Look, it's a punk rock record with some funny little new wave songs thrown in. You were expecting prog rock? It's also a bedroom album by Dean Agostino, one-half of Digger and The Pussycats, so that should tell you right there that it's pretty fucking good, OK? DIY rules!
Even if Radio Birdman were the sum of its parts, the solo output of its members surely deserves more than the cursory consideration many have been prepared to give. Case in point is this album. Deniz Tek has built a formidable body-of-work outside the framework of
Neil told us that rust never sleeps. On his fourth solo band studio album, Deniz Tek acknowledges as much, examining the oxidation that’s all around him in clinical detail. Relationships and places go under the microscope and are dissected - like a scalpel through a heart - with keen precision.
The last non-sellout in a line of powerful, soulful, R&B-influenced rock singers from the '60s, Scott Morgan's had a lot of notoriety the last few years, since the world of Rockdom at large belatedly discovered the joys of Sonic's Rendezvous Band, the late-seventies Dee-troit "supergroup" that he fronted in tandem with (and later in opposition to) ex-MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith.
After the run of great records with The Solution, Powertrane and The Hydromatics, Scott Morgan thought it was time to make a solo album. Thus the former singer and guitarist of the legendary Sonic's Rendezvous Band (and even before that, The Rationals) gathered around him some of the most respected musicians of the Motor City and pulled out an album that oozes black music and emotions out from every note.
Yeah, it's obvious that this has been a long time coming. Compiler and Real O Mind Records chief Geoff Ginsberg toyed with the idea of a Scott Morgan box set and put a version together - as a one-off for friends - many years ago. But now the real deal's here, with the involvement of Ginsberg as compiler and UK label Easy Action honcho Carlton Sandercock as issuer, and you'd be a fool to miss it.
