In My Life — Fay Fife & Eugene Reynolds

Here’s an old documentary on the Rezillos I found on Google video.

I was a big Rezillos fan back in the late seventies, and I've seen them a couple of times since they reformed. If anything, I'd say they were now even better: Faye & Eugene's singing voices are certainly more powerful, and richer, too. And I'd forgotten what a good guitarist Jo "Luke Warm" Callis is, in that lead-and-rhythm-together style of, I dunno, erm, Mick Green? Wilko Johnson? (music journalism hat falls off).

And —swoon— I got to stand next to Faye & Eugene in the audience at the last Bis Christmas show at Oran Mor. Too starstruck to actually say anything, though.

Anyway here they are being interviewed in 2001, before they reformed, talking about the band's history, including their intermediate "Revillos" project. With some hard-to-find archive footage.

To watch in a bigger window, or download it, go to Google video here.

Go Raj!

Earl Vince and The Valiants – Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight

Back in the late seventies, “Fleetwood Mac” was a dirty word (dirty phrase?), at least it was if you were a punk/new-wave/power-pop person like what I was. Alongside Journey, Kansas and Foreigner, they represented all that we hated about smug, comfortable American FM-radio stadium rawk. So how did a groovy plastic (in a good way) punky pop group like the Rezillos get away with doing a Fleetwood Mac cover? After all, they did choose to stop playing the blessed Joe Meek’s Have I The Right when manufactured boy band The Dead End Kids had a minor hit with it.

Well, to begin with, it’s not technically a Fleetwood Mac song . Back in their UK-based, blues-band-fulla-guitarists period in the late sixties, they would goof off by playing pastiches of old rock’n’roll numbers, and calling themselves “Earl Vince and the Valiants”. And one song, this one, managed to get on the B-side of a proper Fleetwood Mac single (Man of the World). The song was also easily the “punkyest” in the Rezillos’ repertoire: with all there other stuff being about science fiction and sculptures and luv, this one was their only song dealing with violence. And it was fast too, at least the way the Rezillos performed it.

So I guess Eugene, Faye and the boys just hoped nobody in the audience had that old Fleetwood Mac single. Or indeed Blues Leftovers, the cheapo Immediate Records compilation where I found it. So here it is, with Jeremy Spencer’s brooding Elvisish (Elvine? Elvistic?) vocal.

Listen:

Download Earl Vince and The Valiants – Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight MP3 (rapidshare)