Bite It Deep - 1st Birthday Mix

Almost forgot to celebrate the first year of this blog!

Here's every song featured on this blog so far all in one 90 minute mix.

Enjoy...

Bite It Deep 1st Birthday Mix by Bite It Deep on Mixcloud

Hudson Brothers - Be A Man

Wolfe - Bite It Deep

Red Herring - Working Class Man

Chaos - Dance Dance Dance

Jamme - She Sits There

Sweet - Paperback Writer

NRBQ - That's Alright

Zuider Zee - Listen To The Words

Smyle - I'm So Heavy

Starry Eyed & Laughing - Closer To You Now

Sleepy Hollow - One Time

Gerry Morris - Only The Beginning

DBM&T - She Was A Raver

Tranquility - Nice And Easy

Junior Campbell - If I Call Your Name

Flame - Don't Worry Bill

Stackridge - Marigold Conjunction

Grumbleweeds - Never Before

Nicky Hopkins - Waiting For The Band

Jigsaw - No Questions Asked

Space Opera - Outlines

Nick Garrie - Little Bird

Remo Four - In The First Place

Elli - You've Only To Say

Telltale - Rainbow

Liverpool Echo - You Might As Well Surrender

Kit Russell - Peppers Last Stand

Barron Knights - To The Woods

Barron Knights - One Man's Meat (1972)

The Barron Knights are known to most as a parody band. They had a number of hit singles between the 1960's and 1980's, their biggest hit being, "A Taste Of Aggro" from 1978, a song which parodies The Smurfs, Boney M and Brian & Michael's "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs". It is not well known though that they started out as a straight pop in the early sixties group before becoming successful as a comedy act. In the early seventies, after a few years of little success, the Barron Knights decided to go straight again, releasing their pièce de résistance, the self produced, "One Man's Meat" on Penny Farthing records in 1972.

Nine of the Ten songs on the album are original compositions, penned by band members Peter Langford and Leslie "Butch" Baker.  Recorded at Morgan, Recorded Sound and Beck Studios, the album wears it's influences on it's sleeve and you can hear echoes of The Beatles, David Bowie, The Sweet and Badfinger. I promise, I'm not making this up!

The album opener and lead single, "You're All I Need" starts off with tribal drums and fuzz guitar and can be heard on the Electric Asylum Volume Three compilation. "Before You Leave" sounds like David Bowie doing Abbey Road with its George Harrison-esque slide guitar and might have been a better choice of single. "Bottle On The Shelf" is a prime Badfinger singalong with the band doing their best Lennon impressions. The orchestrated ballad, "Lonely" sounds almost like the Bee Gees but without the billy goat vocals. "You Know What I Mean" contains hints of psychedelia with it's church organ and dreamy vocals, it also has my favourite lyric on the album, "She may be a trifle small but I don't care at all, just take a look at her teeth".  

(L-R)  Duke D'Mond,  Dave Ballinger,  Peter Langford,  Butch Baker,  Anthony Osmond

Side two begins with a better than the original version of Hurricane Smith's "Don't Let It Die", a tune that Smith wrote, hoping that would be recorded by John Lennon. "Turning My Back On You" is a dead ringer for the Sweet circa 1972. I wonder if Noel Gallagher has ever heard "Oh Little Girl"? as it sounds remarkably like Oasis' "All Around The World". I'm a total sucker for a Beatlesque tune, especially one with hand claps, like "To The Woods", the album highlight and worth the price of the album alone. The LP closes with the Pete Ham styled piano ballad "Peaceful Life" and rounds off the perfect ten out of ten album and fades out to the lyrics "I'm not gonna pack my bags, I ain't gonna pack my bags"

This album really is a genuine killer and if it was by any other band it would be considered a lost masterpiece by the rock press. Having searched the web for info on this album it appears that little has even been written about "One Man's Meat" in the blogosphere with the exception of The Downstairs Lounge, a site dedicated to novelty records. So grab yourself a copy of this album straight away. If you're lucky one might turn up at your towns charity shop, I cheated and got my copy from ebay!

Also worth mentioning is "Nothin' Doin'", the b-side to "You're All I Need" which is bouncy piano pop reminiscent of Macca at his most playful.

DJing

Last weekend I found myself behind the wheel (yes, just the one) of steel.  A friend of mine was running a vintage fair, required some suitable music for the event and for some reason asked me to provide it.  A five hour session spinning retro tunes was not far off what I'd be doing on a Saturday afternoon anyway so I obliged and was set up in the corner of a primary school hall to blast out some popsike, toytown, power pop and some Beatlesque faves at a reasonable volume. I got to meet some interesting characters who live in the area ranging from some old bloke who upon hearing the Moody Blues made a beeline towards me to tell me the usual "You can't beat the sound of vinyl can ya?" right down to a toddler who seemed hypnotized by the spinning vinyl on the deck. I'm glad I brought along a ten minute version of the Beach Boys, Heroes and Villains Suite as it gave me plenty of time for a toilet break and a stretch of the legs.


Highlights from the day included...

Slade - Martha My Dear
The Californians - Congratulations
Fenwyck - Mindrocker
Ronnie Burns - Coalman
Merry Go Round - Listen, Listen

...and of course "Tonight" by New Kids on the Block. A Junipers favourite!

I'm hoping to get the vinyl out again soon, maybe start a Bite It Deep club night or even as part of the Junipers' gigs with some help from the other lads. Watch this space.

Bite It Deep Mixes on iTunes

From now on, as well as being able to listen to these mixes on Mixcloud you can also get them from iTunes.  Just go to the iTunes Store, Podcast section and search "Bite It Deep".  You can subscribe and all future mixes will be automatically downloaded to your PC/Mac/iPhone/iPad/iPod etc.

Apple made this process of uploading a podcast as hard as they could. It took me a good evening to get these up, so gimme some good ratings please!