Rivherside - Instrumental Cheap Fuzz Blues

Although he initially left behind his Rivherside project in 2016, when Renaud Villet came up with a simple guitar riff and then added a little fuzz he really liked what he had.  After he fleshed it out with the rest of the instrumentation, he realized it sounded like Rivherside, and now, with a few more songs added to the mix, we have the new EP, Instrumental Cheap Fuzz Blues.  Largely built around fuzzed out blues guitar with super infectious sampled beats that often give it a hint of hip hop and some organ and/or synths, the EP is an extremely catchy set of tunes running the gamut from the raw rock and funk of “Toad’s Stomp” and upbeat bounce of “The Jab” to the warped Bo Diddley beat of “Fuzz Blowin’” and the BB King inspired “Last Thrill”.  The EP is a refreshingly fun collection that begs you to hit replay and listen again.

(Black and Tan Records)

Methuselah - Matthew, Mark, Luke And John - Expanded Edition

Methuselah initially got their start in late 1964 / early 1965 as the beat/R&B band The Dimples.  Not long after forming they got a residency at The Jazz Workshop in Ashby, as did the band The Imps.  Over the ensuing years, band members came and went and with some members of The Imps (and their later incarnation The Craze) joining, the lineup was finally solidified with John Gladwin (lead vocals), Terry Wincott (guitar, vocals), Greg Tomlinson (guitar, vocals), Craig Austin (bass, vocals) and Stuart Smith (drums).  At this point they started moving from their blues heavy songs to also include Tamla and soul and released a single at the end of 1966.  Not long after the single's release, Tomlinson and Smith quit the band and were replaced by guitarist Geoff Eaton Tindle and drummer Steve Cox.  With this new lineup they started shifting stylewise again, incorporating influences of psychedelia and the burgeoning California sound.  They changed their name to Gospel Garden and released another single.  More member changes followed with Cox and Tindle leaving the group to be replaced by drummer Mick Bradley and guitarist Les Nicol, and they also moved in more of a rock direction.  All of this was followed by the name change to Methuselah when their management told them the one they had wasn't commercial enough.  The band then entered the studio with Brill Building songwriter Kenny Young (co-writer of "Under The Boardwalk") and Steve Rowland (one half of their management at Double-R) co-producing what would become their sole album Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Even though they were signed to Elektra, the album ended up only being released in the US and didn't sell much.  Its release was also delayed and by the time it was released the band had split in two with Austin, Nicol and Bradley playing more free-form jam sessions as a trio (a la Cream and Hendrix) and Gladwin and Wincott playing mellower acoustic music as The Amazing Blondell.  All of this meant sales were lackluster and resulted in it being counterfeited a few times over the years.  Now this newly reissued version has been remastered from the original master tapes, and also includes seven previously unreleased outtakes and alternate mixes from those sessions.  While not necessarily religious, the album definitely has plenty of biblical references starting off with the four-song suite that is the album’s namesake.  “Matthew” kicks things off strongly with its late sixties/early seventies era California sound vocal harmonies and heavy psychedelic guitar work, a sound that continues with “Mark”, which at times is even heavier, but also has some more laid-back psychedelic sections.  “Luke” picks up that laid-back psych sound and adds a little bit of jazz and more strong vocal harmonies.  With a bit of blues thrown in “John” is more of an acid rocker that brings back the heaviness again exploding with screaming guitars.  “High In The Tower Of Coombe” is an interesting, kind of quirky medieval tune driven by a military like marching beat.  Complete with handclaps, “Methuselah” is spirited and upbeat, but with slow and dark choruses.  Driven by a funky, R&B groove, “My Poor Mary” is a super infectious change of pace, followed by the straight-ahead hard rock of “Fireball Woman” and “Fairy Tale”, a ballad with a little rock edge.  The album closes strangely with their bizarre cover of the nursery rhyme “Frère Jacques” that is definitely the album’s weak point.  It starts with them singing in a sing songy falsetto and then shifts into an extended soft-jazz instrumental before coming back around to a choral falsetto section.   Kenny Young, the aforementioned co-producer also contributed the song “Don’t Ask Me And I Won’t Lie”, a really catchy midtempo rocker that ended up not making the album, but is now included here as the first of three outtakes and also here in a mono mix.  The other two outtakes are a soft jazz version of “You Are My Sunshine” that’s in the same vein as their version of “Frère Jacques”, and “Put Me Down Easy”, a heavy blues rocker  Rounding out the bonus tracks are an alternative mix of “Fireball Woman” and mono mixes of “Fairy Tale” and “Frère Jacques.”   Also included here is a very detailed twenty-eight page CD booklet that highlights the band’s history as well as what happened after they broke up.  Grapefruit has once again brought a well-deserved, largely ignored band to light.  

(Grapefruit)

McCoy - The Sound Of Thunder!

Although primarily known as a bassist, John McCoy got his start in the mid-sixties as lead guitarist for the beat group The Drovers.  Over the ensuing years he worked as a session musician with a multitude of big names, played with the likes of folk rockers Curtiss Maldoon, jazz rockers Zzebra and Atomic Rooster, and also worked as a producer for many artists including Samson and UK Subs.  From the band’s inception in 1978 until its dissolution in 1982, he was a member of former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan’s band Gillan, where in addition to playing bass, he also contributed a lot to the songwriting, arranging and producing.  When Gillan decided to end the band, he said it was because he had to have vocal surgery, but two months later he announced he was joining Black Sabbath.  This was a blow to the band, but about a year later McCoy, Gillan keyboard player Colin Towns and guitarist Paul Samson, along with vocalist T-Bone Rees and drummers Ron ‘Rebel’ Matthews and Liam Genockey, formed the band McCoy and in 1983 they released an eponymous EP followed by their full-length debut Hard Thinking in 1984.  When the band decided to tour following the album’s release things went awry.  Before their first show Rees got drunk and was horrible, resulting in the promoters and agents saying he needed to be replaced.  At this same time Samson also left the band.  They were replaced for the live shows by vocalist Nikki Brooks and guitarist Mark Keen, but when the band failed to make any impact, McCoy went on to form the group Mammoth who released an album in 1989, but then also broke up.  At this point he focused more on producing, but then in 1998 he revived the McCoy name and released the album Brainstormm with Al Romano on guitars and vocals and Mike Sciotto on drums.  Now, thanks to HNE Recordings, the EP and both albums along with Live 1977, a live recording featuring the trio of McCoy, Samson and drummer Roger Hunt that was recorded in 1977, are compiled on the three CD box set The Sound Of Thunder!

Disc one kicks off with the EP and a killer cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well!” (written by the legendary Peter Green).  It’s a hard driving cut with a strong sense of atmosphere and some solid guitar work from Samson.  Next up are “Night Lights” and “The Sound of Thunder”, a couple of great NWOBHM rockers, the first of which has a short piano section in the middle that reminds me a little of what Van Halen would do not too much later on 1984 (interestingly Rees vocals on the EP also give me Sammy Hagar vibes at times).  “Temporary Threshold Shift” is a catchy track with a hard driving chugga chugga, boogie woogie beat.  That brings us to the last track on the EP, “Because You Lied”, a slower tune full of shimmering guitar washes (a little reminiscent of Whitesnake), but with biting, very emotional lyrics directed at Gillan.
Also included on disc one is the Think Hard album, which starts with the raw, crunching guitars of the hard driving opener “Freemind”.  “The Demon Rose” is a definite standout track that finds them shifting gears a little and is somewhat laid-back with a really cool groove that is strongly reminiscent of Thin Lizzy.  With an emotional vocal performance from Rees, “Loving Lies” is the first of two strong bluesy power ballads (“Fear Of The Morning” is the other).  Driven by its galloping beat, “Hell To Play” is very Maiden-like, while “Heads Will Roll” and “Ride The Night” are more classic sounding NWOBHM tracks.  The album closes with “Jerusalem”, a midtempo rocker, fleshed out with some synths and choral vocals from Mathern Village School Choir, that unfortunately goes on a little too long and gets a little repetitive.  Disc one also contains a couple of bonus tracks with the single version of “Oh Well!” and an alternate version of “Night Lights” that sounds a lot like a demo.  

The lineup of McCoy that recorded the Brainstorm album (disc 2) started around 1991 when Samson and Thunderstick told him about playing with Al Romano on a trip to New York.  Samson said he sounded like him and he thought they might work well together.  Romano got in touch with him and also told him about vocalist Joey Belladonna who he had been working with.  They decided McCoy would write the music and then finish them with Joey and record an album.  Belladonna was still with Anthrax and they had a hit at that time with "Bring The Noise", which continued to create delays with the album.  McCoy started working out the songs with Romano and Sciotto and it reached the point where they decided to just record it themselves with Romano handling the vocals.  When Joey finally heard what they were doing he said he thought it was too AOR for him and after further delays due to McCoy's mother dying, he said he wasn't interested in finishing it. McCoy eventually completed the recordings several years later and the album was released in 1998.  While there are some similarities to the earlier releases under that name, overall, the album is much more on the melodic, and at times poppier, side.  It opens quite differently with the ethereal “Dreaming Of The Dead”, a sitar instrumental with an interesting droning undercurrent.  “Heavy Metal Cowboy” is up next and is a hard driving cut with an almost thrash like pace from the rhythm section that finds them in a more familiar territory.   The next several tracks find them sticking to the melodic rock side of things starting off with the midtempo “On And On”, which is okay but a bit on the generic side.  “Outrageous” and “Don’t Walk Away” are in the same vein, but are catchier and much better, while “I Know A Place” and “Save Me” have a bit more of a rock edge.  Along with more really good guitar work, “Streamtrain” adds a slightly funky, stomping beat to the mix, while “Bad Luck” shifts even more in a harder direction with a bit of a ragged, punky edge.  The synth-heavy power ballad “Josephine” is up next followed by “Tarot Cards”, a poppy melodic rocker with more emphasis on the synths once again.  With the exception of the occasional chant of the song’s title, “The Prophets of Doom” is a heavy, slow paced instrumental.  Closing out the album, bookended between two humorous tracks (“The List/Zoomusic/The List Continues” and “Hawaiians 2 - Electrolux 1”) that are a nod to the For Gillan Fans Only album, is “Disillusioned”, a really pretty stripped-down acoustic cut.

Disc three is from a show recorded in 1977 featuring the earliest incarnation of the band utilizing the McCoy name (to get more gigs they also moonlighted as Samson).  In addition to McCoy, the band consisted of Paul Samson on guitars and vocals and Roger Hunt on drums.  The set was recorded by the band's roadie/sound engineer at a pub call the Target in Reading, Berkshire on July 16, 1977.  Amongst the songs are five that ended up on Samson’s debut album Survivors (“Big Brother”, “Wrong Side Of Time”, “Six Foot Under” and CD reissue tracks “I Wish I Was” and “The Shuffle”, the last of which even showcases some harmonica from Samson) and covers of Jimmy Reed's "Big Boss Man" and ZZ Top's "Nasty Dogs and Funk Kings".  For the most part, the set consists of solid bluesy rockers along with some boogie woogie (the aforementioned "Six Foot Under") and a few muscular straight-ahead rockers ("Telephone", "I Wish I Was), and while the quality of the recording is rough, it is a fascinating glimpse of what was to come a few years later.  Rounded out by a CD booklet with an essay detailing the band, The Sound of Thunder! does a great job of highlighting this era of this underappreciated musician's work.   

(HNE Recordings)

Waverly Drive - Push My Luck EP

Push My Luck is the third EP from Waverly Drive, the solo project from studio engineer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Phil Galloni.  It's a highly infectious set of tunes that draws from musical influences like indie rock, new wave, synth-pop and electropop.  Kicking the EP off is “After The Show”, a dreamy, indie pop tune with an infectious electropop beat.  The title track is up next and is a bouncy pop track with well-placed synths and some guitar work that gives it a little more of a rock edge.  The new wave influence is very strong on the next two tracks, the melancholy “Moonlight Love Song” and the up-tempo, synth heavy “Taste Of Love”, which sounds like it came straight out of the eighties.  Driven by a hypnotic, dance beat the EP ends nicely with the dreamy, somewhat melancholy "For You".  

(Waverly Drive - Bandcamp)

Various Artists - Do The Strum! Joe Meek's Girl Groups and Pop Chanteuses (1960-1966)

Do The Strum! Joe Meek's Girl Groups and Pop Chanteuses (1960-1966) is the fifth and latest release in Cherry Red Records outstanding Joe Meek’s Tea Chest Tapes series.  Unlike the previous collections, all of which focused on a specific artist, this one focuses on female vocalists and girl groups.  Over the course of three discs there are eighty-eight songs that include every known A and B side, tracks from the film Live It Up!, demos, alternate cuts and more.  While there are a few exceptions, most notably Glenda Collins (check out her great Tea Chest Tapes collection Baby It Hurts: The Holloway Road Sessions) Meek didn’t work much with female vocalists, so most of them recorded a couple of songs with him before he moved on.  

Alongside Collins, who is heavily represented with sixteen tracks, there are twenty-three vocalists or female led bands including the more prolific (Billie Davis, The Honeycombs, Eve Boswell, Gunilla Thorn and Valerie Masters), a few that had just a handful of singles (The Cameos, Judy Cannon), others that only had a song or two (Yolanda, Carol Jones, Pat Reader, Jenny Moss, The Sharades, Kim Roberts, Flip and the Datelines, Diane and the Javelines, Gerry Harlow, The Halos, Lea and Chess, June Harris, Denise Scott and the Soundsmen and Pamela Blue), and even a couple tracks where the artist remains unknown.  There is plenty of diversity throughout the three discs, with everything from beat, folk, soul, R&B, exotica, pop, death discs, garage rock and more, and as always, Meek’s distinctive creativity in the studio is in full effect.  With almost half the tracks previously unreleased this is another treasure trove from the Tea Chest Tapes that is well worth your time.  

(Cherry Red Records