Can Blue Men Sign the Whites
Recent BBC 4 documentaries reminded me of how great the Bonzo Dogs really were. I have almost worn out vinyl copies of ‘Donut in Granny’s Greenhouse’, ‘Keynsham’ & ‘Gorilla’.
The title of this post was their tongue – in - cheek response to the 1960s UK blues boom.
Liverpool Scene is another of my favourite bands of this period & they also satirised this movement with, ‘I’ve got thos Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, don’t go back, John Mayall, cant fail, blues’. I have lucid memories of that time & listening back to those albums I am amazed, how much they have stood the test of time & how fresh they sound. Other prime examples, would be Savoy Brown, whose song ‘Bamboo Grove’ was in my cd player they other day & lets not forget the Groundhogs, whose first lp was ‘Blues Obituary’ & who’s lead guitarist, Tony (T.S.) Mc Phee appeared on many of Mike Vernon’s Blue Horizon labels compilation. The original Fleetwood Mac & Chicken Shack did the same. Incidently, there has been a whole raft of these Blue Horizon albums available for download on other blogs.
It is difficult now to imagine how big a movement this was & how great an impact it had on other styles of music, e.g. jazz & folk bands…e.g. Alexis Korner (R.I.P.), John Mayall & Graham Bond. The members of these latter groups were to go on & push the boundaries with the next stage of development: psychedelia or progressive music as we used to call it back in the day…………e.g. Cream, Ten Years After, Family, Edgar Broughton Band, Pretty Things, Traffic, Trees, Principal Edwards Magic Theatre, Occasional Word….etc. Many of these bands began by playing R & B, but soon they got caught up in the lifestyle & tripped the light fantastic. Some went out there too far & never came back………..Syd Barrett (R.I.P.), Graham Bond….etc..
For me at this stage of my life, I am constantly re-discovering wonderful sounds from that period………..at the moment it is Comus………….superb, fresh, exciting………when they came out they were lost amid so much terrific material………..now that I am getting a chance to hear them…………the wait was well worthwhile……..
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