Carl Simmons - Angel/ Hold On Ruby

Opportunistic pop-glam from rock and roll stalwart

Label: Antic

Year of Release: 1974

Sometimes it's hard to make a judgement call on whether an artist is opportunistically jumping on a bandwagon, or whether the world around them shifted and enabled them to be sucked into dominant trends. By the early seventies, Carl Simmons was already making something of a living by putting out fifties rock and roll covers on budget labels like Forest and Avenue - then by the time glam rock hit its peak, he suddenly added a glittery thump and thwack to his work. 

In doing so, he didn't really do much more than tinker around the edges of his existing style, bringing him close to the likes of Alvin Stardust in making the noises and poses of deepest rock history relevant for the seventies. Glam rock was always fascinating in this respect; finding room for the weird and wonderful (Bowie, Roxy) as well as revivalists who just wanted to take the best of the past and squeeze it into a spacesuit, hoping the kids could be tricked into eating up a side order of rock and roll if it was painted to look like the future.

Generally they could, but unlike Alvin, Glitter or Roy Wood, Simmons had no luck with his seventies recordings and most ended up in bargain bins as unwanted items. You can hear on "Angel" that he could have been a contender - this is catchy, wiggly glam at its plastic catchiest - but he probably needed something brighter and bolder than this, and ultimately it didn't cut through. 

Prior to this period of career, he had been a drummer in the Ember signed act Count Downe and the Zeros whose solitary release can be heard here. They later morphed into Peter and the Headliners who became the resident group on BBC2's "Beat Club". 

Following the failure of this disc he did have a few more cracks at the charts across a variety of different labels, including Atlantic in 1974, Elektra in 1976, and Polydor in 1981, but still didn't find a place in the record buying public's hearts and ultimately spent his time more successfully working in songwriting and production.

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