stand for—equality, equal pay, daycare centers, and abortion rights.”

Once Gentry was completely in charge, she used her stage show to expand lyrical meditations on women and work and more deeply engage and subvert societal ideas about gender and class. On stage, she performed exaggerated representations of femininity to expose it as a social construct in a way not unlike what Dolly Parton does with her persona. She’d come out on stage swinging around a stripper pole inside a gilded birdcage for one number then perform in drag as Elvis Presley the next. For her Elvis homage, Gentry would wear a sparkling white pantsuit and slicked-back hair to perform a whiplash medley of Elvis songs, strutting across the stage with exaggerated masculine swagger, hair coiffed into a pompadour, painted lips pulled back a snarl.

Never afraid of scandal, Gentry doubled down on the salacious plotline of “Fancy” by instructing the band to play a few bars of “House of the Rising Sun,” the blues song about a New Orleans brothel, as a prologue to “Fancy.”

She also added a coda. The music would swell a key higher to ramp up tension after the final line in the recorded version. Then Bobbie, in Fancy’s signature slinky red gown, would toss a boa over her shoulder and belt, “If I did it again, I’d do it the same! My name is Fancy, and I’m not ashamed! My name is Fancy!”

Gentry sauntered off stage with her head high, hips swinging like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. As she exited the stage, all the audience could see was one final bullwhip snap of her boa before the stage went black.
 

 
The thing about subversive art is that contains a secret message that stirs echoes within a select few.

While the mainstream industry can see itself reflected in the way “Fancy” flaunts the American dream of self-made material success—that is, after all, the story they sell to artists and audiences—outsiders instinctively understand that it’s Fancy’s response to her circumstances, her unapologetic transgression and defiant joy, that is the center of the song.

“I think it resonates with anybody who’s ever felt suppressed by their circumstances,” says Orville Peck, the queer country crooner known for maintaining anonymity by donning a series of fringed masks ranging in vibe from the Lone Ranger to something delightfully kinkier. “It’s almost like if ‘Fancy’ had to be told through a story now, it could just as easily be told through the tale of a trans kid in Harlem or a small town in the South.”

Peck, a “Fancy” fan since the first time he heard Reba sing it on the radio when he was around 12 years old, started playing it live last year.

Orville Peck performs “Fancy” in Brooklyn, 2019

Recently, he announced he recorded the track and will be releasing it on his forthcoming Show Pony EP, out August 14.

“Fancy” feels like a natural fit for Peck, a former indie-rock drummer whose persona echoes the classic singing cowboy of yore, except now it’s 2020 and this lone gay rider is scanning the frontier searching for home in a genre bursting with queer talent who, all too often, remain marginalized. 

Like Reba, Peck thought about “Fancy” a long time before finally doing it. He wondered if he had the artistic right to sing it and worried about whether he should change the pronouns.

“I have massive respect for the history of country music … [and] a huge affinity at a very young age for a lot of the female voices in country because they wrote from more a marginalized place than a lot of the male writers, at least in that era,” says Peck.

Eventually, Peck decided to honor and deepen the song’s subversive powers by changing one word. 

In the original lyrics, Fancy looks in the mirror after putting on the red satin dancing dress her mother bought for her and sees a woman where “a half-grown kid had stood.”

“I say, ‘staring back from the looking glass stood a woman where a half-grown boy had stood’ because I defiantly try to make it equivalent of what I think Fancy’s story might have been in this day and age,” says Peck, shifting the character’s transformational journey from escaping poverty to one of a transgender or gender-nonconforming person finding their true gender expression. “It’s still about the ongoing struggle of people being suppressed by their circumstances.”

Peck’s homage to “Fancy” arrives amid an ongoing re-assessment of Bobbie Gentry’s trailblazing career. In addition to my work and the box set, which sold its first run out immediately, Gentry’s BBC performances were compiled for a special Record Store Day release in 2018, the same year indie-rock band Mercury Rev released a tribute album called The Delta Sweete Revisited. 

Even more treats are on the way: A remastered and deluxe edition of Gentry’s original The Delta Sweete will be released on July 31.

The overdue recognition of artists like Gentry coincides with a powerful movement.

Led by women, queer musicians, and Black performers, both artists and fans are speaking out and demanding equal opportunities in country music. They’re calling on the country music establishment to face its sexist, homophobic, and racist history—and changing country music and American culture with it.

At its heart, that’s what “Fancy” is all about: transformation.

Before sending her out into the world to survive on her own, Fancy’s mother gave her a locket inscribed with “To Thine Own Self Be True.”

That message, in turn, is what Bobbie Gentry gave to us—the inspiration to write our own story—self-righteous hypocrites be damned.

This story is dedicated to Don Bradburn, Bobbie Gentry’s longtime collaborator and choreographer. Rest in peace, Don.

Tara Murtha is the author of Ode to Billie Joe. Follow her on Twitter @taramurtha.

 
Visual artist Jesse Draxler—who has worked with Nine Inch Nails, Daughters, Zola Jesus, Alexander McQueen and many others—has put together a new collaborative art project with the likes of Chelsea Wolfe, Greg Puciato, Trentemøller, Jaye Jayle, Ghostemane and more, called Reigning Cement. 

Draxler gave each of his co-creators a set of 34 soundscape elements to assemble in any way they wanted. These recordings are industrial noises found in Draxler’s LA neighborhood and each artist was given the very same sonic toolbox to work with. Concurrently, Draxler created a visual component to go along with each of the tracks, which are incredibly varied. Reigning Cement pairs a 100-page book of Draxler’s art, photography and collage work with the audio portion of the project (see below for flipbook video).

Today we’re premiering the music video for Chelsea Wolfe & Ben Chisholm’s contribution to Reining Cement, a song titled “Valerian.”

Draxler comments:

“When submitting this track, Chelsea briefly mentioned how the lyrics are an ode to her relationship with Valerian root and its effects on sleeping habits and insomnia. With the video we wanted to echo this notion to create a morphing and echoing sleep-scape, straddling the line between dream and nightmare. The video was created by myself and Rizz (of the band VOWWS), while the footage of Chelsea was kindly given to us by herself” 

Reigning Cement is released on Draxler’s Federal Prisoner label, on September 4, 2020.
 

Above, the video for “Valerian” by Chelsea Wolfe & Ben Chisholm.
 

Exploited Body’s track, “Your Stoic Gaze Changes States Of Matter,” provides the soundtrack for a flip-through of the ‘Reigning Cement’ book.

 
As we told you last month, Third Man Records is about to unleash the last show ever played by the original lineup of the Stooges. Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970 will be released on LP and CD on August 8th, 50 years to the day the gig took place. Tapes labeled “Goose Lake” were recently discovered in a Michigan farmhouse, and it turns out they contained the legendary Stooges gig, which was a soundboard recording, to boot. Not only that, Live at Goose Lake shatters a widely held myth surrounding the show.

For years, Stooges frontman Iggy Pop has said that bassist Dave Alexander was fired following the Goose Lake Festival gig after he “froze” on stage and didn’t play a note, an account at least one other band member corroborated. As the story goes, Alexander was so nervous before the Stooges’ set—which would be in front a massive crowd of more than 200,000—that he got drunk, smoked a ton of hash, and snorted an unknown substance, rendering him incapacitated by showtime. Circulating video of a two-minute clip of the band playing “1970 (I Feel Alright),” seems to support this, since no bass can be heard, and there aren’t any clear shots of Alexander, as the footage is edited to largely focus on Iggy. Although Alexander is indeed missing in action for a good chunk of “1970,” he can be heard during the song on the Live at Goose Lake recording, and is audible on every track on the disc. Alexander’s instrument does come and go, though, so it’s possible he did stop playing now and then, and that’s what Iggy—himself out of his mind on drugs—noticed during the show.
 

Photo: Charlie Auringer

At the time of the Goose Lake appearance, the Stooges’ second album, the indispensable Fun House, was about to come out. The band’s setlist mirrors the order of the LP, except “Down on the Street” and “Loose” are flipped (the record company suits thought the former was a stronger opener).
 

 
Dangerous Minds is thrilled to present an exclusive preview of Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970, an absolutely incredible, mind-blowing version of “Fun House.” As on the Fun House LP, the group is joined by saxophonist Steve Mackay for the number, which, incidentally, begins with Dave Alexander’s bass line.

Hear the premiere, after the jump…

Photo: Neil Zlozower

Hey, do you know about the Beat? They’re the great power pop band led by Paul Collins, who was in another great power pop group, the Nerves. I’m particularly fond of the Beat’s 1979 self-titled debut, which is just a fantastic rock ‘n’ roll record, front-to-back. Seriously, every song on it sounds like a hit, though, alas, in the States, at least, none of them were. The Beat were better received in Europe, with the band first touring the continent in the spring of 1980. In an exclusive excerpt from his upcoming autobiography, Paul Collins recounts the Beat’s 1980 European tour—one of drink, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

But first, a little more background.

The ‘80s began on a high note for the Beat, with the group taping an appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in February. But this was followed by a disheartening tour opening for the Jam, in which they weren’t even allowed to meet the band. They also learned that Columbia had no intention of getting behind their music; pushing Billy Joel’s Glass Houses was the label’s priority that year. Some good news came when Columbia’s International Department offered to bring the Beat across the pond for a European jaunt, offering full tour support. Soon, the band were flying to Paris to begin the outing.

FYI: In Europe they were known as “Paul Collins’ Beat,” as there was a UK band also called the Beat. In addition to Collins, the lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist, the members of the Beat were Steve Huff, bassist; Larry Whitman, lead guitarist; and Mike Ruiz, drummer. Their road manager, Kevin Burns (“K.B.”), also comes up in the excerpt.

*****

On the evening of March 29th 1980, we arrived at the Orly Airport in Paris. Our guide, a guy named Andre, hardly spoke English, but he was hysterical, and we had great fun with him. Back at the hotel, despite being very tired, I couldn’t fall asleep.

The next morning, I was really spaced out. I had to get my shit together, but there were no drugs, not even a joint. What would I wear for the first gig? I decided to be cool and downplay it, by not dressing up. A jacket, t-shirt, and jeans would do.

 

Photo: Catherine Sebastian

After breakfast, we were off to the Pavillon Baltard, a fairly large auditorium that held about 800 kids. We were playing with eight other bands, and immediately, we were all on ‘drug recon,’ looking for anything to get high on. We checked out a couple of ska bands, and I met a photographer, who introduced me to a guy from one of the other bands. Finally, we went to the boy’s room and I smoked my first joint in Paris. Ahh… it was great!

A little later, Larry and I were in a tavern around the corner, listening to French rock ‘n’ roll on the jukebox. We met up with some reps from CBS International, named Suzy and Jon-Jacque. We met two crazy American chicks, Jon-Jacque’s friends, and one of them had a huge block of hash. She told me to keep it! Now we had enough hash for the whole trip, and my voice was getting pretty shot.

It was show time, and Steve and I were having trouble tuning our guitars. We were getting worried, until we realized we were a whole key up! I hoped we wouldn’t get booed off stage, but thank god for rock ‘n’ roll. The kids dug us and we got the first encore of the day. Europe here we come!

 

 
Much more, after the jump…

 
What have you been doing during the COVID-19 Lockdown?

Binging on boxsets? Drinking too much? Self-medicating? Finding all your good clothes have shrunk from lack of wear?

All of the above?

George Miller spent his time lockdown making a set of beautiful marionettes featuring some of the biggest stars of rock ‘n’ roll, country, and R&B.

Miller is a Glasgow-based artist, singer, musician and iconic pop figure who’s better known as the front man to the legendary Kaisers and more recently the New Piccadillys. I’ve known Miller a long, long time. Well, since he dressed like a rocker in a black leather jacket and sported a quiff like a zeppelin, combed back like a barrel most surfers would die for. Something like that, though memory is fickle.

Since then, Miller sang and played guitar with the Styng-Rites (“We got on telly once, made the independent top 20 once, got in the music papers a bit, built a cult following and gigged ourselves to exhaustion.”); played guitar with Eugene Reynolds’ band Planet Pop; then gigged with the Revillos and Jayne County and the Electric Chairs.

In 1993, Miller formed the Kaisers:

“We ended up making six albums and a bunch of 45s, toured the USA twice, Japan once and gigged all over Europe. We did John Peel and Mark Radcliffe sessions amongst others and got on the telly a few times. I think we lasted about seven years and everything we earned just about covered the bar bill.”

Most recently, Miller was involved with the New Piccadillys, worked with Sharleen Spiteri, then toured and recorded with Los Straitjackets across America. About five years ago, the Kaisers reformed due to public demand and will be releasing a new album in the fall—more on that another time.
 

George Miller: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Band.
 
I reconnected with Miller through social media. Over the past few months, he would post a photograph of his latest marionette in progress. Sculpting heads of rock stars like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly or country greats like Johnny Cash. They were beautiful, fabulous models, which were then dressed by Ursula Cleary and placed in boxes designed by Chris Taylor.

How did these marionettes come about?

George Miller: I’d been working on a BBC children’s drama for a few weeks (I’m a freelance Production Designer, gawd help me) and as lockdown was approaching, production stopped so I went from super busy to completely idle pretty much overnight.

I’d made some marionettes for a video a few years earlier and since then had been toying with the idea of making one of Link Wray but never seemed to have the time, so lockdown seemed the ideal opportunity. I liked the notion of spending time making something that had no ultimate purpose other than self amusement and no deadline for completion. With his outfit made by my partner Ursula, Link turned out pretty satisfactorily but after a few days I got the itch again, so I got to work on Bo Diddley, another guitar favorite of mine. Bo gave me a bit of trouble and the first attempt went in the bin. Realizing I’d tried to rush it, I reverted to lockdown pace, which I’ve employed ever since.
 

 
Why did you choose the classic rock ‘n’ roll, R’n'B icons?

GM: I wouldn’t call myself a musical luddite, but nothing has ever thrilled me more than a good rock ‘n’ roll record, so I decided to keep making favorites from the 1950s until my day job resumed. Although a couple of the subjects are still with us, the notion of “resurrecting” the others in some way appealed to me. I like seeing them bursting out of their “coffins.” It’s also a way of expressing my fascination with these people and the music they made. If I start to run out of subjects, I’ll move forward in time, but I doubt I’ll go past 1965 as the joy goes out of it a bit for me around then.

Maybe I’ll fast forward—Joey Ramone would be a good subject.
 

 
Where did the boxes for the marionettes come from?

GM: When I posted a photo of the Buddy Holly puppet, a Facebook friend by the name of Chris Taylor sent me a mock-up of a box label with a great illustration and excellent graphics. Chris got me thinking that this could be a “proper” project and we’ve been working together on ideas for an exhibition and a range of merchandise, as the marionettes have been developing a bit of a virtual fan base online. Chris’s illustrations have a great deal of style and though instantly recognizable, they have their own identity, which complements the puppets which are more rigidly representational. It reminds me of opening a box to find that the toy inside looks different to the illustration, something that always registered with me as a child. Chris’s work has definitely steered things in the direction of an art project, albeit with the (for now) all-important absence of deadline.

Where can we buy these Kaiser George Marionettes?

GM: The marionettes are one-offs and aren’t for sale as they take so long to make. I wouldn’t want to sculpt any of them twice, though mould making could be an option. As someone commented on Facebook, it would be a bit like selling your children. Chris and I are working on a set of bubblegum cards which will be for sale and we’re unashamedly excited about it. Second childhood? Definitely.
 

KGM Trading Cards.
 
What other plans do you have for your rock ‘n’ roll children?

GM: When the “cast” of puppets grows to 20 or so, I’m planning on making a video showcasing their individual musical styles plus a series of short clips based on the photographs of Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran passing time in the dressing room of the Glasgow Empire theater. I quite like the idea of two marionettes in a small room not doing very much, just idle movements.

Now, if I was an enterprising businessman, I would certainly be thinking of investing in mass marketing these to-die-for Kaiser George Marionettes. You know you sure as hell want one. And damned if I wouldn’t be collecting all those trading cards too.
 

 
See more of George’s Marvellous Marionettes, after the jump…
 

Photo by Jeanette Lee

Beyond the Pale, the new album by Jarvis Cocker’s group Jarv Is… is out now and the former Pulp frontman has opted for an innovative video promotion for it that doesn’t involve touring. He was aided in this cause by directors Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard—co-directors of the great Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 days on Earth—who shot the group live at Peak Cavern, Derbyshire. The film premieres tomorrow on YouTube at 8pm BST (that’s 3pm EST, noon if you’re on the west coast) and you’ll have 24 hours to watch it before it disappears.

Cocker posted on YouTube:

Beyond the Pale was written (& partially recorded) in front of a live audience, so it feels extra-strange not to be able to take it on the road at the moment. Fortunately, our friends Iain & Jane suggested a way round the problem: set up our equipment in a cave & they would film the results. We have invented a new way of playing a concert.

 

 
Backing Jarvis Cocker during the program are Serafina Steer, Emma Smith, Andrew McKinney, Jason Buckle, Adam Betts and Naala. There’s a trailer for the concert below. Once it’s live you can view it here.
 

 
Out this week is the new multi-disc compilation, Surrender to the Rhythm: The London Pub Rock Scene of the Seventies. The collection is an excellent overview of pub rock, a phenomenon that helped paved the way for British punk. Before we get any further, though, we need to address a question many of our readers are probably asking themselves: What the hell is “pub rock?”

Pub rock is a British genre and movement that lasted for a handful of years in the early to mid seventies. Pub rock bands played a back-to-basics style of rock-n-roll that was loose and unassuming. Though very much a London scene, pub rock was kick-started by an American group. In the spring of 1971, Eggs Over Easy were in London recording, when they convinced a local pub, the Tally Ho, to let the band play there on a regular basis. Their subsequent performances at the bar were a popular attraction, and other musicians and pub owners took notice. By 1973, a scene was thriving.

One of the earliest and most popular pub rock acts was Brinsley Schwarz, a group fronted by Nick Lowe. In addition to Lowe, many future punk and new wave players got their start in pub rock bands, including Ian Dury (Kilburn and the High Roads), Joe Strummer (the 101’ers), and Elvis Costello (nee Declan McManus of Flip City). The Jam also got their start playing the pub rock circuit, which is where they were first spotted by Polydor, the label that would sign them.
 

Dutch picture sleeve, 1973.

By the time 1976 rolled around, pub rock had petered out. Though it didn’t last long, pub rock bands established a circuit for local groups, demonstrating to bar owners that hosting live music was profitable. Punk bands would come to reap the benefits of the successful pub rock circuit, and the stripped-down style of pub rock influenced the sound of punk.
 

The Razorbacks at the Brecknock.
 
Surrender to the Rhythm, new from Cherry Red Records, is a three-CD overview of pub rock, containing 71 songs and a 48-page booklet. It spans the years 1970-79, so there are acts on the collection that weren’t part of the scene, but do have some connection to pub rock. An example is the fantastic, new wave-y 1978 single “Driver’s Seat” by Sniff ‘n’ the Tears, a group that spawned from the ashes of pub rock band Moon. A few of the groups on the comp, such as Status Quo, Thin Lizzy, and Mott the Hoople, were so popular they never would’ve played in pubs, but have a similar sound and approach, so they’ve been included. The aforementioned Eggs Over Easy, Brinsley Schwarz, Kilburn and the High Roads, the 101’ers, Flip City, and the Jam are all represented. Surrender to the Rhythm contains a number of previously unreleased recordings, and Dangerous Minds has the web premiere of two of those tracks, Roogalator’s chugging, greasy “Ride With the Roogalator,” and Byzantium’s “It Could Be Better,” which sounds like Badfiner/Abbey Road-era McCartney. They’re on a playlist that Cherry Red has created, which has a few additional highlights from the set. Check it out at the end of this post.

But first, a few more images of pub rockers.

Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts.
 

Chas & Dave aboard the HMS Belfast, 1975.
 

Byzantium with friends backstage at the Roundhouse, 1975.

Order your copy of Surrender to the Rhythm: The London Pub Rock Scene of the Seventies via Cherry Red’s website or Amazon.
 

 
RidingEasy Records is the label behind the legendary—and ever growing, there’s a brand new one out—Brown Acid compilations of heavy psych and proto-metal. You have to hand it to them, they really know how to find obscure records and have performed some exemplary subcultural archaeology in the 70s hard rock department. Where do they keep finding these gems you wonder?

In the case of Indianapolis quintet Ice, RidingEasy head honcho Daniel Hall happened to be in a nightclub when the DJ played a test 45 they’d made—it wasn’t even issued properly, or under their own name, that’s how rare it was. Soon Hall was in touch with the band about using the song on Brown Acid: The Ninth Trip, when it was revealed that they’d recorded a never completed full album’s worth of original material in 1970. It just had to be mixed, but the group parted ways soon after the tracks were laid down and the 2” master tapes had been sheveled and long forgotten before Hall reached out to them.

Half a century later, The Ice Age, their ten-song album of 70s FM radio-ready rock will finally see light of day. The hard-driving midwesterners sound like Grand Funk Railroad meets The Guess Who with a definite influence from the Move. Imagine recording an album in 1970 that doesn’t get released 2020? Talk about a bomb with a very long fuse.

The Ice Age will be available on LP, CD and download on July 10th, 2020 via RidingEasy Records.

 
I’m the guest on this week’s installment of the That Record Got me High podcast. I joined co-hosts Barry Stock and Rob Elba to discuss an album that I like to listen to a lot while I’m high, Jefferson Airplane’s lysergically-soaked 1967 longplayer After Bathing at Baxter’s. I think it’s one of the defining albums of the 1960s. I also think it’s an album that all too many people keep flipping past in the used record bins—dirt cheap Jefferson Airplane albums are ubiquitous in any American record store—and this is a shame. There’s quite a vast difference between the Jeffersons Airplane and Starship, but commercial dreck like “Play on Love” and the horrific ear-bleeder “We Built This City” has all but insured that the Jefferson Airplane albums are unfairly ignored. I wanted to try to rehabilitate their rock snob bona fides in my own small way.

One thing that I had intended to mention on the show but forgot about, is the album’s distinctive cover. It was drawn by underground cartoonist Ron Cobb who would go on to design the Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars a decade later.
 

Front and back of a 1993 Topps ‘Star Wars’ trading card
 

Counter culture icon and Editor of Dangerous Minds (www.dangerousminds.net), Richard Metzger, dove into the psychedelic deep end of the pool to discuss a record that STILL gets him high: Jefferson Airplane’s darker, heavier follow-up to Surrealistic Pillow, “After Bathing at Baxter’s”. Coffee was consumed, minds were expanded, and by the end the Summer of Love felt more like a hazy hangover.

 
In 1977, King Crimson founder Robert Fripp—who’d left the world of music in 1974 when he dissolved the group—moved to NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen (and then later a place on the Bowery) and immersed himself in the city’s punk and new wave music scene. Inspired by New York’s frantic energy and wanting to combine the new sounds he was hearing with “Frippertronics,” the droning tape loop system he had developed with Eno, the final product was his solo record, Exposure.

The ambitious Exposure is one of the ultimate art-rock documents of late 70s New York, a classic album that sadly seems to have fallen through the cracks for many music fans. It’s a brilliant and underrated missing link between what was to become King Crimson’s next incarnation, the “Berlin trilogy” of David Bowie and Brian Eno (and indeed Fripp and Eno’s own collaborations), Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel and believe it or not, Hall and Oates!

That’s right, Exposure was meant to be seen as the third part of a loose trilogy that included Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs and Peter Gabriel’s second album (both produced by Fripp). Daryl Hall’s management threw a wrench in the works, concerned that Hall’s decidedly more esoteric solo material might confuse his fan-base expecting catchy, “blue-eyed soul” AM radio-friendly pop tunes and that this would harm his commercial appeal. Additionally, they insisted that Fripp’s own Exposure album be credited as a Fripp/Hall collaboration. As a result, Fripp used just two of Hall’s performances on the album, recording new vocals by Terre Roche and Van Der Graaf Generator’s Peter Hammill.

Sacred Songs didn’t come out until 1980 and sold respectably well. Both albums include the snarling buzz-saw rave-up, “You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette.”:
 

 
The first voice you hear in the “Preface” is Eno’s and the voice before the phone starts ringing is Peter Gabriel’s. The vocal however, is obviously Daryl Hall, but not as we’re used to hearing him. Fripp later described Hall as the best singer he’d ever worked with and compared his musical creativity to David Bowie’s. High praise indeed.

Another highlight on Exposure is Peter Gabriel’s amazing performance of his “Here Comes the Flood,” perhaps the best version of the many he has recorded: Gabriel disliked the orchestral arrangements for the song on his first album, considering it over-produced. He did a different version on Kate Bush’s Christmas TV special in 1979 and still another on on his Shaking the Tree greatest hits collection. The rendition heard on Exposure is sparse, haunting and moving. I think it’s one of his single greatest vocal performances. Eno, Fripp and Gabriel are the only musicians on this track:
 

 
Continues after the jump…