ALBUMS: Now (1978)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$
I was graduating from high school when this came out. Talk about retro.. This group was like something out of 1966. They cover ‘Paint it Black’ on this album like it was a new song.
‘There’s a Place’ cover sounds like the 1960’s prom band checking in on the Beatles.
All this came to me in the early 1980s.
I discovered this Flamin’ Groovies in a strange way. I was at the Birmingham public library doing some research and they had vinyl records that you could check out, like a book, and return later. This would have been mid-1980s.
I picked up a Flamin’ Groovies album called Groovies Greatest Grooves. It had the song ‘Shake Some Action,’which blew me away. It’s the sense of discovery that you live for as a record collector. Again I was looking for tunes not rare artifacts and that song was one good song. Cracker later recorded it and it was featured in a movie, all much later.
I made a cassette tape out of it that I have no idea whether I have or not.
The thing that made the Groovies groove work was that they played essentially covers or originals that sounded so close to their heroes, early Beatles, Stones, and Who. — with no irony. That’s what makes it great. Just a few guys from San Francisco playing songs they love from another era.
So, it wasn’t surprising to see that this 1978 album, a comeback of sorts, was produced by retro-man Dave Edmunds. “Yeah My Baby” written by Edmunds, and band members Cyril Jordan and Chris Wilson sounds like a long lost classic. Or long lost classic B-side.
The sound seems like it was coming through a B&W TV set.