A Bucket Of Brains

Flamin’ Groovies

Parlophone 0190295104139

This year’s RSD No1 saw Parlophone release a nifty 10” pressing of the1972  tracks recorded for Andrew Lauder at United Artists called (I’ll Have) A Bucket Of Brains. If the title sounds familiar it’s because this release is an exact copy of the CD compilation that Jon Storey produced for EMI back in 1995 (my first ever CD!). Eight tracks, produced in the main by Dave Edmunds at Rockfield. Shamefully Jon’s original sleeve notes are not reproduced, nor do we get Phil Smee’s photos and memorabilia. A complete absence of credits means we do not know whether the record was mastered from the original tapes, or just copied from a CD. Certainly the original Shake Some Action sounds as muddy as ever although the extended Married Woman is sharp. Slow Death would sound great on a wax cylinder and You Tore Me Down will always sparkle. The 1995 mixdown of Shake Some restores the song to its original, slower tempo: only the Capitol demo version sounds better. Little Queenie and Need A Spot Of Rhythm And Blues are both rockin’ fun.

So put this on your scanner, expand from it 8 tracks to 12 and persuade United Artists to release it in 1972: voila, you just rewrote rock’n’roll history!