It's the Wooluff!

Anyone who rides a camel on to the stage at an Alice Cooper concert gets my vote and you can't beat a bit of dry heaving over your favourite tunes. Awesome DJ.Click

School of Lazy Journalism 1

If I had a penny for every time I've read 'He could have been in Led Zeppelin, you know' or some such. Aside from a ripple of reappraisal when 'River' was rereleased about 10 years ago, that's all you seem to hear about Terry Reid. What fuckwits!

Although 'River' gets its rightful props, it's 'Seed of Memory' for me. One of the greatest West Coast albums you've [maybe] never heard. Another album that created its own world and would never have happened if that Zeppelin thing ever came off. A glorious win-win; we got Zep and Terry.

This boy was born to sing and I'm proud to report he still does with the same passion and seat-of-your-pants delivery that hums on my balls and shakes me to my goddamn soul.

Go ahead. Mellow your stressed-out, constipated self.Click

Diving through the burning poo-pah-doo......

There'll be more traditional, meat & potatoes rock & roll in due course but, like Catholic Boy, this is another one from that late 70s/early 80s musical perestroika period.

There used to be a strictly enforced law here in 70s England that sought to apply control and order over the way that kids listened to music. After your baptism via Sweet, Slade, Alice Cooper etc. it was time to begin your apprencticeship in earnest. And this would be provided for by regimented exposure to Quo, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Purple etc.; like an Atkins of Rock.

Punk came along and smashed everything up but, like an East German postman watching the Wall coming down, I waited until everyone else celebrated before I was truly comfortable with ditching my hard-earned apprenticeship (more of this some other time but God bless you, Ed Banger & the Nosebleeds!). The comfort arrived about 78/79. I took pieces of some of the stuff that Punk smashed up, glued and sellotaped them together into a spastic sculpture of my own imagination, dutifully worshipped and smelled the roses in all sorts of gardens.

So this is one of those roses. And I found it in a sci-fi, hippy garden in front of a house that was being squatted by punks and social activists. I was more than familiar with their earlier stuff and had become accustomed to the 'modern' sound by now. This album ticked all my boxes and seemed to really confirm that it was OK to cross-pollinate without fear of reprisal.

The real star of the show is that man Robert Calvert. A whole other university of human wonder. We'll do some of his solo stuff one day.

This album also contributed to the lesson I learned that lyricsheets can ruin one's appreciation of a good line. 'Burning hoop of doom' just doesn't do it like the line in my head.Click

It's like my lungs are filled with chains...

Man, I miss Jim Carrol like I miss being 17 years old.
So many great words handpicked and woven into killer lines and on into a story blanket to hide under and study with a torch and a magnifying glass - ultimately derailing whatever masturbation schedule your working to. And them guitars are for real too. I roamed around the world of this album for so many years. I play it now and I'm still roaming it; I never wanna find my wayback. I can't think of an album that says 'modern' like this does.
You should check him out from all angles because there was so much more to the guy. But this was what he did with these musicians at this time. Such a moment in time. And those albums are always the best. Click

Beginning of a great adventure......

DAY 1, POST 1

OK. The idea is to do the usual expression of likes and dislikes and attempts at educating a world that isn't as cool or as clever as me.

Everyone's welcome so long as they play nice. And it wouldn't hurt to chip in with your twopennarths/cents to further enlighten me and whoever else drops by.

Standby to receive infrequent communiques aimed right at your gonads. For now, in the words of the godlike David Coverdale, here's a song for ya. A rollocking good time with the Flamin Groovies.....

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