In the dying embers of a burnt-out day when morning seems a thousand hours away

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

22/08/71 : Split - The Groundhogs

The last entry was our second ever mention of Atomic Rooster and this is our second ever mention of The Groundhogs - and I don't have any clue as to what I'm going to get here.

Hmmm - how to describe it? It's definitely rock, but it has more of a blues/psychedelic element than most of the proggier stuff we've seen this year - it feels more rooted in the late 60s than most of the stuff we've heard. And, like Atomic Rooster previously, it's not really my sort of thing but it's all perfectly listenable (except for the end of "Junkman" which is most peculiar) because it's well done with plenty of skill involved - I also really like the album cover (you can really imagine Dave Grohl going for something like that)

We're at #27 in the charts this week on their 23rd week of a surprisingly lengthy 26 week run with it having peaked at a surprisingly high #5 in its sixth week - one of three top ten albums they had in the early 70s. The top five this week were TOTP Vol 18, Hot Hits 6, The Moody Blues, Simon & Garfunkel and Black Sabbath with the highest new entry being a cash-in posthumous Jimi Hendrix live album (#15). 

Wikipedia tells us it's their fourth album and that's pretty much your lot. Padding things out, their entry tells us the early 70s was their peak time when they were made up of Tony McPhee (singer, guitarist, song-writer), Peter Cruickshank (bass) and Ken Pustelnik (drums until '72)/Clive Brooks (drums from '72 to '74) - although Tony McPhee appeared with a further NINETEEN different lineups between '75 and '14, which is both impressive and desperate at the same time. Back to the album, I'd love to give you further information on the critical or commercial reception but, rarely, there's absolutely no information on either - which is even more unusual considering how well it did here.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for £8, but if you want a mint version then you'll be looking at £120 - which seems a bit pricey to me. I imagine The Groundhogs are pretty much forgotten or never even heard of these days, but I really didn't mind this at all and found it quite an interesting listen, although it's not really my thing. I'm quite enjoying our educational visits to the lower reaches of the charts, but it does bring home how few decent albums seemed to exist in '71.

29/08/71 - Not what I was expecting

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