« Back to Top Level | Flamin' Groovies, The

The Flamin' Groovies - Flamin' Groovies Now (1978)

Track listing:
  1. Feel A Whole Lot Better
  2. Between The Lines
  3. Up's And Down's
  4. Move It
  5. Take Me Back
  6. Reminiscing
  7. Good Laugh Mun
  8. Yeah My Baby
  9. House Of Blue Lights
  10. Blue Turns To Grey
  11. Paint It Black
  12. All I Wanted
  13. Don't Put Me On
  14. There's A Place

Notes

It looks like listeners are destined to rely on imports for most of the Groovies' Sire catalog. In 1978, the group was getting all kinds of great press, and even some radio play from their comeback Shake Some Action album on Sire, and embarked on a national tour playing clubs like the Bottom Line in New York in front of every rock V.I.P. who could wangle a ticket. And to accompany the tour, they put out Flamin' Groovies Now!, an album of more British Invasion tracks. The sound on this record, produced and engineered by Dave Edmunds, was a notable improvement over Shake Some Action, and the group had lost none of its flair for the period or the style, though there was also precious little new ground covered. The range of styles embraced on this record was astonishing — "Between the Lines" and "Take Me Back," and especially "Good Laugh Mun" were examples of Edmunds emulating Phil Spector, and had the Groovies sounding like the Beach Boys of "Don't Worry Baby" and recalled the way the early Kinks covered American music; "House of Blue Lights" gave nods to both Merrill Moore and Chuck Berry, as well as the Stones. The songs off of side two were harder, giving them more the kind of edge one associated with the Stones or the Rockin' Vickers. But their version of Gene Clark's "Feel a Whole Lot Better" was the crowning achievement on this record, the best contemporary cover of a Byrds track ever done, and one so good that some fans thought a re-formed Byrds should have done a cover of the Groovies' "Shake Some Action" in return.