Col Truck - You're All I Need/ One Fine Day

Straight-shooting but mistimed boogie rock from 1976

Label: Baal

Year of Release: 1976

Col Truck - aka Truck as they were otherwise known two years earlier - were a rock group from Malaysia and side project of the more prolific October Cherries, whose work occasionally veered towards the psychedelic and proggish end of things. Their second album "One Fine Day", released in 1976, occasionally meanders in a particularly mellow way, interfusing their confident rock and roll boogie with occasional unexpected diversions. Have a quick spin of the track "Woe Is Me" if you don't believe me.

"You're All I Need" was their one and only UK single, and has a bit of a swagger about it but none of the fairydust which occasionally worked its way on to other tracks of theirs. It was clearly plonked out by the label as a possible hit single, but was perhaps almost a bit too straightforward to cut through. This kind of crystal clean catchy rock and roll didn't really fit in with either the growing pub rock movement, which tended to be grittier and dirtier, or the proggish tendencies of their hairy rivals. With a bit more stomp and oomph, it might have made a convincing glam single a few years earlier, but 1976 didn't really have space for this kind of thing.

Both sides slipped out pretty much unnoticed, but the group are beginning to draw more attention online for their less poppy work.