The then trio of Rob ‘Edgar’ Broughton, Steve Broughton and Arthur Grant – who had built up a following in their hometown of Warwick (just down the road from the HFoS hub) with a fourth member, Victor Unitt, under the name the Edgar Broughton Blues Band – had signed to EMI’s prog rock label Harvest in December of 1968, following a move to the Notting Hill Gate area of London. It was here that they became a part of the Ladbroke Grove scene, a frantic haze of underground rock,  left-wing and anarchist politics, illicit substances, and incredible hairiness. In July of 1969, Wasa Wasa was unleashed.

The silence that exists just prior to placing this CD in the stereo, is well and truly obliterated by the opening track, ‘Death of an Electric Citizen’. With a throbbing blues riff and Rob Broughton’s unconventional vocal – sounding as though he’s been liberated from a home for rabid preachers for the express purpose of raining fire and brimstone down upon you – it takes a hold, turns you upside down and proceeds to shake the loose change from your pockets.

Wasa Wasa continues the trend set by the opener throughout, representing the Edgar Broughton Band in their rawest, most dishevelled form. It crawls from the deepest, darkest, filthiest ditch, reeking of cheap booze, and sets about you without so much as a by-your-leave or the courtesy of an introduction. The eight tracks on the original release mix psychedelic rock, blues and progressive elements into one foul, frantically bubbling cauldron; creating a uniquely out of this world fug that’s dense enough to bring down small aircraft.

‘Death of an Electric Citizen’ gives way to the biting satirical attack  on American foreign policy, specifically Vietnam, ‘American Boy Soldier’ – an extended, even more acerbic version of which can be found on the excellent live album Keep Them Freaks a Rollin’ – Live at Abbey Road – which sowed the seeds for the full-on approach the Edgar Broughton Band would take towards social commentary within their songs. In fact they, along with partners-in-crime such as Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies,  have often been labelled the proto-punk, not only because of their rough and ready style and healthy distrust of authority, but also their fervour to get behind radical causes and highlight injustices in their lyrics. This would manifest more overtly in future songs such as ‘Up Yours’, ‘Side by Side’, ‘I Got Mad’, ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’,  and ‘Eviction’, to a name a few.

The hard-edged intensity of Wasa Wasa is no better demonstrated than on ‘Evil’, a psychedelic meat market of driving guitar and bass, ferocious drumming and hallucinatory lyrics, whose demonic presence might’ve lead to the band’s rallying cry and show-closer ‘Out Demons Out’. Elsewhere the likes of ‘Neptune’, with its heavy phasing, retain the otherworldly ambience and songs like ‘Crying’ and ‘Love in the Rain‘ ensure the pace never lets up. The only minor blemish on an otherwise spotless hymsheet is the fourteen minute closer ‘Dawn Crept Away’, which perhaps could’ve benefited from being a bit shorter, although it works if taken strictly as a studio representation of one of their live freakouts.

The Harvest reissue features five bonus tracks. Four are demos of blistering blues numbers recorded as the Edgar Broughton Blues Band in 1965/1966 and the fifth is a ten minute instrumental jam called ‘Untitled Freak Out’, simply because it has no actual title.

Less tribal sounding than the excellent follow-up, Sing Brother Sing, and considerably less polished than the remaining Harvest albums, The Edgar Broughton Band, Inside Out, and Oora, Wasa Wasa is nevertheless a remarkably confident and bruising debut.

Wasa Wasa is released on the EMI/ Harvest label and available from Amazon.co.uk

See also:

The Edgar Broughton Band “Meat” Album

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Howlin Rain, the 2006 debut album by the San Franciscan band of the same name, is like the return to civilisation of an old friend who has spent a week wandering California’s Death Valley, with nothing for company other than a guitar, a quart of Jack Daniels and a boot-heel full of mescaline.

Yes indeed, setting aside an inveterate prejudice of this writer and breaking the cardinal rule within the HFoS camp, we once again take tentative steps into the often seizure-inducing territories of “modern music”. But hang on just one ruddy minute there. It appears that in our eagerness (honest) to sample some of this so-called “modern music”, we’ve caused a Doctor Who-style rift in time and space and landed right back in the altogether more pleasing era of the early-70s.

Howlin Rain harks back to a time and music defined by groups such as The Byrds, Poco and to a certain extent the over-commercialised Eagles, throwing in the best elements of psychedelic garage bands such as The 13th Floor Elevators, The Bubble Puppy and Kaleidoscope (US), for good measure.

This heady mixture of the psychedelic, blues and country rock wears its late 60s/early 70s West Coast sound with obvious pride, like a thick layer of dust and grime earned during those days  of enlightenment in Death Valley. The spirits of not only Dennis Wilson, but Gene Clark and every other Golden state musician who lived fast, made their presence felt, then died before their time, lurk deep beneath the sonic tapestry that Howlin Rain weave.

The eight songs on Howlin Rain keep firmly to the darker side of the trail, touching on the imagery of death throughout, amidst sudden bursts of psychedelic distortion, rattling banjos and sultry slide guitar. In places, particularly on the epic ‘Calling Lightening with a Scythe’, they sound like the Rollng Stones doing and impression of Primal Scream doing an impression of the Rolling Stones (do Primal Scream ever do anything else?) during their early-70s country rock phase. The opener ‘Death Prayer in Heaven’s Orchard’ is a triumph of fire and brimstone, and the closer ‘The Firing of the Midnight Rain’ is outlaw music, riding into town, shooting up the bar and quickly leaving in a sunbaked cloud of dust and buckshot.

Howlin Rain as good as fell into my lap. I came to it with eyes closed, completely unaware of the band beforehand. And if the truth be known I still know next to nothing about them. What I do know is I like this album, and to me that’s all that ruddy matters.

So if the relentless heat of the Californian sun and perhaps a touch of brain-frying sunstroke doesn’t faze you, grab a bottle of Jack, bite down on a button of peyote  and let Howlin Rain do the rest.

Howlin Rain is released by Birdman Records and available from Amazon.co.uk

Howlin Rain website

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In 1970, between the releases of Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones, looking to go it alone and handle their own business affairs, finished with both their record company Decca and their manager Allen Klein. The contract with Decca required the band to deliver one more single.

‘Cocksucker Blues’ was the result.

The very deliberate decision to submit something that would have consigned Mary Whitehouse to an early grave, in some alternate universe where explicit first-person accounts of a rentboy’s misadventures in London could get airplay, was a vintage piece of Jagger mischief-making. They owed a single and so they delivered one. The fact that it was not only unfit for broadcast but also open to prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act should Decca have taken leave of their senses and released it, was neither here nor there. The fact that it would’ve enraged the stuffed-shirt executives of the record company was everything.

The song was locked away until 1983 when it was issued on a West German Stones compilation The Rest of the Best, before being quickly withdrawn. It’s existed as a bootleg ever since.

The two versions of the song I have are markedly different. One is a longer, extremely rough take, possibly recorded further into the ’70s, with an extended slide guitar jam in the middle; the other a shorter, polished version, which I think is just Mick and Keith and is probably the one they gave Decca the option to put out.

The song itself – particularly the longer version – is a slow-burning blues number; the sort that should carry a health warning. Lyrically it’s completely childish and guaranteed to send your nan into an irreversible state of shock should she hear it prior to the Sunday roast being carved. Nevertheless, the little charm the song can muster resides in the overall sound – the Stones at their lowest, downest and sleaziest – not the puerile shock tactics.

Below is the shorter, ‘single’ version.

WARNING As can probably be surmised by the title, ‘Cocksucker Blues’ is no ‘As Tears Go By’. If offended in anyway by explicit sexual references and the sort of language that would make an Irishman blush then don’t play it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEFhuvg1SEA

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It’s safe to say that Jethro Tull have been through many a line-up, right up until the present day which still sees them touring albeit in a very different guise to when this album was recorded. However, throughout these changes there has been the one constant factor: the aforementioned Ian Anderson. Anchor, flautist, harmonica-monkey and most importantly, the singer-songwriter – the other stalwart, Martin Barre, wouldn’t join until the following album, Stand Up, their first stone-cold classic. But why didn’t This Was make the grade?

Well, it would be unfair to assume the fact songwriting duties on This Was were shared with the then guitarist Mick Abrahams – who’d soon after leave to form Blodwyn Pig – played a factor in the album’s overall lack of lustre when compared to future efforts, because the blame clearly lies at the door of the over-reliance on instrumental tracks. Unecessary additions such as the boring flute-fest ‘Serenade To A Cuckoo’ or the desperately dull ‘Dharma For One’. But amidst these voiceless jams that make their unwelcome presence felt throughout, there are some real gems on offer.

Abrahams influence gives the album the bluesy feel that had been so en vogue a couple of years earlier (after all, even the great Rolling Stones kicked off as a rhythm and blues cover band) and it’s one that permeates throughout. Of course, his imminent departure would see the blues cast aside in favour of the more folky, soon-to-be prog rock sound for which the Tull would become internationally known.

But it’s the blues sound that throws up some rare old treats such as ‘Some Day the SunWon’t Shine for You’, ‘Beggar’s Farm’ and the exquisite, foot-stomping ‘A Song for Jeffrey’. Of course, even at this early stage in Jethro Tull’s musical career you could say that they were tickling the boundaries of progressive rock. Where else would you find a lead singer injecting his songs with, of all things, the flute? Prog-blues, maybe?

Of course, it was this flute that gave the group, and Ian Anderson, their – to steal an acronym from the sickening world of marketing – USP, setting them apart from what had gone previously in the Brit-blues explosion. One that, once they’d embraced the calling of the progressive movement, would see Jethro Tull tower to the heights that produced excursions such as the lengthy concept workouts of Thick as a Brick and The Passion Play, Heavy Horses and, of course, the legendary Aqualung.

A timid beginning to a recording career but one that sowed the seeds for the greatness that was to come.

This Was has recently been released as a 2CD deluxe, collectors edition, expanding upon the three bonus tracks of the previous re-mastered CD release with a mono and stereo mixes of the original album, plus some live John Peel sessions at the BBC.

This is the aforementioned ‘Song for Jeffrey’, recorded for French TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSgfHjLmmj8

This Was is on the EMI record label and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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