Sunday 10 June 2012

Sombrero Club 1962


After the Godz, another all time greatest group ever are Toots and the Maytals. Here they are at the Sombrero Club (no idea where that is) in 1962 backed by Byron Lee and his Dragonaires. Exciting vocals and some great dancing. This is brilliant, actually.

Tuesday 5 June 2012

The Whiffenpoof Song

One last blast from the Godz. This was released as a single in the hope that it would compete with Strawberry Fields Forever or Good Vibrations. The Godz appeared to sincerely believe that their ur-music (and I have only posted their more musical stuff, some of it really is tuneless) had the potential to be widely successful. Gentlemen songsters off on a spree, doomed from here to eternity.

Soon the Moon


The previous video had poor sound so this is what the Godz could sound like properly recorded. A song of great depth and mystery that stays in your head. The less imaginative might have had a three note bass part to reflect the three syllables of the song’s repeated title. I think this is what Pink Floyd wanted to sound like but could not cut themselves loose from what was considered musical. No such qualms for the unfettered Godz who set the controls for the heart of the dissonance and achieve lift off. 

Monday 4 June 2012

The Godz

I fancy myself a musical primitivist but The Godz take the primitivist biscuit. The ne plus ultra of primitivism, Easy to characterise as untutored and ill disciplined. Absolutely rubbish and completely brilliant at the same time. Barely photographed, hardly written about, this most obscure group sometimes seems not to exist, to be an invention of another fictitious Lester Bangs article. I cannot remember their names and know nothing of their biography. But they did exist and thanks to You Tube here they are in 1966 sitting in their apartment practicising their hopeless music and then having a party and dancing with girls and then playing a show. I was once asked what other time I would have liked to live in and I said there was none. But perhaps I might like to go to 1966 when Godz walked the earth.