Being a weeklie podcaste from Madison, Wisconsin featuring several remarkable curiosities therein occurring being a compendium of live music from divers artistes
Show #114: Groundhogs Day
April 11th, 2007
Not too long ago, someone requested a show by The Groundhogs and so I deliver. While I’d heard of the band, I’d never heard anything by them previously. Hence I’m going to liberally quote the band’s All Music Guide entry for some background.
The band began as a blues/R&B unit in the mid-1960s when guitarist/singer Tony McPhee co-founded the group and named it after the song by John Lee Hooker. They actually backed the blues legend during this time as well as another prominent blues figure, Champion Jack Dupree. In 1966 the band became Herbal Mixture and took on a more psychedelic sound. A couple years later Herbal Mixture broke up and McPhee revived The Groundhogs. AMG picks up the story.
Initially a quartet (bassist Pete Cruickshank also remained from the original Groundhogs lineup), they’d stripped down to a trio by the time of their commercial breakthrough, Thank Christ for the Bomb, which made the U.K. Top Ten in 1970.
The Groundhogs’ power-trio setup, as well as McPhee’s vaguely Jack Bruce-like vocals, bore a passing resemblance to the sound pioneered by Cream. They were blunter and less inventive than Cream, but often strained against the limitations of conventional 12-bar blues with twisting riffs and unexpected grinding chord changes. McPhee’s lyrics, particularly on Thank Christ for the Bomb, were murky, sullen anti-establishment statements that were often difficult to decipher, both in meaning and actual content. They played it straighter on the less sophisticated follow-up, Split, which succumbed to some of the period’s blues-hard-rock indulgences, putting riffs and flash over substance.
I got my hands on a show from 1971 in support of their album Split. It was recorded in London. The band’s line-up at the time was:
Tony McPhee – guitar, vocals
Ken Pastelnik – drums
Pete Cruickshank – bass
Setlist:
Mistreated
Still A Fool
Cherry Red
Split Pt. 2
This is the lone video from the Hogs that I found at YouTube. It’s some behind the scenes footage set to a live version of “Mistreated” of recent vintage.
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Thanks for this – saw them last month, still pretty good but preferred Stray, the ’support’ band.
BTW There are quite a few GH vids on YT, I put up a couple myself…
Cheers!