galileo7

This single is great and odds are that the album from which this comes, "False Memory Lane", would be even better. Let’s get the antecedents out of the way first.

The Galileo7 is the latest vehicle for ex-Prisoners bassist Alan Crockford, whose band was at the vanguard of the Medway garage rock wave in the UK. The Prisoners bit the dust in 1986 but Rockford has been dutifully playing this garage rock-pop stuff since then and this is a new line-up of his current band.

We’re not claiming to be a “hip” or “cutting edge” forum at the I-94 Bar but here’s the conundrum: No-one other than the readership of similarly backward-looking but worthy publications like Mojo or Shindig is going to know about The Galileo 7.  And that’s shit.

At the risk of sounding like a haughty communications lecturer talking to a bunch of undergrads, the more media fragments, the more isolationist its bubbles become. Which means, dear Barflies, that YOU have to dig deeper to find stuff that’s not disposable, commodified or bland. 

The Galileo 7 is none of the above. 

One of those online dictionaries defines "freakbeat" as "a sub-genre of rock and roll music developed mainly by harder-driving British groups, often those with a mod following during the Swinging London period of the mid to late 1960s".

Fair enough. This review is written by someone who used "The Rubble Collection" of UK freakbeat as the soundtrack to painting a dining room wall. There are 10 discs in that box set and, no, it didn't all of them to get the job done. Almost.

The point is that if you don't know the tag, you'll know th sound. Odds are you've probably heard, latched onto and loved a freakbeat band without consciously knowing it. In which case, you're a candidate to be equally besotted with The Galileo 7.