Wednesday, 16 November 2016
Sorry (not sorry)
Off-topic on a Wednesday? You betcha.
When Sideburn goes to a show with a booth the first rule is to entertain ourselves, and the best way is to have a great soundtrack. Luckily we have friends with incredible taste in music that are often happy to come to a launch or a bike show and hang out. Dave Taylor, Katie B, Johnny Alpha and jack of all trades, Dave Skooter Farm all man the decks from time to time.
I know Dave Skooter Farm's show selection records back to front and this one by The Easybeats stuck in my mind after our recent outing to the Revival Show in Rotherham. I always thought The Easybeats were one of the Liverpool explosion, but they are cited as being the 'greatest pop band to hail from Australia' (talk about damning with faint praise...).
The band formed in 1964 and had some great hits, including Friday On My Mind, and were all first generation immigrants. Three of the band were born in the UK, the other two were born in the Netherlands.
Enjoy lead singer Stevie Wright's chimp-like posturing, while not entirely mastering miming, and the chainsaw strum of the twin Gretsches while the studio dancers frug wildly. Yeah! G
L-U-V that band! Super pop with some mean sounding geetar.
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting to mention the AC/DC connection, George Young, big bro to Angus and Malcom, playing rhythm.
Effin great. Those dancers at the back at times appear to be milking the biggest cow you ever did see. And rather roughly.
ReplyDeleteMore epic dancin' to be seen:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/osGm7fIKFZE
By the time The Easybeats arrived in the UK in late 1966 Beat Music was all but finished. The Cavern audience would have probably thought they were a bit twee as things had moved on musically by then. Looking back as opposed to being there at the time they probably look better now than they did then. On saying that they left us with some good tunes and a worldwide pop hit.
ReplyDeleteTwee? Don't know about that. This is a killer. Sure the bum-freezer jackets are behind the times, but the song is fierce. G
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't a killer at the time trust me. That doesn't mean that it isn't a killer now but at the time this was a tame bit of pop.
ReplyDeleteI don't get how 50 years passing can make a tame song into a killer.
ReplyDeleteOf course it can. Fashions change and so does musical taste. Some records that were thought of as crap in the 60s are now much in demand by collectors and fans of 60s beat. Lots of records from that era are now rare and collectable because hardly anyone bought them and usually for a good reason. Perhaps you had to be there.
ReplyDeleteWe'll agree to disagree.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a matter of taste or popularity. A hard guitar sound is a hard guitar sound. Shit records don't become good, but ignored records gain new audiences. Northern soul records didn't sell at the time because they were out of fashion, didn't get promoted, were by unknowns. That doesn't make them shit them, just makes them out of step with the audience.
The song hasn't changed, only the reaction of the contemporary crowd. I'm not disagreeing that the contemporary crowd thought it was passe and that they didn't like it, but that is a matter of fashion and I don't care what they thought. I'm saying it was a killer when it was made and it still is. I'm looking at it in isolation and it doesn't matter if I was there or not, because it is exactly the kind of tune I've loved for nearly 30 years.
I see where you're coming from, the 1966 youth thought the Easybeats were passe, and I'm not arguing with that. What I'm saying is, my musical taste says it's a killer. That means it must have been that good in 1966.
I do see where you're coming from, but I don't think you see where I'm coming from.
It's no big deal.
I really do understand where you're coming from as i see it from the point of view today and i also saw it from 1966. I bought Freak Out! by The Mothers Of Invention in 1966 before Sorry was released. The Mothers were as cool as while The Easybeats were what later became know as a teeny group. That doesn't mean to say it was bad but more the audience it was intended for. I think we agree about the fashion bit and Northern Soul but i totally disagree about 'being there' as it did matter and made such a difference on how you thought about a record just like living under the threat of a nuclear war did that people who weren't there at the time have no idea whatsoever what it was like and how it affected our outlook on life. I've always kept my ears open to all types of music but understand that the impact of listening to something by Cage or Varese now would be so different to listening to it in 1950s when it was something new to us. When you listen to music in relation to when it was released has a massive bearing on how you receive it. We should be listening though not talking about it so in putting on a bit of Eric Dolphy now and hope you're listening to something good yourself.
ReplyDeleteHaving fun watching the conversation here! I wasn't even born until '67, so I have no direct experience, other than being a bit obsessive about the music of the era.
ReplyDeleteIMO '66 was pre-"Sgt. Pepper", and big "rock" type stuff like Hendrix and Cream was just barely getting started. Seems to me that The Yardbirds, The Who... all that stuff still had a "pop" element going on in '66, despite being dang tough-sounding stuff.
I believe that pretty much everything the Easybeats did during that era was great and also pretty dang mean guitar-wise, despite the poppy elements (same can be said for Paul Revere and the Raiders, though I know folks back then dismissed them as too "pop" as well).
I think they were pretty dang big in Australia, even if you English folks were too sophisticated for them at that point!
Here's some '66 goodness for ya, from NZ:
https://youtu.be/oXFNPVygOSg
Oh, and I love the Mothers of invention, but I MUCH prefer the Easybeats! So that certainly sways the argument for me.
ReplyDelete