Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

The Curse of the COVERS Album Part 1
Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby
"Two-Way Family Favourites"

The title of A&E's new LP harks back to a RADIO request SHOW from the sixties which was primarily for the populous of Britain with family members serving in occupied GERMANY. Yep it all seems like another world - it was!

Unfortunately being somone who cares cringingly about what I listen to, this LP highlights the problems and pitfalls associated with the CURSE of COVERS ALBUM. I banged on about the COVER VERSION for far too long when The Hot Rats released their "Turn On's" LP earlier this year so I won't bore you any longer than I could.

When a band or artist does a selection of covers things start to get skewed. There is always stuff in the record collection of the ARTIST that you would never want in your own; this works both ways, I mean I'd never go round to Eric and Amy's gaff push some records into their mitts and say "I think you should cover all these" in the belief that they would whole heartedly love my choice. And this is how it is on Two-Way Family Favourites, most of the songs on the CD I'm already painfully aware of, and there's some I've got no wish to hear again - by anyone! And this is the problemo - if the artist is too self indulgence in their choice of cover or fails to make the song their own the CURSE OF THE COVERS ALBUM is only too obvious.

Ok I'm done.

Put simply "Two Way family Favourites" is a Curates Egg of a thing. Firstly there's the BAD, "Fernando" which is just Amy singing "Fernando" - I'd love to think its tong in cheek - but who knows? - For me Abba's "Fernando" will always mean Swedish fur coats, no knickers, singing round a camp fire and a well aimed monkey boot getting hurled at the TV screen - These were the days before the remote control box.

The there's the unquestionably GOOD, "Endless Wire" by Pete Townsend - yeah him from The Who. Eric & Amy voices imbibe the song with what most of The Who's work lacks, warmth and humanity. Once this is done and all the PT bullshit is scraped away we find that "Endless Wire" is a sublime humanist spiritual. Transfiguration complete.

The there's the SUBLIME. "Living Next Door to Alice". Not the Roy Chubby Brown version or the Smokie version or the New World version, this is the ERIC version. George Braque would have been chuffed at all the dislocation, dissection and reassembling that's been done here. It's just a pity the whole "Two Way family Favourites" wasn't given the same abstraction treatment.

So it's a bit of a strange offering is "Two Way family Favourites" and something definitely for the BBC Light Programme. But when all is said and done you have a choice - you can either listen to A&E doing a cover of the Flamin Groovies "You Tore me Down" or you can listen to A&E doing "Please be Nice to Her" from the Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby LP. Personally I would rather listen to the later 7 days a week and twice on the Tuesday. Because when I go to town I don't mind hearing some one else's RECORD COLLECTION, as long as their musical preferences and references have been strained drained purified pulped distilled broken down and regurgitated in something of their own. But what the hell do I know. You decide. THEN CLICK HERE