What does it sound like?:
I saw this lot Supporting Be Bop DeLuxe back in 1976. They looked like the future, and sometimes sounded like it, but listening 40 years on, their influences are very apparent; Dylan, iggy, Velvets, Cockney Rebel and artier glam (in some ways the DoM WERE artier glam, just 3 years too late), Van Der Graaf Generator), frenzied hoedowns, and a hefty bolus of 20th century theatre. At points, some good healthy rows and frenzies, at others, the earnest Dylan thing and the drearier dirges indicate why they may not have done as well as they could have amongst those seeking something new.
What does it all *mean*?
Lots of people sought something new by the mid-70s, and this was typically based on the darker and nosier bits of what had happened in the past 10 years. In the Doctors of Madness you can hear where The Damned and The Adverts got some of their riffs (“Bulletin” is a kick in the arse off “Too Young to be 21”, and “For Me and You” shares genes with a subsequent “New Rose”). They are touring again, and it might be fun to revisit if the knees can hold up to a night’s standing.
Goes well with…
See above: tea, “rocky”, shitty mid-70s lager of the kind sold in clubs back then, a sense of ennui that “Racing Cars” might really be the future of rock n’roll.
Release Date:
Might suit people who like…
Bowie, Cockney Rebel, SAHB, Peter Hammill, Roxy Music (pre-1979), early punk, Iggy, the Levellers, arch edgy art-poncery (in a good way).
Sewer Robot says
Ooh! The old Magpie font. You’ve got me daydreaming about Jenny Hanley ….and me just about to jump into the bath…
Rigid Digit says
On My Wish List – just haven’t pressed the Pre-Order button yet.
It think I will do now – I do love a bit of “arch edgy art-poncery”.
Often spoke of in hallowed tones, how they were the progenitors of so much that followed, but never really had much bar the odd track on Youtube.
Carl says
I remember this lot – main songwriter Richard ‘Kid’ Strange reckoned there were only three worthwhile songwriters in rock – Bob Dylan, John Lennon and himself. But he declined to put them in an order of merit.
The strange (no pun intended) thing is, after all these years I don’t know a single Kid Strange song.
fortuneight says
I saw them too on the Be Bop tour, and had a track – “Out” – on a Sounds freebie LP that I have no memory of.
But Racing Cars …. now there’s a whole further story. The band that hated their one and only hit single.
Vincent says
I saw “Racing Cars” a few time thereabouts, too. Fine for those who like that sort of thing, but I found them worthy and dull (exhibit B: Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. Quiver? I could hardly open my eyes). It was that kind of time: people looking for the next thing, and it came out of the left field. Must have been rotten for all the folks who were wrong-footed or just that year wrong (liker the DoM) though.