The Go Go Cult
WE DON’T FIT
WESTERN STAR
+++
Continuing to crank out
60s-influenced garage rock,
Reading’s The Go Go Cult return for
their fifth long-playing release on
Western Star in a decade. There’s
plenty of threatening menace to the
bass-heavy Wild Women From Mars
On Drugs, and overdriven MC5-style
guitars add crackle to Wake Up’s
slow-building intro, with frontman
Nigel Poole on devilishly good form.
Guitars and bass are wound up
to the max on the thumping
Horsepower and Atom Bomb Bop
even tips its hat to the electro-rock
of Sigue Sigue Sputnik. SH
Pagan Gould &
The Nitro Men
GOT SOME ROCKIN’ TO DO
MALLEY CAT RECORDS
++++
A huge number of influences from
across the rock’n’roll spectrum
make up a nicely balanced 13-track
collection from veteran singer/
bassist Pagan Gould. With superior
backing throughout from The Nitro
Men, Gould tackles everything from
Blue Cats covers through to Gene
Vincent. The Carnations’ Long Tall
Girl, a strolling favourite for 30
years, gets a rare cover, and Pagan
even drags The Troggs’ Love Is All
Around into the rockin’ pantheon.
An interesting and worthwhile
project, buy with confidence. JHCrazy Cavan And
The Rhythm Rockers
50 ROCKIN’ YEARS
CRAZY RHYTHMRicky Nelson
A TEENAGE IDOL – ALL THE HITS 1957-1962
JASMINE
++++An out-of-the-box success due to his prominence on TV sitcom
The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, Ricky Nelson was the
quintessential US teenager. While he still scored the occasional chart
success post-’62, this is a pretty decent encapsulation of his prime
hit-making years. Nelson’s first nine singles were all million-sellers
and are included here; this 34-track compilation rounds up all 33 of
his US hits, as well as the UK Top 10 success Someday from 1958,
which was never released as a single Stateside. A solid all-rounder,
Nelson was equally at ease on the rockin’ Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye
Heart) and lip-curling Believe What You Say as the balladry of
Teenage Idol and swooning Lonesome Town. Country influences
found their way into the mix, too. Nelson also shone on covers – his
version of Fats Domino’s
I’m Walkin’ is augmented
by a slick backing band
performance and there’s
a striking reinvention of
George Gershwin’s
Summertime, which
certainly piqued Ritchie
Blackmore’s interest –
it’s clearly the basis for
the guitar riff in Deep
Purple’s Black Night. SH++++
While there’s no shortage of Crazy Cavan
compilations available, this expansive boxset
emphatically delivers the goods across three
gold-coloured discs, with an impressive
tracklisting reaching 72 songs.
Old favourites feature prominently, but for
collectors the real treat is the inclusion of the
Crazy Rhythm EP from 1974, making its
appearance on CD for the first time.
Further spoils inside the box include
a stunning 84-page booklet that’s stacked
with unseen photos and features an in-depth
exploration of the band’s complete career
from 1970 to 2020.
Disc One harvests their early long-players,
with a range of selections from 1975 debut
Crazy Rhythm and the classic Our Own Way Of
Rockin’ two years later. Tracks from both 1976’s
Rockability and Mr Cool (1979) are less well
represented, but fans need not panic – Trouble
Trouble is in there.
Disc Two leaps into the 80s, missing a few
albums on the way, but still presenting someessential cuts before moving into their 90s
material and beyond. The third disc brings us
right up to date, with a full portion of the
band’s material from the new millennium –
Crazy Cavan And The Rhythm Rockers always
had something new on the horizon for fans
and, unlike many acts, kept on creating fresh
material almost until to the end. Alongside
the inclusion of the EP tracks are no fewer than19 unreleased demos from between 1983 and
2019 to excite hardcore devotees. The majority
of these are focused around the period just
before the release of the album Rollin’
Through The Night (1984), followed by six
tracks that were effectively the band’s final
recordings. For this reason alone, they make
50 Rockin’ Years far more than just another
greatest hits retread.
Picking a broad representation of songs
from a band with so much material can’t have
been an easy task, but this collection offers
a comprehensive overview of their career.
For heavy-duty fans and even curious
onlookers, this rockin’ box demands a place on
your shelf, especially if your home is lacking
solid senders such as Knock! Knock!, Teddy Boy
Boogie and My Little Sister’s Gotta Motorbike.
Crazy Rhythm have created an essential
package that not only encourages frenzied
bouts of boppin’ and shakin’ but also serves as
a fitting epitaph to a sadly missed legend of
rock’n’roll. Craig BrackenridgeCD Album Reviews