BRINSLEY SCHWARZ: HEN'S TEETH (1967-1975; 1998)
1) Shy Boy; 2) Lady On A
Bicycle; 3) Rumours; 4) And She Cried; 5) Tell Me A Story; 6) Understand A
Woman; 7) Tomorrow, Today; 8) Turn Out The Light; 9) In My Life; 10) I Can See
Her Face; 11) Hypocrite; 12) The Version; 13) I've Cried My Last Tear; 14)
(It's Gonna Be A) Bring Down; 15) Everybody; 16) I Like You, I Don't Love You;
17) Day Tripper; 18) Slow Down; 19) I Should Have Known Better; 20) Tell Me
Why; 21) There's A Cloud In My Heart; 22) I Got The Real Thing.
Somebody's love for Brinsley Schwarz must have
been bubbling indeed, if it prompted its victim to assemble such a
painstakingly meticulous compilation of just about every studio-based rarity
that the band put out during its lifetime and much, much beyond that. Because
formally, only a few of these tracks are credited to «Brinsley Schwarz». The
first ten tracks represent the small legacy of Kippington Lodge, with Nick Lowe
joining in only about midway through and only having enough time to contribute
one single song. Tracks 17-20 are Beatles covers that were recorded by the Brinsleys
all right, some time in late 1974, but were anonymously credited to «The Knees»
and «Limelight», two different bands with two different styles (!). Tracks
11-12 are yet another stab at anonymity as «The Hitters», from 1973.
Finally, the last two tracks have them as
simply «The Brinsleys» — an odd attempt at name shortening right before the
break-up: did they think it was the name Schwarz
that prevented them from fame and fortune? (Come to think of it, does anybody
know of any famous and fortunate Schwarzes from the UK? Maybe there was something to the idea). And thus,
only tracks 13-16 are properly billed to «Brinsley Schwarz», with two singles
from 1974-75, neither of which is credited to Lowe or Gomm, either (the B-sides
are, but one of the B-sides, ʽI Like You I Don't Love Youʼ, was already
available on New Favourites anyway).
It isn't much of a pain to sort through this
mess, given that all the information is laid out in the track listings and
liner notes. It isn't that much of a great pleasure, though, to sit through the
music, either: only by some anomalous miracle could an album of Brinsley
Schwarz and «para-Brinsley Schwarz» rarities turn out to be as good as, let
alone better than their regular output. It ain't much worse, either, but I doubt
that, apart from a tiny handful of these tracks, anything here could truly
satisfy even the most forgiving fan of the band — heck, even the liner notes,
written in an age when raving and ranting liner notes are written about anything, admit that, well, you know, it
ain't no great shakes, but, you know, historical importance, charming period
pieces, the regular drill. And yeah, they're kinda right about it.
The Kippington Lodge stuff shows what we'd
probably expect to see — yet another bunch of nice, clean, well-meaning kids
striving to be the Beatles, but falling somewhere in between the Hollies and
just about every other band you heard on Nuggets
II. Most of the songs are from outside songwriters: for instance, the first
song, ʽShy Boyʼ, was donated to them by Tomorrow (the Steve Howe-nurturing band
of ʽMy White Bicycleʼ fame), although this excited the band so much that they
tried to write the B-side themselves — and, of course, it was named ʽLady On A
Bicycleʼ, because, you know, bicycles are so British and so psychedelic ever
since Albert Hofmann rode one. To be fair, neither of them sounds like the
Beatles: ʽShy Boyʼ is a music hall number much closer to the Kinks, and ʽLadyʼ
is more of a swingin' jazz-pop ditty with a sappy chorus that's more Mamas
& Papas than Lennon/McCartney.
In fact, when they do tackle Lennon/McCartney directly, it sounds awful: ʽIn My Lifeʼ,
released in May 1969, coincided with the era of "let us reimagine early
Beatles songs as grandiose art-pop epics!" (remember ʽEvery Little Thingʼ
by Yes?) and has wailing distorted guitars, organs, instrumental breaks and
vocals overdriven into frenzy mode by the end. The B-side to that single was
Lowe's first solo original: ʽI Can See Her Faceʼ, a mournful guitar-organ slab
of soul-pop that will bring to mind early Deep Purple, but with every aspect of
early Deep Purple brought down to amateur level. Endearing, perhaps, but as
forgettable as every other song by this early incarnation of the band — real
gallant name, though, that Kippington Lodge.
Of the other stuff, «anonymous» or no, only two
tracks caught my attention: ʽEverybodyʼ was curious because it probably has the
heaviest sound the band was ever allowed in the studio, with such a gruff riff
that, for a brief second, it opens them a little bit of that door into the
Sweet / T. Rex league (not that this is necessarily a plus — just noting that
they so very rarely sounded «glam», every such attempt jumps to attention). And
of those Beatles covers from 1974-75, although ʽDay Tripperʼ and ʽSlow Downʼ,
which «The Knees» play in rock mode, are pitiful, the other two tracks, which
«Limelight» play in «artsy» mode, are much less so — especially ʽI Should Have
Known Betterʼ, where I really appreciate how they take the song into another dimension
by replacing the harmonica with the organ and the guitar solo with
strings, so it's a «Hard Day's Night meets Procol Harum and The Moody Blues» kind of
event that deserves to be heard, maybe even in a higher status than just
«historical curio».
Another historical curio is that the Leroy
Sibbles ska song, ʽHypocriteʼ, turns out to have been first recorded as a vocal
version — with very pretty vocal harmonies at that — and ʽThe Versionʼ was its
instrumental track, for some reason released as the B-side; and then, for an
even stranger reason, it was the instrumental rather than the vocal version to
make it as the coda for Please Don't
Ever Change. Accident? Humility? Copyright issues? Anyway, just another
example in a series of tiny odd blunders that probably contributed to their
career never taking off.
Anyway, it all sounds okay, and in each such
retrospective there is at least an instructive value — with the Kippington
Lodge tracks, for instance, you can quickly and succinctly track down much of
the general evolution of the UK musical scene from 1967 to 1969, starting out
as wispy, sensitive, music-hall influenced psycho-pop and then gradually
getting bleak, thick, and heavy, with layers of vanilla fudge strewn over grand
funk railroads — that is, before the roots-rock craze sets in and we become all
downhome and earthy and stuff. Not that the Brinsleys always followed this
simplistic model, but ultimately, this was a band that could not overcome
somebody else's limitations and fully come into its own — in the logical end, this
is why Hen's Teeth is indeed an
appropriate title for this collection.
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