Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Shake Some Action
I have been looking for a while at YouTube waiting for someone to post a good video of the great lost American Band, The Flamin' Groovies.
They came out of San Francisco at a time when the rest of the world on the west coast was into head trips and love beads, The Groovies were pure rock traditionalists and were proto punks as well. You only have to listen to their grunge anthem, Teen Age Head to see these guys were the basics. "I'm a monster, I'm a long-haired teen age head"
Chris Wilson, Cyril Jordan, George Alexander, David Wright and Mike Wilhelm and at times Roy Loney, were keepers of the flame, some how distilling basic rockabilly, Chuck Berry, and the sounds of the British Invasion into their own vision.
In 1976, they stylistically reinvented them selves and recorded one of the classics, Shake Some Action. The record was notable because they managed to write a body of work that captured the inventive freshness of the Beatles and the Punky Snarl of the Stones in the mid 60's and update it with great songs that some how sounded like your favorite record from 10 years earlier and truly kinetic playing.
I believe Chris Wilson and Cyril Jordan are still performing.
I would have liked to have found a real video, but this is a great live performance of Shake Some Action from the late 70's.
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3 comments:
Thanks for that great music and those bits and pieces of rock and roll history.
The Flamin Groovies are one of Americas greatest unknowns....
They sure kept the flame alive for me in the 70's and in their own way, when they released Shake Some Action, they were again, "out of time" bu somehow bringing the esthetics of 60's rock to the birth of "new wave".
These Keepers of the Flame were able to light the way into the future.
Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney just did a couple of shows doing Groovies tunes, backed by Yo Lo Tango. They will be doing a couple more shows next month in the NYC area.
Cyril has been in a band called the Magic Christian, who are really good.I have seen them live twice and hope to catch them live again. Clem Burke from Blondie is the drummer,Eddie Munoz from the Plimsouls plays bass, and the singer is Paul Kopf, who is a great front man.
More information http://www.magicchristian.net/band.html
and here
http://www.myspace.com/magicchristian
And finally, some photos I took when I saw the Magic Christian in DC earlier this year.
www.flickr.com/photos/32416244@N02/
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