Your Move . . .That'll Flat. . . Git It! Volume 46

Bear Family have just issued volume 46 in their rockabilly series That’ll Flat . . . Git It! that began waybackwhen in 1992. I don’t pretend to listen to each new volume with the same ardent fervour as I did thirty years ago, but my admiration for the compilers’ dedication to the task of cataloguing and archiving this small corner of popular music knows no bounds. . . I’d buy each release for the photos and sleeve notes alone. Whenever the task is done, if that is ever likely or even possible, I hope they put all the text and images together in one giant hardback book

The series is the digital version of the rockabilly by label compilations that were released from the mid 1970s to early 1980s that were curated by Rob Finnis, Bill Millar, Colin Escott, Stuart Colman and the like. It was then a very British obsession. Some 20 plus albums were released, which apart from the then ongoing excavations in the Sun vaults must have seemed pretty exhaustive. Yet, here go Bear Family barrelling on with near 50 silver discs in their catalogue.

Volume 46 is dedicated to Chess and affliate releases, it is the second one to feature the label. 64 tracks in all. In their notes for the original vinyl release Finnis and Millar considered its 20 tracks to be ‘virtually the sum total of the Chess brothers erratic forays into rockabilly’. Perhaps their view of the form was stricter than those who came after, certainly Bear Family, with volume 27, expanded their scope by adding “rock ‘n’ roll” to ‘rockabilly from the vaults’ which meant they could include Chuck Berry and Big Al Downing on their latest release. That’s no hardship to endure (and better than some of the more uptempo country numbers that have helped swell out the track listing in other volumes in the set).

Anyway, this one on v.46 gets my stamp of approval. Tell us about your baby Steve . . .

Rock Revival, Brighton 1968: Advertisements for Peace

1968 and the rock ‘n’ revival as pursued by The Who was in full-flight with ‘Shaking All Over’ and three Eddie Cochran covers added to their set, while The Move, having put ‘Weekend’ on their debut album, issued another Cochran song on their live EP ‘Something Else’. Mick Farren and his pals kept the flame burning bright in the underground press and with his Deviants kept the faith. He also teamed up with Brighton’s Unicorn Bookshop for a run of posters sold under the tag ‘advertisements for peace’ . . . and there was nary a Teddy Boy in sight among these rock history mavens.

Numbers 1–3 are part of a long-ago acquired batch of posters bought by Vinyl Head, Ramsgate. Each is 30 x 20 inches, published in 1968 by Unicorn Bookshop, Brighton with ‘Production: by Mean & Filthy’.

Unicorn Bookshop was situated at 50 Gloucester Road. It was opened by American Bill Butler and ran circa 1966–1974. Its psychedelic–beat–counterculture goods were advertised by a mural that covererd both sides of the shop front and which has recently been restored to its original glory.

There are a number of blog posts on the shop, John May’s site has one of the more detailed accounts [HERE] and there is also a Butler biography by Terry Adams, which gives some background on the selling and distribution of the posters, but there’s little to be found on their design.

Mean & Filthy was a front put together by Mick Farren and Steve Sparkes – Rich Deakin’s Keep It Together has the lowdown on their activities. A revised version of #2 for a Roundhouse gig (with Deviants 3rd on the bill) is reproduced, along with a Dylan, also a Mean and Filthy production, in Mick Farren’s Get On Down history of the rock poster. Based on a cover for Oz, the Dylan was a big seller, designed by Vytas Serelis, artist, sitar player and friend of Marc Bolan.

As Deakin points out, Farren had laid out the thinking behind the series in a piece for IT. . .

Guevara, Dylan, Hendrix and Eddie Cochran – heroes of the revolution

Paul Kaczmarek, who worked with Bill Butler, has very kindly provided the following information about the various rock related posters the shop printed and sold.

There were only three titles directly related to the ‘Rock Revival’ series:

Rock Revival 1 - Gene Vincent  (2,622 printed)

Rock Revival 2 – Elvis Presley (2,565 printed)

Rock Revival 3 – Eddie Cochran (2,500 printed)

These three, along with the Dylan and Hendrix, were the only Mean and Filthy productions – all first published March 1968. There are three variants of the Dylan poster (black/grey, orange and green versions). They were heavily reprinted in the early 1970s with some 10,000 in distribution. The numbering system used related to the sequence of release and was not a continuation of the Rock Revival series, so Jimi Hendrix was Unicorn’s 14th poster (with two variants), it was also based on a Vytas Serelis illustration. Other posters that are of interest include:

#8 – ‘Beatles scene’ (drawing by Richard O’Mahoney)

#36 – Paul McCartney (PK has found references to this but has not seen a copy).

#37 – John Mayall

B1 – Maharishi and The Beatles (drawing)

C1 – Eric Clapton (PK has not seen a copy only references to it in sales invoices)

The three Rock Revival posters link effortlessly with Farren and Barker’s Watch Out Kids and with the aesthetic of Ian Sippen and Peter Shertser’s Union Pacific label [HERE] . . . This was greaser rock ‘n’ roll for the new generation and Mean and Filthy had their bedroom walls covered.

My thanks to Phyll Smith, Don Lickley, Paul Kaczmarek and @heaven_mirror for feeding me with material and insights. Paul’s book, Poetry, Publishing and Prosecutions – Bill Butler and Unicorn Bookshop is due to be published in 2023

Collect the Set . . . Rock 'n' Roll Stars Vol. 1–4 (Joy Records 1972)

These four volumes of reprocessed stereo cuts from Vee Jay’s catalogue have intrigued me for years as I chanced upon bits of the covers’ Teddy Boy. Finally found the complete set in Ramsgate’s Vinyl Head. Compiled in 1969 by Joe Fields and Richard Robinson (Groovies and Lou Reed’s producer?) with sleeve notes by John Gabtree who wrote The World of Rock, a 1968 paperback history. You have to hope the book had a better copy editor than his sleeve notes which places Sun Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. . . .

The Teddy Boy figure was obviously a substitute design for the UK edition, the American version had been released earlier on the Buddah label in an anonymous jacket. The 1972 British edition was very much of its moment, as was the album’s theme – ‘First Generation: Rock/Blues/Early Soul’ – when the notion of a ‘third generation’ was being cast around by the likes of Alice Cooper and Nick Kent. Things were moving fast . . .

Gabree began his story at a Filmore East gig, headlined by Three Dog Night and Sha Na Na, with a showing of the Chubby Checker movie Twist Around the Clock (1961). In 1969 the Rock ‘n’ Roll Revivial is revving up so some history is needed: Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, etc. are the first generation then come the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he wrote. But as yet no third generation is nominated, just the first murmurs of the resurrection shuffle.

Fats Domino plays the Club International – David Parkinson was there

Fats Domino’s sell-out Hammersmith Odeon appearance in April 1973 was covered by Waxie Maxie in the July ‘73 issue of Club International (volume 2, number 7). As per his self-given remit, his lead into the story managed a sex scenario that featured rock n roll records and a little ultra violence between the day’s youth cults . . . Perfect Max in fact. Fats bought his own band, which must have disappointed the Allstars, but none of that matters much because we’re not here to celebrate Teddy Boy Rock ‘n’ Roll, Mr. Domino or even Mr. Needham. My purpose here is to give your peepers the chance to glance over David Parkinson’s photographs. The one above being all you will ever need to see in order to understand the appeal of rock ‘n’ roll in 1972–73.

I can’t let this post go by without also noting that this is all in the same issue that David Parkinson ran a spread on Malcolm McLaren’s Let It Rock clobber that ran for seven pages. Style and attitude never better displayed . . . visit Paul Gorman’s webpages for a fuller account of Parkinson, Mclaren and Club International, be warned you will get lost in there: https://www.paulgormanis.com/

For anyone looking to track down a copy of this issue of Club International here’s the cover, which features Iggy Pop on stage at the King Sound July 1972 gig, as photographed by Mick Rock

Any Wild Yahoo British Group – The Rock 'n' Roll AllStars

I was not very generous toward The Rock ‘n’ Roll Allstars in Pin-Ups 1972, in all fairness to them my issue was as much to do with Max ‘Waxie Maxie’ Needham using his porn connections to drag them into the degrading (for everyone involved) scenario in Curious magazine’s Pillow Book as it was for their insipid cover version of T. Rex’s ‘Get It On’. Small amends then, but here’s some extra observations, a few images and cuttings.

The band’s recorded output was pretty meagre, one LP, one single, one EP, and appearances on two compilations all put out by budget label B&C where they were joined by The Wild Angels and fellow Curious magazine freaks, Arnold Corns. The label was an off-shoot of Trojan. The initials stood for ‘Beat” and ‘Commerical’, which is naming things as they are I reckon.

Their debut 45 is a fair effort at pitching themselves as both true to the Teddy Boy Rock ‘n’ Roll ethos and to the novelty pop market (Philips in Germany released it in a neat picture sleeve). ‘Baby Can You Feel It’ nicely foreshadows the hits of Showaddywaddy, but completely lacks Mike Hurst’s production ability (and budget). The Fats Domino cover ‘It Keeps Raining’ was their real statement of intent. In a Beat Instrumental feature from November 1971 they explained that they had ‘gone for the New Orleans type of rock and roll’. Lots of saxs ‘is the sound we have and I feel we could confidently back Little Richard or Fats Domino if they ever came over here. Our sound is what these men are used to’. Not the Gene Vincent sound that drummer Billy Williams’ previous band The Houseshakers trade in then. Regardless of these fine points of distinction between the bands on the circuit, ‘The Allstars are not just a bunch of fellows jumping on a rock and roll revival bandwagon, or a band aiming at sending it up. They are truly dedicated Teddy boys with a great deal of experience in the R&R field.’

Needham, who was the band’s manager, made sure they got maximum coverage in his Record Mirror column ‘Waxie’s World’. The thing with Max, however, was he had trouble remembering whether he was writing for the Soho skin trade or the pop press.

I can forgive him his peccadilloes when the link is this crazy: ‘Shelia was twenty-nine years of age, married with three children all skinheads’. Caught by her husband in bed with Jailhose Jim Bennett, she’s now staying at her mum’s where she can play the best of the wild Yahoo British groups as she rubs up against Jailhouse Jim.

His readers held a debate about the merits of Waxie’s approach. Here’s their verdict (below the great pic of the Sunsets)

Both the Curious and Beat Instrumental pieces were promoting their Party EP, which is 14 minutes of standard covers with crowd noises and, I think, Waxie doing the cheerleading. It is just about the worst thing that came out under the Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival of 1969–73, and there is plenty of competition for that accalade. It’s not just that their versions are no better than a budget TOTPs album, and ‘Get It On’ is an absolute travesty, it is the fact it is all done without any style and zero attitude, not even the frisson of a sexual fumble in the dark. Cut on the cheap, the EP didn’t even come with a picture sleeve FFS! Most of the tracks are scattered across the Rock ‘n’ Roll Party compilation, the louder mastering doesn’t help much.

Someone must have liked the crowd noises between the songs on the EP because they are back on their sole album Red China Rocks, which does have one of the period’s great sleeves as compensation. . . Chairman Mao in drape and creepers . . . and, as my mate Eddie says, a Clash bootleg sleeve before the fact. Rather than develop the New Orleans side of things the album retreats back to Houseshakers’ territory. The world did not need another cover of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ but, that said, it is all a significant improvement on the Party EP and with Perkins’ ‘Dixie Fried’ and, what must be one of the first British covers of a Charlie Feather’s number, ‘One Hand Loose’, I do believe I can hear Crazy Cavan coming down the line. . . . cut loose!!!

Bush Hollyhead’s illustration for a 1972 Club International special on Fifties revivalism goes places the Rock n Roll Allstars led by Waxie Maxie were never going to get

London Rock: Birth of an Edwardian

A chance encounter in a local record shop, the jacket so grubby it might almost have been a revenant from 1959. But what a great sleeve it is, a superb design that looks like the cover of some titillating true crime or confidential magazine pushed out by some back street Soho publisher.

The price asked for the beat up copy was too high so I skipped on it and went home and checked on-line. A tenner for the mint copy you see here.

I thought at first this white label boot on Velvet Touch Records might have been something that slipped out from behind the counter at Rock On around the same time as Ace and Charly were putting out all those rockabilly 10 inch discs, but this all feels a little too arch and artful for the early 1980s.

All, apart from the Bern Elliott and Tom Jones unknown to me, and those two tracks I’d always thought of as more Beat Merchant material than Rock n’ Roll even if they make perfect sense in the present company.

Most first generation British Rock ‘n’ Roll comes across as if it was conceived as a novelty recording backed by jobbing big band jazzers. That’s not hidden here, especially with the inclusion of The Basil Kirchin Band, who have that swing thing down, and Clay Morton’s ‘Tombstone No. 9’ which is delivered in an execrable cockney accent, or Tommy Bruce who is so burnt up by his girlfriend he has to call for a fire engine. Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman telephoned in that composition.

Adam Faith’s reworking of ‘Great Balls of Fire’ as ‘I Vibrate’ has some fire in its groin and Dean Shannon’s ‘Ubangi Stomp’ drives the cool cats wild, but it still sounds like it was recorded in Teddington upon Thames and not anywhere near Memphis.

This is all clearly neither here nor there because the disc as a whole is a solid ‘Whoop Up’ as Johnny Keating and the Z-Men demonstrate. Brilliantly curated from the opening introduction from some Pathé newsreel warning of the latest folk devils to the last cut on side two.

I’d love to know who put this together and when, but if I live the rest of my life in ignorance I don’t much care as the sleeve is the real thing, pure 100% rock ‘n’ roll

Matched Pairs in Monochrome: MC5 and J. Geils Band 1970

A love letter to Zip-Gun Teenage Punk Thunder from The Garage Band Appreciation Society, Maidenhead, May 1976

Just 18 catalogue entries separate the MC5’s Back in the USA and The J. Geils Band’s debut on Atlantic, released in March and December 1970 respectively. The matched pair share the same sleeve photographer, Stephen Paley, stripped back aesthetic and belief in full-throttle rock ‘n’ roll that spins out of the garage greased up, burning alcohol and smoking its own exhaust fumes.

The two albums were reviewed in Rolling Stone, in May ‘70 Greil Marcus covered the MC5; he thought Back in the USA a valid but flawed effort: 

Phil Spector once talked about the difference between ‘records’ and ‘ideas’ – ‘The man who can make a disc that’s a record and an idea will rule the world’, he said in his typically moderate fashion. The MC5 album for the most part, remains an idea, because in the end it sounds like a set-up. ‘Teenage Lust’ and ‘American Ruse’ and ‘Human Being Lawnmower’ break through, and they belong on singles, and on the charts. All the way up the charts.

Bostonian, journalist and the MC5’s producer, Jon Landau reviewed The J. Geils Band’s debut in January ‘71. He loved it all:

The best album I’ve heard in sometime . . . It is a goodtime, modern piece of rock and roll; it is also totally devoid of the self-consciousness and pretentions that usually mar this kind of thing.

Where Back in the USA was all edgy, dry and hard-wired, the J. Geils album pulled in the oppositie direction with keys and harp filling out the middle and the upper reaches. The J. Geils Band’s choice of producers were Atlantic in-house Muscle Shoals and Critierion studio tyros Dave Crawford and Brad Shapiro, producers who brought the funk with them. Landau’s neophyte production of the MC5 careens into the corners and then skitters down the lanes. Crawford and Shapiro play for a less immediate impact. It is a more comfortable ride, but equally thrilling when they pile-in and threaten to spill out of control. Landau took what he heard here and used it to help shape the E. Street Band.

On the otherside of the Atlantic ocean, the matched pair's impact was most keenly felt in Essex, in its suburbs and in Southend and Canvey Island. Wilko Johnson was an admirer of the MC5 after witnessing their performance at Wembley in 1972. He was there backing Heinz, (you can catch him in the movie of the gig if you keep your wits about you. His hair is long, so be warned) and one of the few who wasn’t throwing cans at Rob Tyner. In April 1976, Eddie and the Hot Rods told the NME’s Max Bell that they were ‘bored to tears with long songs. We play short and punchy . . . We don’t want to be a heavy albums band. We come on with high energy . . to get the MC5 feel from Back in the USA, bang, two minutes, over and carry on.’ J. Geil’s ‘Hard Drivin’ Man ‘was a keynote cover version in their live set and in Lew Lewis they had, at least for a while, their own Magic Dick and his lickin’ stick.

The Feelgoods and Hot Rods never exactly hid their debt to either band, it’s written all over their lp sleeves.

The J. Geils Band’s ‘Wait’ was a Lew Lewis Reformer showstopper. Like J. Geils, the Feelgoods covered Otis Rush’s ‘Homework’ (on Stupidity), but the influence of the Beantown band on Canvey’s finest doesn’t really show through until Gypie Mayo gets on board. ‘Milk and Alcohol’ had copped its lyrical imagery from John Lee Hooker’s ‘It’ll Serve You Right to Suffer’ – “Your doctor put you on milk, cream and alcohol” – but they (and co-writer Nick Lowe) most likely nicked it from the J. Geils Band, who on their debut had taken the song uptown, downtown and all around. The whole of Be Seeing You, Otis Clay’s ‘Baby Jane most evidently, is cut from the same cloth .

Eddie and the Hot Rods finally got around to releasing ‘Hard Drivin’ Man’ on their second EP, about the same time as they backed Rob Tyner on his solo 45. Their keen pursuit of amphetamine psychosis meant they never really acquired the funk n’ grease of the J. Geils Band but that attack strategy did help them align with the MC5’s razor-edged rock ’n’ roll, even if it was more a shared attitude than aptitude that took them up and down Shakin’ Street. Whatever their merits, and there are many, I got to the MC5 and J. Geils Band by riding in the slipstream left behind as the Feelgoods, followed by the Hot Rods, pelted along the A127

Letters page, The Garage Band Appreciation Society, Maidenhead, Sounds (May 8, 1976) no doubt Hot Rods’ manager Ed Hollis’s concoction but mark me down for membership

Rockabilly Psychosis Redux

Teds, Rebels, Hepcats and Psychos: The Story of British Rockabilly 1966-1988 (Rockin’ 4 Life Publications 2021)

Running close to 750 pages (and no footnotes or index to pump up the count), Paul Wragg’s self-published volume on British Rockabilly (the only sort that counts) starts in 1966 when the first record collector heads to the States to bring back a casket of pirate treasure, colonial plunder, and ends in 1998 when Charlie Feathers slipped away. 32 years of listening, playing and dancing to the rockabilly beat. Wragg presents his long history of the music’s style and attitude through a series of step-changing fads and trends told in first-hand accounts that makes this monumental volume something akin to McNeil and McCain’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (1996), only better.

I doubt many will read the book from start to finish, but whatever draws you to it you’ll not be disappointed. For myself, I wanted to know more about the collectors, fanzine writers, curators and reissue labels that first pulled the term ‘rockabilly’ out of the trash bin of history and invested it with the identity we know today, or think we know. So finding out more about Bill Millar, Martin Hawkins, Colin Escott and the like was my aim. I also wanted to know more about the Teddy Boy scene, the rock ‘n’ roll revivalists who had their moment in the sun at Wembley in the summer of 1972, and how they fed and then lost out to the rockabilly rebels who followed. I wasn’t disappointed.

You wanna know the story behind the 1970s bootlegs of rockabilly discs which are all but indistinguishable from the originals? Then you also need to know about Dan and Faye Coffey, who sold 45s bought back from trips to America and essentially created the market Henry Mariano and his exacto-repros then developed. And you absolutely have to know about the Bill Millar curated series of rockabilly compilations, each focusing on a label’s output, which are as seminal as Nuggets and any of the sets of sixties garage punk LPs that followed.  The importance of Millar’s series in the scheme of things is nailed when Tim ‘Polecat’ Worman explains that the Stray Cats initially got their look from Levi Dexter and the Rockats and their set list from Imperial Rockabilly Volume 1, but then what rockabilly band didn’t mine that vein? The story of collectors providing the material on which three generations of young musicians will find their stimulus and inspiration is vividly captured by Wragg.

While Crazy Cavan is the ship’s figure head, loved by most, respected by all, for Wragg the core of the tale he really wants to tell begins as the great man’s strength starts to fail. Without selling any trend short, Wragg is most interested, I think, in the late-1970s and early 1980s when rockabilly became a significant element among Britain’s teenage tribes and momentarily goes mainstream with chart toppers and TOTPs exposure. While the bands that helped form and rode this wave are all given a generous amount of space to tell their part in things, the real story belongs to the adherents and scene makers, those who danced to the records and supported the bands, the young kids who took the music, style and attitude to heart and remade the world in their own image.

If I started to lose interest with all the rockin’ weekenders in Caister and Hemsby it doesn’t much matter because by then my pockets were already loaded with gold and others will find that final part as fascinating as I found the first half and a bit.

Because these tales have rarely had an audience outside of the social groups Wagg documents, the stories are as fresh as the day they were first told, presented without guile or perfidy. Given the scope of the project, Teds, Rebels, Hepcats and Psychos is an extraordinary achievement, a luminous oral history, superbly compiled, organised and edited by the author. If this book had been supported by an established publisher it would still have been an heroic achievement, to have done it independently is a true testament to the spirit of rockabilly that Wragg sets out to celebrate. You need this book, your friends and family deserve their own copies too.

£15 paperback and £25 hardback plus shipping. Contact: paulwragg68@btinternet.com

Doo-Wop-Sha-Waddy-Waddy – the 1970s R 'n' R Revival Staggers on

Variations on a theme . . . Game magazine in June 1975 ran a seven page spread using four Teddy Boys and a beat-up 1952 Pontiac Chieftan as props. It’s all a little obvious in its hoodlum poses, but the model’s two outfits, what there is of them, look to have been borrowed from the racks of 430 King’s Road. Though I’m no expert, the string vest looks like a leftover from Let It Rock and the black top with asymetrical zips, rips and patches might be something worked up for Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die/SEX.

Bob Carlos Clarke directed the shoot, ‘ A wet dream from those rockin’ fifties’.

addenda: turns out I was part way right on the model’s shirts, the black top, Paul Gorman tells me, is a detourned Let It Rock shirt made for the London R n R Show at Wembley and then cut up for TFTL/SEX. He’ll be posting something on these images and others from Game at somepoint so we’ll know more . . . As for the string vest, who does really know . . . and, I should also add, the Teds, Ian, Pete, Andy and Len were all well-known figures on the London scene, but you can tell that can’t you?

GAME v.1 #3 (March 1974) ‘Teddy Boy Memories’. Why do ‘70s Teds always come from Tooting? Is this Max Needham? Let It Rock gets a mention: ‘pushing drainpipes and brothel creepers to the King’s Road trendies’.

Rock 'n' Roll Penthouse

It may not be by Hipgnosis, but the above is my favorite sleeve from the early 1970s. It perfectly encapsulates 1972 and the rock ‘n’ roll rumble. 10 years later and pop cult sholars would be looking at The Face and writing essays about bricolage and the post-modern, but it was already afoot a decade and more before. Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here To Stay is all about the iconography of youth culture collapsing in on itself – late 1960s American custom choppers, the early 1960s Parisian blonde sex kitten look and, of the moment, London Ted style with 1950’s applique courtesy of Let It Rock. All surface and no depth: a signifiying monkey. How pleased I was then to discover a couple of German variations, which are all the better for checking out the Ted’s opulent waistcoat and the model’s ability to get almost completely prone without toppling off the bike (and she’s wearing neat platforms to boot)

Sounds news item (March 4, 1972)

The cover conception is credited to Pierre Tubbs (great Anglo-French name), photography is by Bryce Attewell, who I presume had fairly steady work at UA as he also took the photos of Brinsley Schwarz on their Dave Edmund produced classic, New Favorites Of (1974), but that’s about all I know. I know even less about the Teddy Boy, though with that hair and those sideburns I presume he was the real thing. As for the BB impersonator I was, until recently, equally ignorant, but in my pursuit of the lost short fiction of Mick Farren (see here) I stumbled across this 1972 edition of Penthouse; she is rather unmissable. Her name, if you believe anything written in the editorial that accompanies glamour spreads, is Karen McCook, 20 years old and a daughter of San Francisco. She was photographed by David Jonathan

Karen’s Penthouse cover image made a hit not only with me, 48 years after the fact, but also with whoever did the marketing for Stoke-On-Trent’s Heavy Steam Machine discotheque, NME classifieds November 1972. PoMo or just plain-old plagiarism?

Those keen to follow Karen’s traces a little further might Google ‘Susan Shaw’ and ‘Mona Solomon’

Suzy Shaw appeared on the cover of at least half-a-dozen Hallmark Top of the Pops albums, circa 1971-4. That whole series is covered in delightful depth here. Some of the shots from the modelling sessions turn up on other budget label sets like the above from the Mike Morton Congregation. See here for more of the same

The biker image does the rounds again on a picture sleeve for a 1977 45 for a German band called ‘Mill’

The November 1975 issue of Game reported that Suzie Shaw was Susan George’s body double in Sam Peckinpah Straw Dogs, which is a good place to pause and reflect . . .

Retro-cuties – airbrushing the 50s into the 1970s

A significant trend during the early 1970s in the cover design for reissued 1950s recordings was to wrap them in a vibrant cartoon sleeve featuring teenage girls slurping on overflowing sodas or sticking their butt in the air. 50s teen iconography – saddle back shoes, rolled cuffed Levis, over-rouged lips and pony tails are all there with jukebox and soda fountain used as backdrops. It’s a cute sell but one that is unequivacably sexualised. Teen innocence is but a masquerade for more prurient adult action.

Tipped off by Paul Gorman’s blog [here], I’ve been browsing through early editions of Paul Raymond’s Club International skin mag, circa 1972-75. Among the attractions on offer are some of the era’s best illustrators, many of whom worked on album designs, including Bowie and Bolan’s chum George Underwood. NTA Studio is prominently featured, as is photography from Hipgnosis who frequently collaborated with the Studio’s illustrators, eg. Be Bop Deluxe’s Futurama. NTA’s Bob Lawrie, George Hardie and Bush Hollyhead were used regularly by Club International, including this illustration that accompanied an article on cinema going

Hollyhead and Club International were clearly uninterested in any ambiguity in the cartoon’s depiction of 50s teen activities. When NTA dropped out, Mike Farrell’s illustrations were regularly featured in their stead. He’s the artist responsible for the Bo Diddley and Billy Stewart albums shown above. Farrell did some arresting photo montages for the magazine but here’s a fairly typical illustration. The girl might come straight from the pages of Eerie or Creepy horror comics.

Bert Weedon - 'Rockin' At The Roundhouse' (1970)

The early seventies rock ’n’ roll revival threw out some unexpected contributions to the trend, but none more strange than Bert ‘Play in a Day’ Weedon’s Rockin’ At The Roundhouse. The music is a so-so set of instrumentals, covers of Duane Eddy, Johnny Kidd, Elvis, and some originals. Nothing here to get the Roundhouse freaks moving. By way of explanation for this bit of exploitation of the youth scene the cover notes tell us: ‘A few months ago Rock gradually started to come back into the pop scene, and a big Rock Revival show was put on at London’s Roundhouse - the mecca of pop and beat music. All the rock stars were invited to appear, and the concert was a big success, but the hit of the show according to the press was not surprisingly guitar star Bert Weedon.’ At which point Fontana get him to put this album together. Sticking Weedon on the cover would have blown the ruse so they went for this blonde model in a superb Hell’s Angels t-shirt, and a studded leather jacket draped over her shoulders. The bit of dog chain she’s pulling on adds a touch of violent frisson to her display, well that’s the pose anyway: Altamont via The Bath Festival . . .

‘Keef’ gets credit for the photograph and album design. I’m guessing he’s Marcus Keef, aka Keith MacMillan (1947-2007) who was responsible for a slew of Vertigo label albums. See here and here

The album was twice reissued on Contour, once with the original art work and the other time with a moustachioed Bert kicking out the jams – you can see why the original went for the blonde . . .

In the words of Duane Eddy: ‘Bert is a great guitar man’ but not much of a looker . . .

I can’t imagine the East London chapter of the Hells Angels would have given their approval to Bert’s Rockin’ at the Roundhouse as they did to Mick Farren album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus, also released in 1970, which featured an incoherent Angel telling it like it is . . .

While we’re on the subject of East London Angels, it’s time to give this 1973 Paladin edition of Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils & Moral Panics a showing. Punk DIY ethos on full display here . . . as it is on NEL’s 1971 publication of Chopper by Peter Cave where the biker dress-up box is filled with their dad’s war souvenirs

Where’s the original from? Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, 1970? Isle of Wight? Weeley? Wherever, those are superb homemade patches, 666, 13 & 1%er.

My thanks to Eddie who tipped me off to this album and for the gift of the Cohen book

screen grab from BBC Man Alive ‘What’s The Truth About Hell’s Angels and Skinheads’ (Dec. 1969) – smells like teen spirit

The Deviants have a Secret to Share

The third and final Deviants’ album lacked any track or personnel information on the sleeve and came supplied with a chapbook of sorts.

Accompanying the credits was a short rant from Mick Farren that included a manifesto of a kind:

For the past 13 years Rock & Roll has been the secret language of a generation, despite lapses into gibberish and side-tracks into academic obscurity. Rock & Roll is a secret language that the rulers cannot understand.

Which raises the question of how well kept was that secret?

Scans of the complete text and some background on the album can be found on Richard Morton Jack’s blog, Galactic Ramble . I hope he doesn’t mind me ripping off the three I’ve used.

Red Lightnin' – blues reissues – J. Edward Barker

letterhead, circa 1972, for Sippen and Shertser family of labels

Like the Union Pacific releases (see below), Ian Sippen and Peter Shertser’s collections of postwar blues wore their underground credentials on their sleeves.

I’m guessing the early releases were all unlicensed, certainly the first issue on Red Lightnin’, Buddy Guy’s In the Beginning (RL001), looks like a bootleg with its cheaply printed monotone matt image pasted onto a blank sleeve.

Later pressing of the label’s early titles were treated to slick upgrades. OZ’s Felix Dennis was responsible for the design of the first four volumes: Little Walter (RL002), John Lee Hooker (RL003) and Albert Collins (RL004). Denise Brownlow was credited for the design work on the five issues released by Syndicate Chapter and for the various artist compilation Blues in D Natural (RL005). The two subsequent Red Lightnin’ releases employed the graphic talent of J. Edward Barker, Mick Farren’s pal and illustrator at large for International Times and Nasty Tales.

Barker’s design for the label’s 7th release, Junior Well’s In My Younger Days, uses a photograph that looks as if it has been cropped from a minstrel scene in a Hollywood movie, though not one known to me. Whatever its provenance, it pulls in the same direction as the ‘Three Ball Charlie’ image on the front of the Stones’ Exile album. Both albums were released in 1972. The double LP anthology When Girls Do It (R.L.006) also sports a Barker design.

The three panels are fair summations of his interests and art: the mirrored picture of monks with pasted on devil’s eyes in the gatefold; montaged found images clipped from erotica and porn (lesbian, school girl and a Weimar-era nude) that surround a photograph of the Daughters of the American Revolution (with Abe Lincoln glued over the face of the sitting dowager and the open palm placed like a cockerel’s crown on her head) are in keeping with the aesthetic of the period’s underground publications: male adolescent salaciousness at the apparent service of political satire. On the sleeve’s rear you get a feast of backsides; this 1930s fetishism plays to the album’s title – the posterior posturing as gratuitous as anything on the front. It also echoes figures used on Barker’s sleeve for the Pink Fairies’ What A Bunch of Sweeties, another album from 1972. Fair enough?

The conjunction of rock’n’ roll revivalism, blues resurrectionism and the freak underground is fascinating in itself, but it also had me searching for some kind of appreciation, book or webpage on J. Edward Barker. I haven’t found much yet. Until then, there is always his and Farren’s Watch Out Kids, also from 1972 (a productive year)

Barker to the left, Farren to the right

Raves from the Grave – Blasts from the Past

A recent bit of deep digging uncovered Transfusion: Rave from the Grave – Blast From the Past Vol.1 (Union Pacific, UP004).  The compilation features the Del Vikings, the two Ronnies – Self and Hawkins – Conway Twitty, Nervous Norvus, Everly Bros, Al Downing, John Greer, and Vince Taylor and the Playboys with ‘Brand New Cadillac’ – a great collection. What sets it apart from, and at odds with, other early 1970s compilations is its sleeve featuring a typically salacious panel from a Robert Crumb comic. No Teddy Boys in the company of a Bardot-like leggy model and a late-sixties styled custom chopper, nor fifties convertible outside a diner, not even a Rock-Ola jukebox. Pasted together in 1972 by Ian Sippen and Peter Shertser, the album connects the period’s rock ’n’ revivalists with the British underground culture of the day as represented by the likes of International Times, Mick Farren and the Pink Fairies.

Volume 2, Loose Ends (UP005) is an all-instrumental collection bookended by Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson and The Fireballs. In between, Duane Eddy battles it out with the Fenderman, Jerry Lee Lewis and a half-dozen other contenders. The sleeve continues the graphic connection with the underground, featuring a tattooed greaser mauling a hot chick in a state of dishabille who threatens to stab him in the ‘puddin’. The panel is given a context of sorts by the incongruous tag-line: ‘Sexism is out! If you like pussy: treat it equal.’ It’s culled from the back page of George DiCaprio and R. Jaccoma’s Greaser Comics (New York: Half Ass Press, 1971), which suggests a transatlantic counter-culture mirroring of interest in rock ’n’ roll.

‘A new exciting label featuring oldies but goodies, rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll’

Sippen and Shertser were Jewish East End Mods who made a name for themselves on the scene as The Firm. They ran in the same circles as the likes of Miles at Better Books and IT fame, and Dave ‘Boss’ Goodman, later Pink Fairies roadie and manager of Dingwalls dance hall. The Firm were involved in the UFO club, helping Mick Farren to keep out ne’er-do-wells when they weren’t pulling pranks on John Peel. With such connections, and a deep love of American rhythm and blues, the duo helped to produce and distribute The Deviants’ debut album. They sold the LPs’ American rights to Seymour Stein’s newly formed Sire records and then acted as talent scout for him, the results of which included an album they recorded in 1968 in London with Walter ‘Shakey’ Horton and another in 1969 by psych blues rockers Sam Apple Pie.

Shertser is a singular contributor to Jonathan Green’s pop-vox history of the sixties underground, Days in the Life (1988), which is where most of the references to him and Sippen are drawn from, including Clinton Heylin’s Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry (1994). The Firm were responsible for the first tranche of illicit Dylan, Stones and Beatles albums in the UK. The two volumes of rock ’n’ roll obscurities and hits are essentially bootlegs; there is nothing to suggest these tracks were licensed. Other releases on their Union Pacific label included collections of Eddie Cochran, Link Wray and Little Richard rarities.

Ian Sippen went missing, presumed drowned, in Morocco in April 1973. Shertser continued to run Red Lightnin’ and associated labels (Syndicate Chapter), which he and Sippen had set up in 1969.

You can read Greaser here. The hard-on in the pop corn seen in Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982) gets an earlier recounting. Perhaps, like the filthy lyrics in ‘Louie Louie’, this courtship ritual is part of American teenage folklore.

Depending on which version you’re looking at, the Pink Fairies debut 1971 album, Never Never Land, has the legend ‘Long Live Rock and Roll’ on either its inside sleeve or on its rear cover. The illustration that adorns the front is about as rock ’n’ roll as Robert Crumb’s fedora.

Mick Farren in International Times #161 (August 1973)

Trevor Hoyle, 'Rule of Night' (1975)

‘Come on, let’s drift.’

Despite being republished in 2003, Hoyle’s novel about a Rochdale bovver boy is still little known and even less written about. Originally published as a pulpy paperback by Futura, and though lacking the requisite exploitation imagery used by NEL on their Skinhead series, you would have thought it would have at least rated a mention in Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nette’s estimable Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980 (PM Press, 2017). Fact is, Rule of Night is anything but an exploitation title. It is by far the most convincing portrait of disaffected youth I have read; its depiction of working-class school leavers who lurch from one unskilled job to another is nuanced and subtle. Hoyle plots their endless drift around the town and excursions to Manchester and Luton, watching them getting drunk and blocked between the chance encounters that give vent, in spasms of gratuitous violence, to their balled-up anger.

Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980

The central character, Kenny owes nothing whatsoever to the romantic renderings of teen life essayed in S. E. Hinton or J. D. Salinger novels, and Hoyle shows little interest in the pop sociology approach taken by the authors of Amboy Dukes or Blackboard Jungle. Rule of the Night is devoid of sentimentality, Hoyle never patronises, nor sensationalises, he doesn’t explain motives; he just shows how it is. His teenagers are barely formed, grasping for a maturity that constantly outflanks them, and so search for it in beer, fags, obscenity strewn language and violence:

He says sneeringly into the face of the man, ‘Did you get a good look or do you want a photograph?’ And then says, ‘Cunt’, and goes on repeating, Cunt. Cunt.’

Fucking Jesus, he wants to hit the man. Fucking Cunting Christ, the man’s pale frightened face sickens him so much that nothing would feel better than kneeing him in the bollocks and seeing that awful fear he loves and despises turn into pain.

 And that search for maturity is also there in the kids’ desperate longing:

Skush is the quiet one; he drinks his pint slow and calm and waits for the others to make up their minds. He’s never been out with a girl, never had it . . . and now wonders if it’s possible to get his end away without the acute pain and torture of having to approach a girl, talk to her, make easy conversation while all the time his lips are numb and his throat squeezed tight and dry.

Beyond the rich and varied characterisation, Hoyle makes a number of sharp observations on youth cultures; a small gang of Bury yobbos dressed as figures from Clockwork Orange infiltrate a Rochdale v Blackburn game; away from the terraces greasers and bike boys take their turn to fight with Kenny and his gang. On a trip into Manchester to sell stolen prescription drugs they encounter a motley crew of Teds at the Bier Keller on Charlotte Street, behind the Piccadilly Plaza Hotel:

Down the green steps and into the dark smoky warmth where the Teds are gathered in sullen groups listening to Gene Vincent and Fats Domino and Elvis. . . The three lads don’t respond to this kind of music: to them it seems crude and obvious . . . But there’s a market and a good sale to be had here for blues and black bombers; the Teds won’t touch acid or grass but rely on lager and pills to give them a charge.

A page earlier they are trying to off load their pills at a northern soul night. The momentarily empty dance space is described as ‘a sacred patch of territory which can only be invaded when the time and circumstances are judged right . . :

Almost precisely on the stroke of nine, a boy with short back and sides and dressed in an open-necked shirt, blue and yellow striped pullover, a pair of baggy trousers with turn-ups, and brown leather shoes with hard soles begins to dance alone . . . looking down at his feet, intent on the movements and rhythms, as though what comes next is as much a surprise to him as to the people watching.

That image of the lad in a state of surprise is unsurpassed in writings on northern soul dancing.

Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980

Beatles 'Rock 'n' Roll Music' (1976)

Illustration by Ignacio Gomez

There’s no doubting the fine rockin’ sounds on this 1976 compilation, though mono is to be preferred to these stereo cuts, but that sleeve is something which would disgrace the cheapest of mid-1970s rock ‘n’ roll compendiums. Apparently the Fab Four hated it, and Lennon even offered to redesign it himself, but Capital in the US and Parlophone in the UK stood firm on a sleeve that said nothing about The Beatles and a great deal about how cliched the 50s into the 70s had become when lit by the tail lights of American Graffiti.

The poster for the album, I quite like, in so much as it looks British, and there is at least some attempt at art direction . . . The expresso machine dominates like an engine block from a hot rod placed on a gallery pedestal. The Rockola jukebox provides warm illumination, and the girl looks like Jordan, if she worked at Let It Rock before Sex. The boy in his leather jacket and pants, knit tie and cigarette, looking directly into the camera, is both surly and camp. Not as cool as The Beatles in leather in Hamburg, but then who is . . .

Addendum: that is Jordan and the story of the shoot can be found here on Paul Gorman’s essential blog

Philip Castle's Airbrushed Retro-fitted 1950s

1974 Dutch only collection of R ‘n’ R hits on the Arcade label, as seen on TV or ‘Van de Radio en TV-Reklame.’ Clearly an attempt to ride on the back of the American Graffiti phenomenon, which is more than a guess because lead track, side 2, Flash Cadillac’s ‘At The Hop’ is tagged as ‘Featured in the Universal Picture American Graffiti.’ The album’s pulling power is boosted by two commissioned Philip Castle illustrations placed on the inside and the outside of the gatefold.

The originals, unadorned with graphic and track information, are reproduced in his 1980 collection Airflow (Paper Tiger).

Castle remains best known for the work he did on Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange publicity materials, where his clear affinity with the fetish pieces of Pop artist Allen Jones was put into play [here]. When he wasn’t taking adolescent delight in rendering phallic objects, jets and cars, threatening full penetration with a fifties styled pin-up airbrushed into a hard chrome sheen, he specialised in retro-fitting the decade’s icons, James Dean, Johnny Cash and Elvis, as man-machine conflations for the 1970s. The women, Monroe, Hayworth, Fawcett-Majors, Dolly Parton are offered to the male gaze as android fuck machines.

Mott the Hoople’s essential 1972 collection of Island era recordings, Rock and Roll Queen, is wrapped in one of Castle’s illustrations. The repeating mirror images of Monroe reducing Pop Art iconography to a set of fast-dry, hard, scratch-proof textures that reflects back only its own vacuous surface qualities.

When the first UK paperback edition of Cohn’s Pop from the Beginning was being readied in 1970, Castle must have looked like the perfect choice to render the flash of the pop moment, five years later with the cover for George Tremlett’s cut n’ paste job, The Who, his work had become all formula.

This Is Not A Soundtrack (part 6)

This 1970 German compilation comes close to what I imagine a biker movie soundtrack might be like if its producers had access to Atlantic and Elektra artistes . . . It’s rock ’n’ roll as filtered through Rock, so Clapton, Delaney & Bonnie on a live medley of Little Richard numbers, followed by Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse chugging through de blues, Ray Charles caught in performance with ‘What’d I Say’, and Al Kooper closing the side with another piano led tune. Side 2 gets going in style with the MC5 kicking out the jams, followed by the Stooges telling it like it was in ‘1969.’ The Danish Matadors stay in keeping with the musical theme of R ’n’ R with their cover of Chuck’s ‘Memphis Tennessee’, but they are otherwise out of time with this 1965 recording. The MC5 return with their homage to Richard Penniman on ‘Tutti Frutti.’ Bobby Darin supplies the only genuine slice of fifties sound with ‘Splish Splash’, before Jody Grind get hard ‘n heavy on their cover of ‘Paint It Black.’ I believe this is the only contemporaneous album to feature both the Stooges and The MC5, ain’t that something?

The cover features members of the Nederlands Harley-Davidson Club - rockers to the max. Now you know what I meant about those caps [see Feb 12 entry].

Good Old Rock 'n Roll

Various, Good Old Rock ’n Roll (Coral: COPS-6219)

A 1972 German double-album. Each side features Bill Haley, Johnny Burnette, Brenda Lee, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings and Carl Perkins, and that order is fixed across all four sides. Now that’s what I call the art of curation. Audio is a particularly bad example of reprocessed stereo. But then I didn’t buy this for the music but for its cover art . . .

In the same way UK rock ’n’ roll revival compilations always betray their county of origin, like the ton up boys on the front of Johnnie Burnette’s Tear It Up, Continental comps also say something about their version of America’s 1950s into Europe’s 1970s. The figure in the portrait looks Gallic to me, and the way his hair is piled up on top is rather unique. I like too the hint of a moustache, the ruby and emerald rings, the extra long cig and the gentle way he holds the oversized transistor radio. He looks to me like an aesthete dreaming of Rimbaud channeled through Gene Vincent, or Jim Jarmusch before the colour drained from his hair