Yes, London did exist before britpop sought to recreate it in it’s own image. A decade hijacked by a music industry scraping around for a national identity to market, the 90’s began not with songs about country houses & the shipping forecast, but with a coruscating screech of diseased organ. It’s name was Gallon Drunk.
Blending together elements of jazz, blues, surf, punk, rockabilly and film music into stylish, sweaty blasts of aural assault, gigs were feverish & chaotic, unpredictable happenings as far removed from polite floor-staring as was humanly possible.
Drummer Max Decharne (who would go on to front the equally brilliant Flaming Stars) and bassist Mike Delanian were charged with keeping the whole swirling noise thing together with a certain amount of detached stoicism. In comparison front man and main songwriter James Johnston, a man in possession of a vocal drawl akin to an inebriated lounge singer, could frequently be found attacking his guitar at the same time as kicking seven shades out of an organ which sounded as if someone was using it to soundtrack an electric chair. Topping this off was one Joe Byfield, a maraca player extraordinaire blessed with a gift for rhythmic shaking unsurpassed to this day. Bez he was certainly not.
The bands look was one of greasy quiffs, sideburns, hawian shirts and second hand suits twinned with pointed boots, old school tattoos and vaguely psychotic stares. It was about presentation, man, looking like a proper band rather than a bunch of students in second hand tracksuits, flares and sight-obscuring bowl-cuts. They may have well just arrived from Mars.
Unlike many great live acts, the band’s early recorded output managed to accurately capture the ferocity of their live shows, quite deservedly attracted much attention from both the late, great John Peel and the music press (way back in the mists of time, when the NME & Melody Maker were actual newspapers with rough edges, print that came off on your fingers and proper journalism). Their trio of pre-britpop era albums were simply astounding, having aged so well that they may have well been released just last week.
Initially spewing out a collection of their early vinyl cuts, ‘Tonite….the Singles Bar’ (1991) was welcome relief to those who didn’t relish trudging through the racks of their local record shops and paying through the nose. The inclusion of early live favourite ‘Draggin’ Along’ and a deliberately perverse slow-motion cover of surf classic ‘Miserlou’ (more apt to soundtrack a corpse floating in the river than the riding of the waves) made it an essential introduction for what was to come with debut album proper ‘You, the Night…..& the Music’ (1992). Containing the classic ‘Some Fool’s Mess’ along with a slew of rather wonderfully scuzzy nuggets from their live set, it sounded more fully-formed than than it had any right to be. Here was a band with an identity and for whom you just knew the word ‘compromise’ didn’t exist.
Keeping up the frantic pace of releases, third album ‘From the Heart of Town’ (1993) expanded on the band’s palette adding banjo, female backing vocals and most importantly, a great big bastard of a saxophone courtesy of new member Terry Edwards. In a world where most brass was still ‘smooth’, here was a squalling, sleazy accompaniment offering no apologies for it’s belching majesty.
Support slots with Morrissey & PJ Harvey soon followed, along with a punishing amount of touring, a slew of critical acclaim and even an appearance on Later with Jools Holland back when it was actually considered a slightly more dangerous commodity.
Naturally, the attending fallout from britpop eventually obscured much of what was a fantastic time for the band and British music in the early 1990’s in general, but then Gallon Drunk were never a band to follow the fickle tides of fashion. Being somewhat overlooked by events in the middle of the decade was somehow inevitable, but the band simply continued ploughing their furrow (albeit more fittingly with a large axe), a rabid fanbase both at home & abroad have kept a steady flow of albums on tap and they still tour. More importantly, they still deliver.
Much in the same way that the 60’s have been reduced to the image of some groovy kids running down the Chelsea road, it’s a pity the image of the 90’s can so readily be summed up by something as trivial as Blur & Oasis going head to head on the news. But then, you have to dig for gold. Shit just falls out of a dog’s arse…..
Some Fools Mess video:
Draggin’ Along video:
You Should Be Ashamed live on jools holland:
