Flamingo

And the Groovies saga continues with 1970's Flamingo.



Almost immediately after Epic released the Groovies from their contract following Supersnazz's commercial failure, they signed a contract with Buddah (a bubblegum label run by Hit Parader editor Richard Robinson), and began recording a new album Flamingo, with Robinson producing.

After playing a few shows with the Stooges and the MC5 during the Supersnazz tour, the Groovies' sound had become a lot harder, and they'd abandoned most of their jugband style for a rauchier Stonesy rock & roll. The band that made Flamingo sounds completely different from the band that made Supersnazz, even though it's the exact same five guys just a few months later. The Groovies were also trying to break away from being seen as 50s revivalists, because there's only one cover tune on Flamingo (Little Richard's "Keep A Knockin'), and the rest are all originals.

During the recording of Flamingo Robinson the Groovies tried to keep everything more direct, letting the band play the songs live with minimal overdubs. Richard Robinson's main job as producer was to keep the tape rolling. The album starts with Roy Loney saying "if you stop the machine, then we'll stop" before they roll into "Gonna Rock Tonite", and they keep the petal to the metal through the entire first side.

If the Flamingo album has a flaw, it's a lack of sonic variety. Almost every song is balls to the wall rock & roll, with only a few slow ones on the second side, like "Chidhood's End" and "She's Falling Apart". The latter is probably my favorite song on the album, a tender ballad that sounds like something Scott Miller would record a decade later. Scott likes this song too, and I can't believe he left it off his 1970 MWH. Here's a nice acoustic version by Roy Loney, from that same 2004 Paris show where he did "My Yada".

Unfortunately, a few songs are dragged down by indifferent mix that makes everything sound like it was (to borrow this review) "recorded inside a barrel on a fifty-year old cassette", but the strength of the performances shines through the muddy sound.

Listening to it now, I'd put Flamingo somewhere in the bottom half of Flamin' Groovies albums. I don't like it as much as it's predecessor (Supersnazz) or it's successor (Teenage Head), but it's a necessary stepping stone between those two records.