PRECIOUS RECORDINGS OF LONDON
The Primevals - Best Of The BBC Sessions The Primevals
The Primevals come from Glasgow and some might say that has been their misfortune. If they’d jetted in from Anytown, Arizona to unleash Michael Rooney’s bluesman’s howl and Malcolm McDonald’s squalls of slide, they might have transmitted a touch of the exotic and seduced the Brits into submission.
As things stood in the 1980s, though, they were something of an unseemly rock ’n’ roll roadblock to be sidestepped by the genteel progression of the domestic independent scene, and their Gun Club/garage rock/MC5/and-even-Sun-Ra-influenced rhythms were out of favour as they didn’t deliver fashionable flavours.
But plenty have been menaced by similar waves of indifference and endured, and the Primevals were no different. Throughout the 80s they blasted out a series of memorable releases – often on obscure labels – that found plenty of fans in nearly every market that (a) wasn’t the UK and (b) didn’t have its perception partially directed by dubious arbiters of taste.
On the sleeve notes for this release of the cream of five great sessions the band recorded for the BBC, Rooney puts it in focus. “We supported the Cramps on the European leg of their tour, but not in the UK. And this kinda sums up the Primevals’ experiences at this time. We were playing music that just didn’t connect too well in our homeland. Still, we played some great shows wherever we were.”
If anybody knew, the Cramps knew. And guess what? The less-partial arbiters of taste at the BBC also knew. Five slots across three years says John Peel, Janice Long and Andy Kershaw connected better than most of their compatriots and the band’s muscle is flexed in the raw on these 12 tracks that span several line-up mutations centred on the core of Rooney, McDonald and bassist John Honeyman. In a similar way to the Only Ones’ BBC sessions, they telegraph the live power of the band with an immediacy missing from some of their releases.
The Primevals, meanwhile, did endure. Playing live and recording to this day, they never gave up and never split up – just got some time off now and then for bad behaviour. Here’s the taste of them in their youthful prime.
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