Friday, April 23, 2010

What Hath Lenny Kaye and Greg Shaw Wrought/Underdog


I have to say it pleases me to no end that unnamed greedy Euros have decided to perform the public service of comping great glam singles on various glam comp lps ala Killed By Death. The first one of these I was able to track down from the UK was "Glam Sandwich and Electric Flares." It cost a fortune to get and was housed in a flimsy thin cardboard cover of the quality of a takeaway chips holder. The music itself, yes the music, was topnotch.

The junk shop glam cds that came out several years ago ("Velvet Tinmine" etc) were among my favorite reissues of the last decade. As Robin at the always great Purepop site wrote a few years ago, these junk shop glam singles ARE the new freakbeat (my paraphrase may be slightly off). Which brings me right around to an lp and single Robin featured a few years back as well and which has been sitting in the barn archive waiting for a spin: Giorgio Morodor's "Son of My Father" from 1972.

There are just some tremendous moogy-synth-glam tracks which as an entire lp holds up really well (with a great cover to boot). The title track has always had that great glam chug that made "Spirit in the Sky" jump out on AM transistor radios worldwide. This ain't your mama's "Terminal Jive" or "Midnight Express." Morodor also produced the Chicory Tip cover of his song which became the bigger hit. As you can see below, Giorgio ain't no Bryan Ferry so we can be thankful he didn't become a teen idol. "Underdog" has great anti-authoritarian lyrics and is pure bubble gum - it will stick in your head like the best of early 70's glam pop.

Here is Chicory Tip (with the great simulacrum of Morodor's accent!!) mooging out on the beach though not quite Magic Band "69 style if you know what clip I mean - this version replaces a non-karaoke version that was pulled by youtube:

No comments:

Post a Comment