LaRM day 154 (Flower-Flying Saucer Attack)

What should start the day off is the great bit of murky indie rock Hologram Sky (1991) by Flower.  However, yet again we have the old problem of vinyl/internet incompatability so despite being able to find one tune (the decent but not best on the album 'Torch Song') we'll have to move straight on to the 2007 compilation of songs by the great Eddie Floyd, called the Platinum Collection covering tracks from 1966-1968.  You'll have noticed a number of Platinum Collections already, and that's because it's the generic title that Warner gave to their comps of old stuff a few years back, of which I got hold of copies of the lot.  Anyway, Eddie Floyd made some grand records for Stax and unsurprisingly the collection starts with the biggest and greatest of the lot, 'Knock on Wood', which as everybody in the whole world knows is a hell of a song.  But the earthy brilliance of Floyd and more specifically the Stax songwriters is writ large across every one of these 20 tunes, from the blistering call-and-response blues-rock of 'Big Bird' to the brassy soul of 'I Don't Want to Cry', there's not a wasted moment, absolutely not a one, and while the vast majority of Stax's output was gold, the same applies to Floyd's recordings for them, it's pretty much all fantastic.  The rolling, fluid performance on 'Don't Rock the Boat' by the exceptional Stax house band coupled with Floyd's charmingly unshowy vocals provide the perfect summation of just how great this stuff is.  As far as 60's rocking R&B and soul goes, this is the real deal.

Next it's some pre-emo punk-pop from never-were's Fluf, starting with the 1993 7", which is a cover of PJ Harvey's 'Sheela-Na-Gig' and Overwhelming Colorfast's great 'Song in D'.  The best thing about it really is the fact that Fluf were aware of and liked PJ Harvey and wanted to big up the sadly under-rated Overwhelming Colorfast, beyond that these are fairly uninteresting punked up cover versions.  Fluf were always really going to be cursed by being a more competent but less engaging version of J Church who cornered the market for this kind of emotionally charged, whip-smart punk-pop single-handedly and as a result although Fluf made some decent records they've faded from sight pretty much entirely.  Next should have been Fluf's penultimate album, Waikiki (1997) but there's only a couple of songs on Youtube (the great punk-pop frenzy 'Pushin' Back Days' and the more sedate pop gem 'Chocolate' but two songs do not an album make so we move straight on to the last Fluf album, Road Rage (1998) which surprisingly is on Spotify.  In a very loose sort of way I think that Fluf pre-empted the Hold Steady in that not only is Otis Barthoulameu's gravel voice not a million miles away from Craig Finn's but Fluf also held that delicate balance between playing straight ahead punk and pulling classic rock poses.  Road Rage is probably the most coherent record that they made, fusing the classic and the uproarious in a pretty effective way and there are some great songs ('If I Could Feel Good' is not only a great bit of pop songwriting, it also has a brilliant little guitar solo which should have been unimaginable for a punk-pop album like this, and again presages the Hold Steady's approach).  There are some real duds ('Wake Up' is absolutely awful for instance) but that's only to be expected with an album like this, and when it's good, it's really great.

Now we have the first two 7"'s by the abysmal all-girl punk rock outfit Fluffy.  Fluffy were a bunch of young posh girls who seemed to think that snarling and dying your hair was the same as being challengingly feminist.  First single 'Hypersonic' (1995) is awful and B-side 'Crossdresser' is dreadful.  Worse yet is the follow-up 'Husband' (1996) and thankfully I can't find the B-side 'Deny Everything' on the internet and I haven't listened to it in years so I can't say anything about it. I can guess what it's like though.

Next is the 7" single by that bedroom 8-track maestro, the bloke who used to work in Revolver Records on Park Street in Bristol (probably still does for all I know) recording as Flying Saucer Attack and covering Wire's 'Outdoor Miner' (1995).  It's a typically fuzzy bit of lo-fi psychedelia, exactly like everything else that he recorded (is he called Dave Broom? It's something like that) and although it often works well for his own material I'm mystified as to why he bothered messing up someone's superb song.  I can't find the B-side, 'Psychic Driving' on the internet and, again, I can't remember whether it's any good.