Tag - Off Down The Road/ Guitar Lover

 

Insistent, stomping and surprisingly under the radar glam number 

Label: Philips

Year of Release: 1975

When the compilation "Velvet Tinmine" first saw the light of day in 2003, I was convinced that record collecting was about to enter its next phase and keen buyers of psychedelic rarities would move on. After all, the paisley wallpapered barrel was beginning to ring rather hollow with collectors raving about non-event discs like Barnaby Rudge's "Joe Organ & Co" - it seemed as if there might be more undiscovered fun to have in the glitter bin on the right.

In retrospect, this was naive of me. There's not an enormous amount of crossover between the two audiences and while psychedelic pop certainly had its heavily manufactured moments, glam rock was often seen - even by serious musicians at the time - as being cheap pop performed by old lags for the ears of teens who knew no better. While glam singles therefore picked up a lot of love from open-minded pop pickers, psych collectors in general couldn't have cared less and there remain quite a few glam gems which don't command excessive prices.

This, naturally, is one of them. "Off Down The Road" hasn't been included on any compilation to the best of my knowledge, and has an astonishing amount of welly. Opening with a pounding piano, it quickly picks up pace with the stomping rhythm entering rapidly, then the group lean so heavily on the song's hooks you fear they might snap, but they never do. The track builds and builds, throwing in the usual foot stomping and chants of "hey!" but never becoming tiresome for all its repetition. It's pop with a capital P, operating somewhere between Kenny and those cheeky scamps Hello.

Sadly, I haven't the foggiest who Tag were, and if anyone else on the Internet does they've kept very quiet about it. They never had another single out so it seems reasonable to assume Philips gave up on them fairly swiftly when this wasn't a hit. In many respects, though, 1975 was a little late in the day to be issuing glam records; past the peak of the movement when even the biggest names were struggling to score top ten hits. Had "Off Down The Road" been issued a year or two before, chances are it would have been huge. 

The flip "Guitar Lover" also isn't bad in an Elvis-aping way, and what was it with all those glam acts curling their lips into sneers in honour of the King, eh?

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