Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Lucifer Sams

THE REBEL KIND is one of my favorite compilation records. After I got it in 1984, I bought every record I could find by the bands included on the LP including The Fuzztones, The Last, The Long Ryders, Plasticland, The Nomads and others. Records by the Sickidz! and The United States of Existence were impossible to find in Chattanooga.

Imagine my surprise and delight the first time I looked through my then girlfriend’s record collection and found that she had a copy of THE REBEL KIND too! It was a French copy with a different cover but I knew that she was a keeper anyway. Twenty years later, I'm listening to her copy of the album.

The cover wasn’t the only thing that was different, My copy was on Sounds Interesting Records and had True West doing a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Lucifer Sam”. Melissa’s THE REBEL KIND was on Lolita Records and had “Lucifer Sam” by The Three O’Clock. That was strange but not as strange as the liner notes which were the same for both bands!

So depending on which copy you prefer add The Three O’Clock or True West at the relevant points: “We want to be a great guitar band" says _____ _____ and it's refreshing to hear a musician say that instead of giving us more boring synthesizer dance rock. Melodically, ____ _____ often recall early Pink Floyd (with Syd of course)but musically their brash soaring sheets of guitar seem to be flashbacks of Quicksilver, Television and Yardbirds. More of the music may be found on their must have albums.”

I always thought that the notes were really about True West (I’ve never heard the Three O’Clock sound like any of those bands) and Sounds Interesting owner Chip Lamey confirmed this. Chip told me that True West was signed to Paris based New Rose Records when Lolita got the rights to release his comp, and Lolita didn’t want to give exposure to a rival label’s act. So they replaced True West’s “Lucifer Sam” with the Three O’Clock’s version. Chip put the record together and did all the work but when Lolita released his comp, they left his name of off the notes. Nobody told him about the bootleg CD version that came out on Revenge Records either.

I like both versions of “Lucifer Sam” but prefer The Three O’Clock version. It shows that they really could rock out when they wanted to. The band never officially released the song in the U.S. but it was included on the French issue of BAROQUE HOEDOWN and on a fan club single that came out in 1983.

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