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Though not apparent on first listen, 'I've Gotta Get A Message To You' is another death song in the same 'tradition' as 'Green Green Grass Of Home', this time sung from the point of view of a death row prisoner awaiting the chair and trying to get a last message to his wife (whose lover he murdered, hence his predicament). A contrived scenario for sure and one that demands a certain suspension of belief on the part of the listener to make it work, not least because of the broad brush work that paints it. Yet while I'm generally happy to play ball, 'I've Gotta Get A Message To You' lands too far beyond the pale for me to be taken in this time.
Ironically for a band who would later have a hit with a song called 'Tragedy', tragedy itself is something the Bee Gees were never at home with. Heartbreak yes, but 'I've Gotta Get A Message To You' is too clumsy in its execution to hit the nerve of empathy/sympathy it's aiming at. Like a surgeon wearing boxing gloves to operate, it crudely hacks out its story via the Gibb's over the top plead "I've just gotta get a message to you, hold on, hold on. One more hour and my life will be through" serving only to rub its blood in your face as the music goes about its own brash and brittle business of creating drama out of nothing. 'I've Gotta Get A Message To You' does its best, but there's a yawning chasm between intent and result that's never going to bridged with an emotional connection no matter how much hard core, hand wrung angst the band pour into it.
"It's automatic when I talk with old friends. The conversation turns to girls we knew when their hair was soft and long and the beach was the place to go" - it seems odd that on 'Do It Again' the Beach Boys were indulging in wistful nostalgia that's all 'was' and 'when' barely two years on from their perfect statement of female desire that gave them those 'Good Vibrations'. But as even the casual fan knows, the late sixties had not been a happy ship for either band or their de-facto leader Brian Wilson as they turned away from the sun and surf that made their fortune into the introspection of 'Pet Sounds' and the grand yet flawed meisterwork that never was 'SMiLE'. "Don't fuck with the formula" warned Mike Love as the hits dried up.
From its title in, 'Do It Again' is a return to roots, a barer boned, surf styled recording that purposely harks to the slow build of 'California Girls' but with a self checking, self reverential lyric from Love that's happy to acknowledge that they'd been away too long. It's a move that falls in step with other major sixties stars who retreated to a more basic path after the comedown of psychedlia, but what was hip in 1963 isn't necessarily so in 1968 and few were calling out for a surf revival. Luckily, Wilson was at hand to lift it above mere retro retread by adding a metallic drum intro that squelches as it clangs and a close of hammering lifted from those 'SMiLE' sessions. Token gestures perhaps, but they succeed in raising 'Do It Again' above the formulaic statement that Love was loathe to fuck with. Its number one status may have proved him right in the short term, but as serviceable as it is, 'Do It Again' is a step backwards from what the band were capable of.
I'm told that a picture paints a thousand words. Watching the 1968 'video' clip of Arthur Brown performing 'Fire' in warpaint and flaming headgear, I'm inclined to agree. Even with the sound off you can see the genesis of the New York Dolls, Kiss, Roy Wood, Alice Cooper and countless other/lesser rock acts who cottoned on to the notion that a strong, visual image can compensate immeasurably for a paucity in the 'good song bag'.
Turn the volume up, and the opening call to arms 'I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE AND I BRING YOU...FIRE' puts me in mind of Black Sabbath, Venom and the legion of corpse painted, church burning black metallers they inspired. Enough to send a small boy hiding behind a cushion in fright anyway, which is where my first glimpse of Mr Brown sent me. But then just when you think Arthur and the band have come to drag us all to hell, Vincent Crane's freakbeat organ fires (sorry) up to give the song wheels and suddenly it all gets a lot more cuddly.
I mentioned above about how Arthur's visual influence has been passed like a baton down the years, but that's not to say that he arrived like a clap of lightning from a clear blue sky. British music hall tradition is laced with acts reliant on mild freakshow overtones to sell their tickets, from George Chirgwin's black face minstrel with the falsetto voice to 'Little Tich' and his 28 inch shoes. But then contemporaneous with Brown, fellow Brit Screaming Lord Sutch was also fond of acting the goat by dressing up to add a grand Guignol appeal to whatever schlock he was peddling. Sutch, however, was the textbook definition of what my Gran would call a 'daft bugger', and scratch below the wild eyed fire demon front he presents and Arthur reveals himself to be fresh from the same gene pool.
Brown plays an effective bogeyman, but appearances are deceptive and 'Fire' is more mainstream than it would have you believe. Built entirely around that organ riff with brass overdubs (no guitars here), 'Fire' is psychedelia neutered by its inherent pop sensibilities. Stripped of Brown's vocal, 'Fire's steady drive seems more suited to soundtrack a car chase scene from some sixties thriller rather than a drug soaked freakout.
Stripped of its theatrics, 'Fire' manages to roll on its own internal rising momentum with sufficient force to keep the cheese at bay, but it's own prim neatness also keeps the excitement lid firmly shut - I don't know how useful the comparator is, but bootleg recordings of the 'Fire/Mrs O'Leary's Cow' elemental suite from Brian Wilson's aborted 1967 'SMiLE' sessions carry with them the wild and whirling unpredictability of a wall of flame to the point that you can imagine the disc itself breaking out in a sweat. By comparison, this 'Fire' simmers on a much lower flame on a Corgi registered gas hob. But that doesn't mean it's not all still great fun. Because it is.
A no nonsense, tubthump blast from the garage, 'Mony Mony' is more familiar to me through Billy Idol's 1987 cover. Yet despite his ever present sneer of lust, James outsings him ten to one with the throat rasping gusto of a proto Kurt Cobain that makes that "Here she comes now sayin' Mony Mony" sound like the most deviant of sexual mores. Should it come as any surprise that he's better? As a rule, the only way Billy Idol can improve on a song is by leaving it well alone, yet his dumb, nu-metal take highlights the weak link in this chain as being The Shondells themselves who play like they were briefed to play it bubblegum.
Lacking the fire of the vocals, the clap happy backing slightly hobbles James's best efforts and damp down his energy; James hollers the "so good, so fine", the band politely look the other way. 'Mony Mony' still thrills, but it lacks the edge of dirt and danger of a 'Louie Louie' or a 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' to be the bona fide teenage, garage grunge anthem it aspires to be.
Along with Max Bygraves and Barry Manilow, Des O'Connor completed the trinity of easy targets beloved to British light entertainment comedians in the seventies and eighties. Their dogma was such that just typing their names causes me to smirk in pre-judgement without them having to so much as open their mouths. Ah but whatever the rights and wrongs of this, I'm not about to launch a re-appraisal of defence of any of them. I'll leave that for someone else. And anyway, in the case of Des and on the evidence of 'I Pretend', I couldn't if I wanted to.
It's the same old story, another lover has gone, but this time rather than try and win her back or hit the bottle in anguished heartbreak, Des is the archetypical polite Englishman, finding spineless virtue in not making a fuss ("Wish I knew exactly what I'd done. If there's someone else I'll set you free now, guess I've lost and he has won") and happy to queue 'till something better comes along as he sits in his chair and pretends she's still there with him. The fire of love does not exactly burn strongly in Mr O'Connor and he sings this with the personality and conviction of the speaking clock, a lo-fat 'ho-hum' of ambivalence suggestive of an innate boringness that could lie at the root of "exactly what" he's done to see her off - i.e. nothing, now or ever. "One day our love must end, till then I'll just pretend"; good luck with that Des, you big loser.
The unwary punter can buy a Platinum records CD from 1997 called 'The British 60's' that's a compilation of the 'best of' The Foundations and The Equals, equally split down the middle with ten songs from both bands.* Why were these two seen as suitable bedfellows I wonder? After all, there's no obvious common link between the music they produced; while The Foundations aped Motown with no small success, The Equals dabbled in the burgeoning reggae genre though neither styles were in any way 'British' enough to warrant that title. Unless the compliers considered that two home-grown, mixed race bands filtering a genre from abroad through very British roots was reason enough for the pairing? Maybe, and if so it's accurate (and imaginative) to a point the premise could provide this review all by itself.
All told, 'Baby Come Back' is a less successful stab at reggae than 'Baby Now That I've Found You' was at Motown. And that's because it keeps more of a toehold in straightforward pop than in its source material so that it's more accurate to regard 'Baby Come Back' as a straightforward pop tune given the odd reggae flourish. There's a light skank to the rhythm (that's emphasised by some "shh shh shh" 'Train To Skaville' vocal percussion at the close) true, and Eddie Grant's Guyana patois is as thick as it's genuine, but it's all overlaid with a typical British beat band beat that's only really interested in getting to the chorus.
This itself builds into itself quite neatly with the "Hey - all right" call and responses, but that doesn't disguise that 'Baby Come Back' is all chorus. Not usually a problem per se (though reggae was never about a good chorus), but in pulling two ways between styles the resulting paralysis and the flatness of the playing keeps 'Baby Come Back' on a continuous plateau that doesn't bear the level of repetition on display here. Good fun that that only just manages to outstay its welcome. Only just mind.
* Not that I'd recommend looking for a copy of this - its bargain basement price on the front derives from the 'song of this music has been re-recorded with as many of the original artists as possible' caveat in small print on the back. Honestly, this kind of carry on should come with a prominent 'ACHTUNG!' and a stencilled image of a grinning skull.
On paper, it looks such a natural step from their previous number one - Jagger, no longer content to just 'Paint It, Black', now wants to take things to a logical conclusion by assuming blackness himself under the persona of 'Jumpin' Jack Flash'. In actual fact, what the stats DON'T reveal is the whole Sgt Pepper aping charade of 1967's 'Their Satanic Majesty's Request' , an album that saw the Stones dabble in cod psychedelia only to come off a poor second best. After such a serious misstep, points had to be proved and on 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' Jagger is in the mood to prove them.
Bill Wyman has since repeatedly claimed to have written, but recieved no credit for, the main riff here, but in truth it's always sounded a sawn off variation of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' to me. And unlike that song, it's not the be all and end all power source of 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' - from Brian's chunky acoustic intro, there's a loose and shambolic feel pervading the whole song from Charlie's off the beat drum beat to the droll drawl "it's a gas" backing vocals, a garage band jam barely holding it together yet with Jagger's yowling, ringmaster in a circus of horrors, daring it to fall apart as he recounts with ambivalence ("but it's alright now") the freakshow life endured by Mr Flash.
"I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag, I was schooled with a strap right across my back" - drawls Jagger, none of it true of course but by self mythologising his own character, both he and the band draw a line in the sand that's the equal of Robert Johnson meeting the devil at the crossroads - 'Satanic Majesty' was then, but now we're going to show how Satanic we can REALLY be. The later 'Sympathy For The Devil', 'Gimmie Shelter' and Midnight Rambler' would be the culminating explosions of this darker turn of face, but 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' lit the fuse and it fizzes quite superbly.
Though not apparent on first listen, 'I've Gotta Get A Message To You' is another death song in the same 'tradition' as 'Green Green Grass Of Home', this time sung from the point of view of a death row prisoner awaiting the chair and trying to get a last message to his wife (whose lover he murdered, hence his predicament). A contrived scenario for sure and one that demands a certain suspension of belief on the part of the listener to make it work, not least because of the broad brush work that paints it. Yet while I'm generally happy to play ball, 'I've Gotta Get A Message To You' lands too far beyond the pale for me to be taken in this time.
