Interlude

Simon riffing on '70s nostalgia for the '60s, and Mod revivalisms. As far as the first is concerned in regards to punks being unimmune to it...dunno. If there was any substantial trope of punks covering psych-era '60s tunes, I must've misssed it. What little I remember to that effect in first-gen UK punk never struck me as much more than the usual bit of pro-forma punk irony of blithe piss-taking on the legacy of its 'countercultural' predecessor. Either that or set/album filler, perhaps something left over from a band's early stages of teaching themselves to play and then later lobbed in to round out a set/album.

Except for maybe this one below, which I'd always liked a lot...




The droning and jaundiced organ washes, the randomly yelping and gurgling Tourettic vocalizations, an admirably pervasive disregard for hooks or harmonics, all laid atop an argument for an exceptional rhythm sections of its day, and even some thoroughly non-objectional harmonica thrown in for good measure.

While on the matter of Mod Revivalism, that's very much a matter of public record. Weird thing was hearing this one some years ago...



A revved-up cover of a Byrds b-side, delivered with a punchiness that made me think of The Jam anticipated by about a decade in advance. But seeing how the tune was never released in its day, I guess it's unlikely that Weller would have heard unless he he was taped into a bountiful bootleg pipeline.

And then it was only recently that I made the connection that Tomorrow had been priorly been going under the name The In Crowd, which turned out to be the same In Crowd who were responsible for this tune which had been a "freakbeat" favorite of mine when I heard it some 25 years ago, mainly because of its supremely ramshackle, go-for-broke noisiness...




And then there's the fact that Steve Howe -- he of later Yes renown -- was the common denominator for a good portion of the guitar on these latter two tunes. Man, no wonder the first-gen punks wanted to turn back the clock.