Medicine Head - Can't Get Over You/ Tenderhooks

Label: Harvest
Year of Release: 1980

Once every so often I'll choose to upload a single on to "Left and to the Back" not because I particularly think it's good, but because I know a number of readers will have been trying to track it down. Certainly, the existence of this one completely passed me by until I saw it sitting in the record racks of a backstreet Camden Town record store, so I've no doubt there are other people out there who will be perplexed by it.

You see, it's a widely acknowledged fact that everyone's favourite minimalist rock duo (if we don't count The White Stripes) Medicine Head split up in the seventies. This record, a complete one-off released in 1980 with no follow-ups to be had, is therefore surely a good-natured reunion? Well, no. It would appear that the disc is little more than Ray Majors out of Mott The Hoople and John Fiddler out of Medicine Head using the latter band's name to try and bump up sales (I suspect both they and the record label would rather have used Mott The Hoople's name had there not been greater obstacles in the way of doing so). What you'll hear below sounds very little like the Medicine Head of yore, and much more like a slickly produced piece of eighties rock-pop, so far removed from their usual output that it's like sticking a Dansette logo on to a luxury Sony stereo system.

Whatever your moral view on the use of the band name for this project, it all came to nought anyway. The single flopped, it doesn't appear on any of the commercially released Medicine Head albums, and appears to have been airbrushed out of the band's discographies. One quick listen to either side will make it clear how this happened, although I suppose there might be the odd fan out there who sees this as a good and forgotten example of eighties AOR. Personally, it leaves me cold, although the B-side "Tenderhooks" is a reasonable enough stab at Springsteen-styled pop.

Sorry for the pops and clicks on this one, by the way - no amount of filtering could cover up the scratches without suffering significant loss of quality of sound elsewhere.

Medicine Head - How Does It Feel

Label: Dandelion

Year of Release: 1972

Well, here we go again... and it's like I said before... and I'm sure I will say many times again... second hand vinyl doesn't turn up in neat batches for any particular artist.  You're not likely to see the complete works of a certain artist just sitting neatly in the racks unless a disgruntled fan has a serious clear-out (it's long rumoured, for example, that one second hand store suddenly had tons of Julian Cope rarities in stock after a fan had a disappointing argument with him).

I'm well aware we've covered Medicine Head here before, and this leaves me with very little to add.  You'll know the drill already - the band were a perverse, two man blues outfit with a deliberately stripped down sound who nonetheless created some great pieces of lo-fi wonder for John Peel's Dandelion label.  Peel had one of their singles in his box of favourite seven inch singles when he died, and whilst they're certainly an acquired taste, a great deal of their output is simplistic, hypnotic and even exciting if you can get into their particular zone.

"How Does It Feel" features a twanging Jew's Harp, the usual basic stomping rhythms, and an approach so facile it borders on childish, but it's an appealing and cheering little single I'm happy to own.  The other blog entry of the band covers the full story of their evolution, and isn't particularly worth repeating again here.  Go back and read it for yourselves, you lazy sods.

Download the single here

Medicine Head - It's Natural (b/w "Moonchild")

Label: Barn
Year of Release: 1976

Medicine Head have always been a curious case, so far as I'm concerned. Depending upon who you speak to, they were either "Forward thinking punk rockers playing the blues in a minimal and daring way", "A pretty good rock band, good for a couple of quid on the live circuit, actually", or "purist bores who were lucky to last as long as they did with one idea". That's what my three imaginary friends said on the telephone when I rang them up just now, anyway (they don't get together in one place very often - there would be too many fights).

For my part, I find it hard to understand how a duo who began with so much credibility could become so seldom referenced. Consisting of John Fiddler on vocals, guitar, piano and drums and Peter Hope-Evans on harmonica, jew's harp and mouthbow, they played blues tinged rock and roll stripped down and raw. John Peel adored them so much he signed them to his own label, Dandelion Records, and even gave them their first hit "(And The) Pictures in the Sky" - a minimal thumper with jew's harp, humming, rather T Rexy lyrics and bar-room boogie piano which, for however 'worthy' that sounds, is actually bloody ace, not making much of an impression first listen, but worming its way into your head slowly and finally setting up home there for good. Had it been issued in the sixties rather than 1971, we'd probably be talking about it a lot more than we presently do.

The whole "Two Man Band" schtick of Medicine Head, plus the blues influences, does make one wonder if Peel recognised bits of the White Stripes in them at a later date. It's true to say that The White Stripes are a lot better, and less hairy, and more noisy and less considered than The Head, but the template remained much the same. A standard quote in reviews of their gigs at the time seemed to be "It's astonishing how two people playing the blues can make so much noise!", which, of course, became the standard line for virtually every hack seeing Jack and Meg for the first time in the late nineties. Perhaps when somebody else comes along and does it for a third time fewer people will have their expectations confounded.

By the time "It's Natural" slipped out in 1976, Medicine Head had already managed to have a top ten hit and three top forty hits on Polydor, but no hit albums. After it became clear they weren't going to have their contract renewed, they moved over to Slade manager Chas Chandler's label Barn, who began to handle their affairs.

One of their final shots, "It's Natural" is a slightly tame beast despite its rolling groove. There's some nice guitar twanging in there and I still find the whole thing impossible to dislike, but it couldn't sound less like a single if it tried - the fact it flopped, then, should not bother us unduly, but the fact that the band were heading towards the end of their careers possibly should have done. For all their hair and beards and worship at the alter of thousands of sacrificied bluesmen, part of me thinks that there was something quite DIY and intriguing about them which didn't quite 'fit' the excesses of prog, and the fact that they've been relegated to a very minor footnote in rock music since seems a bit unjust.

Shortly after this single, the band split, and neither John Fiddler or Peter Hope-Evans have played together again since.

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