Electric Banana? Who the hell is that? I know, I was thinking the same thing. It's the Pretty Things using a different name to record for a different label. Such oddballs cannot be ignored. These are from 1967-1969. In other words more psych than Bo Diddley. There's an interesting story behind them that you can check at The Rising Storm. It's worth the read and if you're really into the Pretty Things, dig around over there. They/he/she (?) are Pretty Things fiends so there's a bunch of their stuff.
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It was pretty obvious from the get-go. The Pretty Things loved Bo Diddley. They named their band after one of his songs. Their first LP had four Bo Diddley covers on it and there's only twelve songs on the damn thing. (It also had two Chuck Berry covers.) Credit them, they definitely give Mr. Rectangle Guitar a run for his money with a good healthy youthful crunch. Also, check their bluesy take on Berry's "Don't Lie to Me".
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Man, I guess this is what I get for not paying attention. I just heard that Phil May died last month. I would have thought that someone would have mentioned it, but no, nothing. Considering the fact that he was a contemporary of the Stones with similar influences and in a band that played the same venues early on, one can't help but compare the lack of shits given stateside compared to the howling that would have come with Mick Jagger's death.
May was the lead singer and a founding member of the Pretty Things. a band he started with Dick Taylor who had been in the earliest incarnation of the Rolling Stones. (Prior to that, Taylor had been in Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys with Keith Richards and Jagger). There were other similarities, bands named after blues songs, gigging the same places, etc. but you know what? If you take a photo of 1966 May and put it next to a photo of 1966 Jagger it's like comparing photos of Johnny Thunders and Elvis Costello. In a cool contest May wins hands down. I'm sure there's a reason why they never made it big in the states, but it wasn't the quality of the music or May himself. That's another thing. Every person I know that's a Pretty Things freak is someone who really knows music, much more than your garden variety Stones freak. So somehow this turned into a fuck the Stones post. Anyway, here's some Pretty Things stuff.
Dig this video, the way the thing devolves into a rhythmic dirge and bounces back again. After watching it, it hits me. I now know what Redd Kross listened to, some of the vocals sound a lot like the McDonald brothers and the overall sound isn't far off either.
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I don't know if you own any of the Nuggets box sets (Nuggets, Nuggets II, Children of Nuggets) but they're pretty decent cross sections. The first set, Nuggets, was American garage era, Nuggets II centers on the UK and "beyond". Children of Nuggets is garage bands and the paisley underground type stuff from the eighties. The four below are from Nuggets II.
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Every had a favorite band go in a different direction on a new release and find yourself thinking "Ahh, man, what are they doing here?" You can bet the Pretty Things elicited that more than a few times. Not that their later stuff is bad, not by a long shot, but you can imagine the hair pulling regardless. I would have been ruthless.
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Looking for something by Kenny and the Kasuals, I ran across an old post at WFMU's Beware of the Blog, Songs the Woggles Taught Us, in other words, songs that the Woggles covered. These Woggle characters had some kinda taste. Nearly every one of the songs is top shelf killer. They range from Top 40, to deeper cuts from familiar artists, to the totally obscure, That WFMU's Debbie D. (now at Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban) was able to track all of these down is an achievement in itself. Here's just a couple. There's over fifty. Yeah. GTFO, baby.
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Oh holy hell, this hits the spot at this particular moment. I listened to the Pretty Things in the car today and I'm still riding that. Hop in if you want. But you better go now, we're not stopping.
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Here again, another quick one. But it's a three day weekend, so slack is in order. Besides, you'll be more than busy if you check this post at Beware of the Blog. It's a list of songs the Woggles covered. Don't remember if I've heard the Woggles or not, but they had good taste in covers. R&B, soul, garage, surf, Northwest stuff You get the idea, a ready made mix. Here's a handful. Go there to check all fifty. Get your barbeque mix out of the way early. You may end up being too busy later, running out to the store to get napkins or something; whatever it is that you civilized people do.
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As a young teenage music fiend, I bought a lot of records, read a lot of magazines, listened to a lot of radio, and talked music with my brothers and friends constantly. I was in the position to know, but not once did the Pretty Things ever come up. They were all but unknown in the US. Like a lot of people in the states who bought records prior to prominence of fanzines and reissues, my first exposure to the Pretty Things came from the two covers of theirs that Bowie did on Pin Ups, and hearing them wasn't impetus enough to go exploring. I already had a backlog of leads and recommendations for scads of other bands from sources I trusted much more than Bowie.
Enter Mike Stax, an English guy who had moved to the states to join the Crawdaddys, a local band. In the early eighties, after he was securely transplanted, he started a zine called Ugly Things. It was apparent from issue one that he had it bad for the Pretty Things. In issue two of UT (which, as unbelievable as it seems, I just retrieved from a bookshelf five feet away from me), he interviewed Pretty Thing Phil May. In the introduction, he refers to them as "the greatest band of all history." Now I was listening. That was well over twenty years ago, and every time the Pretty Things come up, I think of Mike, and how a gangly kid from across the pond imported his fiending. We are the better for it. Ugly Things is still going strong. Visit the site for a physical copy, stuff by his band the Loons, or something from his record label (including 45s by the Nashville Ramblers and the Sloths, both of which I've gushed about before).
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Here's some that may take an extra click to get to, but are well worth the wear and tear on your finger tip. Aquarium Drunkard disables direct linking, so you'll have to go there to get them. A DJ named Clifton does guest posts and this one from November is a great collection. Clifton’s Corner: Volume Six (British R&B And Back Again) includes Georgie Fame, J.J. Jackson, the Pretty Things, Muddy Waters, Small Faces, Booker T. & the MGs, Six Feet Under, the Zombies, and Smoky Robinson and the Miracles, all somehow cohesively linked. What makes it a great post is that, not only will it have a few songs that you've never heard, some are slightly atypical of the particular artist's sound. Regardless, they're all deepish tracks. And I'm not going to recommend a few, I recommend listening to all of them (click on the song titles to download). And read the text. It seems the guy knows his shit.
You're almost there. I know, I thought it would never end. I'm still kind of in the thick of it, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to give you a little booster shot. So, make like the runner that crawls over the finish line; and to help you out, here's a baker's dozen of standbys. Thanks for being patient while I placated the holiday freaks.
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