MOJO WORKHIG! THE UK R&B EXPLOSION!
THE VARDBIRDS MANFRED MANN CENO WASHINGTON BLUES INCORPORATED & MORE
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“MANIC
ACCELERAND
O,”
IS WHAT THE YARDBIRDS’ FIRST manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, called it; the rave-up, the way his protean band would bend rhythm’n’blues into radical new shapes. As The Yardbirds blazed a trail across London – from Eel Pie Island to the Crawdaddy Club, from Studio 51 to the Marquee – their sound got wilder and more untethered from its roots.
They were not, of course, alone.
MOJO Working!: The UK R&B Explosion!
captures a crucial mid-’60s moment, as a generation of blues scholars, dashing young Mods and garage rock tyros let rip.
It’s the sound of the British beat boom becoming louder, feistier, crazier, manifesting a proto-punk spirit before psychedelia sent bands off on a very different freak-out. Future legends are here in putative form – not least Eric Clapton, setting Chuck Berry’s Too Much Monkey Business on fire. But these 15 tracks also contain scene godfathers like Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner, alongside bands whose careers were much shorter, if no less incendiary. “We really whipped up the audience,” remembers Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty – and now you can bring that frenzy back home.
1 THE BETTERDAYS DON'T WANT THAT