The Sorrows - "Take A Heart" (Piccadilly, 1965)

Hi there! I'm pushing myself too hard the last weeks on many things and i feel kinda tired. We are working along with Jean Philippe for many days now on a new WAX CD also and as you can easily imagine there's hardly no time for anything else. Likewise, i don't want to lose touch with you guys and gals and even if I'm not in a good mental shape, i thought to devote some lines on a very underestimated band of the British sixties boom that more or less the previous post taught me about through their cover versions. Of course we 're talking about the Sorrows. The archetypical 'freakbeat' group and in a way proto-punk was as many said not that R&B oriented as the Pretties or the Downliners, but for sure that hard! That's their first on Piccadilly, a subsidiary of PYE and it's the aggressiveness in personage! Raucous vocals, thundering drums, lightning guitars for a band that obviously was too much ahead of its time! Call me paranoid, call me sulfurous, call me what you will anyway, but the Sorrows 'Take A Heart' was (and still is!) way better than say Who's 'My Generation'! A little later they turned out as psychedelic kinda Dylan-esque outgrowths or Italian speaking pre-progsters, but we forgive them. There are not much long plays from that period of time with an edge like theirs!

Little Bob Story - "Livin' In The Fast Lane + 6 Inédits" (Fnac Music,1991 - Originally by Crypto & Chiswick as "Off The Rails", 1977)

Well this rave up here got virtually everything i like on a rock & roll record! Tanked-up, leather dressed, sneakers carrying, dirty-ass R&B, the way played THAT GOOD in his half a century plus life, by (very) few and in the end was the true forefather of what is now known as 'punk movement' back in the 70s. And this record being made by a "five feet nothing of guts and energy" Frenchman along with some street harbor brats not unlike those you can see outside of bordelos. And it was produced (adding by side his filthy boogie guitar as well) by Sean Tyla of the Ducks Deluxe/Tyla Gang notoriety. Yes, the same Sean Tyla whom Keef tried to drag unsuccesfully for his Rolling Stones label. The same Sean Tyla who refused to produce the Sex Pistols and declined to join in Motorhead (!).
And if you're one of those maniacs (I am...) judging in many cases a record by the label's logo, this one wears proudly the one of Chiswick records, home at the time of same heights hellraisers such as Motorhead and the Count Bishops. BTW, on Chiswick released as "Off the Rails" but in France Crypto put it out as "Living in the Fast Lane" so if you ever come against it, it's the same blazing piece of vinyl. That's the digital reissue of it, using a part of "Off the Rails" front sleeve but the Crypto's title. I found it a few months ago (not many days after Ratb0y sent me the links of Spalax reissue) in a second hand store, so i guess by now this re-edition is an out of print situation too. Whatever, this is probably in my top 5 of the most played records ever and with a good reason. A fine blend (or mess!) of cover tunes and originals, in the punkish R&B vein of Dr. feelgood, only this time better! The Sorrows' "Baby" transformed actually in a Muddy Waters on speed shape, "Little Big Boss" the toon Wilko & Lee Brilleaux would have killed for, "Riot in Toulouse" a slow burner blues guitar mayhem with Little Bob's voice sounding just like late Bon Scott's plus A KILLER version of Them's "I'm Gonna Dress in Black" that puts original in the bucket's tap once and for good! There's really not a weak song in here, at least for the list that constitute the original pressing. Be sure to put this edgy fireball among "Down by the Jetty" and "Speedball +11".