Commensurate with the characteristics of this type of thread, Grinderswitch were a second or third tier suvvern rock band. They played relentlessly on big undercards through the 70's but never had a major breakthrough. Capricorn gamely supported them as that label would, Grinderswitch being built upon Joe Dan Petty, an Allman Brothers roadie. They blamed disco for killing their careers off but that's an excuse, they had a decent enough run at things.
Honest to Goodness was their first album, produced by an Allman Brother, and substantially propped up in parts by Dicky Betts. It has a sub-Allman Brothers feel and I mean that in a good way. The songs are shorter and the jazziness is much less to the for, much more of a good times rock and roll feel. Soulful singer doesn't hurt. Everything on the first album is fair to good if unspectacular.
No continuance possible -- two of the original four members are dead.
My record collection is a good seventy percent second and third tier genre bands, so I'll always have room for Grinderswitch.
― George the Animal Steele, Monday, 17 October 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)
Here is some significant love for Grinderswitch.
The Peel has championed and promoted the best (and, to be fair, a good measure of the worst - Carcass, anyone?) music of the last three-plus decades, without ever appearing a bandwagon-jumper. Show, until recently, always introed with the increasingly inappropriate blues plodding of Grinderswitch...
courtesy of TV Cream (UK)
What was the name of that music that, at least in the early 1980s, John Peel would play at the end of each show? It was kind of a bluesy twangy number.
-- mark (markwheele...), June 9th, 2005.
Answers
"Pickin' the Blues" by Grinderswitch, if I'm not mistaken.
-- retort pouch (retortpouc...), June 9th, 2005.
― George the Animal Steele, Monday, 17 October 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)