Titus writes:
I
hope you enjoyed my blog on The (mighty) Fall. Such a complex band
spanning over 40 years, and as I inferred, I’d still be typing now if
doing a full appraisal. All I would say is find out about them via the
various media sources – you won’t look back!
This
week I’m going to talk about a band that really struck me in the
eighties, and are still performing today – The Sex Clark Five from
Huntsville, Alabama. They called their music “strum and drum” and if
that description is alien to you, like it was to me, it has a jangly ,
almost surf guitar sound, similar to several Southern bands of the day.
They were notorious for the unpredictability of their live shows,
e.g. drummer Trick McKaha would sometimes wear a bag over his head –
in a way pleasing that he was the drummer rather than say a guitarist!
Not
surprisingly, the Sex Clark Five came to the attention of John Peel
when he acquired a copy of their first EP “Neita grew up last night”.
The band was so impressed by being liked by JP, that in 1986 having
recorded an album in founder James Butler’s basement – amazingly
entitled “Strum and Drum” – and Peel concurred with the views of the
American music press who were extremely praiseworthy, lauding the album
as a ‘pop milestone’. They also referred to the Sex Clark Five as
“America’s most inexplicable band”. Peely was impressed by the fact
that there were 20 very short tracks on it, (some barely a minute
long), and having heard The Ramones and nearly all punk bands play he
once pronounced that “the three minute single is back” – he became
weary of the seventies 20+ minute tracks, particularly with a drum solo
incorporated.
The
band had been set up by school friends and guitarists James Butler,
Rick Storey, drummer Trick McKaha and vocalist Joy Johnson. McKaha
& Johnson left the band in 1993 & 1995 respectively.
Butler
continued to write the songs and the band had a small but devoted fan
base. The nineties found the band continuing to record, but they, like
a lot of others, found only the small labels with very few resources
willing to promote them. Their discography reveals that they have spent
a great proportion of their recordings, for Records to Russia records
In
the year 2000, Butler & Storey got together on ‘Crimson Panzer’
with McKaha temporarily re-joining the band for this – this appeared
almost exclusively on Peely’s programme. You’ve heard the expression
before, but I guess that in real terms they were “unsung heroes”. A bit
of a case like Northern Ireland’s Would Be’s who I wrote about, a couple of months ago...... a talented band that never quite made it.
Devotees
of the band would argue that they must have been doing something
right, by the fact that in 2020, Captured Tracks Records remastered
& released ‘Strum & Drum’ as a double album, (albeit with a
slight alteration to the title – they called it ‘Strum & Thrum!)
with a few tracks added to the original version. This week I am
requesting lex to play Alai from the original ‘Strum & Drum’ album.