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Prepare to have your head ripped off by the buzzsaw guitar of Love Sculpture’s ‘Sabre Dance’
10.20.2015
02:48 pm
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One thing that I have always wanted to showcase on this blog is “Sabre Dance,” the incredibly amped-up 1968 instrumental hit by Love Sculpture, featuring Dave Edmonds, later of Rockpile, on lead guitar, but sadly there was never a performance clip of it posted on YouTube. You’d have to actually see them to get the full effect, I think.

That was then, this is now. Two months ago, a kind soul upped what might be a live color performance from Swiss television. All good things come to those who wait, as well as those who had no idea they were waiting for this, but who WERE.
 

 
I first got hipped to this number when it appeared on a See For Miles Records compilation called Twenty One Hit Wonders back in the 80s. It has long been a mainstay of my mixed tapes and CDs and when I DJ. The song, a ferociously crazed rev’d up take on Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian’s already crazily ferocious “Sabre Dance” was inspired by The Nice’s Keith Emerson and his ostentatious “rock” arrangements of classical music. Love Sculpture (Edmunds, bassist John David and drummer Rob ‘Congo’ Jones) were basically a “heavy blues” trio whose first album, Blues Helping consisted of a bunch of Willie Dixon, Slim Harpo and Ray Charles covers. Once they gained a little notoriety due to “Sabre Dance,” which went top 5 on the British pop charts due to support from DJ John Peel on BBC radio, their next album, the more psychedelic Forms and Feelings contained rock arrangements of “Mars” by Holst and Bizet’s “Farandole,” as well as the terrific original number “In the Land of the Few.” After Love Sculpture went their separate ways, Edmunds would later form Rockpile with former Brinsley Schwarz guitarist Nick Lowe.

Prepare for liftoff…
 

 
Bonus: A Beat-Club performance of “Sabre Dance” after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.20.2015
02:48 pm
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