Wednesday 20 January 2010

Phony American Accents

Wow! Pub rock's everywhere at the moment; making more of an impact on the zeitgeist than it did back in the seventies!

What with the release of the Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, and Julian Temple's latest piece of 'Essex noir' Oil City Confidential, a film that tells the tale of Dr. Feelgood (let's hope that gets a swift DVD release!), pub rock feels exciting again.
And that's very apt.
Because it was exciting.

Eddie and the Hot Rods were there from the beginning; and this e.p. captures them at their most energetic and frantic best.

Recorded during their lengthy residency at the Marquee Club in 1976, what is evident now on listening is the way the band were moving towards that classic punk rock sound.
They may have been performing covers of American standards, but they brought their own take and British sensibility to their performance, as well as sounding a little like the New York Dolls!

It was a transitional time; fractured; tribal; influences were everywhere.
Eventually a centre was found, and all the elements gravitated to a single point: the creation of the first postmodern popular music genre: punk rock.

This is a wonderful example of foetal punk: still gestating; premature and innocent.

Decent vinyl rip @320kbs
Get rodded here

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for The Hot Rods. Nice site.
T-man

Anonymous said...

Just found you I had this as a boy they were great ...A brilliant bridge to the first punk singles 1st albums great as well...

Anonymous said...

nice post mate... looking fwd to hearing this. went to see SDRR last week, which was great... i think every blockheads album is essential listening... yet i've never heard the kilburns stuff.
i hadn't heard about the julian temple Dr. Feelgood film...now we're talking,was it on at the fliks??
off to google it now.
laters.xx

Anonymous said...

"I caught the Rods at Reading" I still have the badge. Thank you for reminding me of how good they were.

roy rocket said...

Pleasure.
They were damn good, weren't they.

I think 'Oil City Confisdential' has only just been released into the cinema; chances of seeing it round here are nil; our 'cinema' is in a school... they don't tend to show too many cutting edge rock-docs.
Shame.
Regards, roy

teifidancer said...

seem to recall them paying in Aberteifi once, down the Theatr Mwldan, belated Birthday greetings,damn I forgot.Many apologies
Regards, teifidancer

roy rocket said...

Huh! [sulk]

Creative City said...

Oil City Confidential is coming out on 2nd Feb!!! Most cinemas are showing it for 1 night only with a rock n roll event in London beamed into cinemas. Wilko JOhnson performing with Alison Moyet.
www.oilcityconfidential.co.uk has the list of cinemas participating.

Anonymous said...

Cheers Roy - I try and catch the Rods when they come to Southend, they have a long haired bloke on guitar now that also plays with John Ottway - still sounding good.

Nick

Richard said...

I also went to see SDRR last week, and really enjoyed the section about The Kilburns as I was gigging myself around that time and the drunken brawls looked a little too familiar >:-)

There's a lot of damn fine rock still being played in the pubs of England even today - old stagers like The Rods, Dr Feelgood, Wreckless Eric, but don't forget the young pretenders too - Pub-rock may never reach the dizzy heights of fame again, but that doesn't stop it being the most vibrant music scene anywhere in the world!

If you've got a small rock venue locally, use it, and use it often - the guys (and girls) at the coal-face of rock need your love...

I'm near Bristol and recommend

http://www.thethunderbolt.net/
http://www.fleecegigs.co.uk/
http://reckless-engineer.co.uk/

They all have regular rock gigs in a wide variety of flavours.

It might be a nice idea to have a post all about 'local live venues' so we can have an ongoing comments thread where we can share hot tips for smaller gigs... that way we can put some of our money in the direction of the musicians and venues that promote them rather than all the fat bastards in Rolls Royces at the major labels...

Just sayin' ;-)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this! The first two E&HR singles (with Lew Lewis) are indexed in the Dr Feelgood megapost below, as are further Hot Rods links:

http://overdoseoffingalcocoa.blogspot.com/2011/09/dr-feelgood-rarities.html

Cheers, Dave Sez.