Rockhunter, Issue 36, 26 March 2007

Generic Psych and the Realism of Sublime Repetition, III

Christian’s Generic Psych Tape: Side A, Track 2: “Oh Mary”, The Primitives
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of The Seeds’ influence on beat music in the British Isles in the second half of the 1960s. My pal Dave was turned on to their sound by his mate Ginger in 1967 and they used to play a couple of Seeds numbers live in their Woodingdean-based band. “Oh Mary” by The Primitives, released in 1966 on an EP with “I Don’t Feel Myself” on the face-up and “Mr. Heartache” b/w “Tears In My Eyes” on the flip (Vogue INT 18093), combines the solid A/G versifying of The Seeds with a trebly, yet still bone-shaking, near-negation of the power chord lifted from anything from The Who up to 1966, or The Kinks to 1965. The off-kilter effect of this non-power chord provides a poignant counterpoint to the linear thrust of the song’s arrangement.
 
I first heard The Primitives in 1985 courtesy of the inclusion of their life-affirming, ranting rave, “Yeeeeeeah!”, on Pebbles, Volume 18: The Continent Lashes Back, European Garage Rock, Part 2. This 1967 Italian single is a more trippy number, which had led me to figure the band as a bunch of stoners giving up a futile, blissed-out version of the late-60s counter-culture “message”. But they’re right on the money with “Oh Mary”, a bass-thumping club classic before its time.

The Primitives were from these Isles, but left them behind in the mid-60s to work in mainland Europe, mainly Italy, I think. That well-trod path had been trampled down by many before them, including The Beatles, who rocked it most nights, mornings, afternoons and evenings in down-town Hamburg. This exodus of talent has for too long been regarded as a sign of a band’s uselessness. In fact, it’s a reflection of their ability to keep audiences interested all over the place and, therefore, a marker of how good they are at entertaining.
 
Contrary to the expectations of those who’ve seen their fair share of John Waters movies, “Oh Mary” is not a camp address to another man in the feminine diminutive, although it suggests the gaiety of a party-goer, nor is it a paean to some renamed Apollonian deity after the Greek fashion, although it is clearly a song of praise and joy. Mal Ryder of The Primitives, if indeed it is he, offers his Mary a sweet plea: “I been waiting all my life, for someone like you / But now you’ve turned away from me now/ You say that I won’t do…”
 
I can’t make out whether it’s the recording of the instrumentation that makes this a thin song. It could be the natural reverb of the room it was recorded in that interpellates the slight interference, or phasing, characteristic of recordings made with a cheap microphone. Or—having thought about it for a couple more minutes—the thin sound could be a result of the compiler mastering from an extant copy of the record, maybe even from a test pressing. That would account for the rather distant quality of the recording. But suffice it to say it’s fat in all the right places.

See ya,

Ed.

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