The Zutons/Wreckless Eric

The Zutons name conjures up an image of 50's sci fi, but the band are actually closer to Scooby Doo as they play scampering eager to please pop featuring songs about Thelma and Daphne…er actually Stacy and Valerie, but you get the idea. The band look suitably cartoony. They've got a big haired bassist, some good comedy beard work from the drummer and their very own Daphne. Sax kitten Abi. Short on skirt long on saxophone.

Their first album Who killed the Zutons, sounds like a collection of Pop songs set to an imaginary B movie soundtrack where the song titles like Havana Gang Brawl, Dirty Dance Hall and Moons And Horror Shows illustrate what the band were going for.

It's got odd chants and gear changes and was more in keeping with the Scallydelic sound of the likes of The Coral. Sea shanties ahoy! (There was a time when Liverpool bands seemed to be more influenced by the likes of Beefheart and Zappa rather than their traditional first stop influences of Beatles and Love. The band name that best sums up that era is….The Wizards of Twiddly. I've never heard them, but I think I know what they sound like. You probably do too.)

The Zutons second album, Tired Of Hanging Around is a more straightforward poppy affair though. The sax lines in particular sound more imaginative and less like an enthusiastic parping Scrappy Doo. There's also been much more attention paid to the backing vocals, but it's subtly done. It's not Queen.

Singer Dave McCabe's voice has the right amount of innocence and yearning, which you need in big eyed pop music. The musicianship is really good too, with lots of space between guitar bass and drums. The drums have a good natural sound. It actually does sound like a decent drummer is in a room playing drums really well. Hmm revolutionary concept. Just drums. No added tweakery. Sound Engineers have had decades to build up the expertise and techniques to do it….So why would a band want to have a drums sounding like anything else? They are righteous instruments of rock. They just need hitting. That's it. Nothing else.

Valerie is a terrific pop song. I'm fairly sure that the line about "I miss your ginger hair and the way you used to dress" isn't addressed to Mick Hucknall.

Oh Stacey (Look what you've done) is tale of a girl drinking her inheritance. "She should have kept her head and got of bed more in the mornings…Now she drinks away the will and she's not proud of it"

The girls names the band sing about do come from a different generation, and it's this and the sax that keep reminding me of Wreckless Eric. From the Zutons Scooby Doo gang to the Pub/Punk eccentric who got away.

There was always something of the pub about Stiff…all day drinking and crumpled clothes with mystery stains. Of the original Stiff signings Wreckless Eric had the unenviable distinction of being less successful than Elvis Costello and Ian Dury but he might have nosed ahead of Jona Lewie had it not been for the small matter of Jona Lewie having the Christmas single in Stop The Cavalry.

Wreckless Eric's first and most famous single was Whole Wide World and it's been covered by Black and The Monkees amongst many others. (The ultimate Wreckless Eric cover version though has to be Sir Cliff of Richard who did Broken Doll)

Whole Wide World has got all Wreckless Eric's trademarks…cracked vocals, scratchy rhythm guitar honking sax and it's got geography. "When I was a young boy my mother said to me there's only one girl in the world for you and she probably lives in Tahiti"

My well loved copy of his debut album is in the 10 inch compressed buffalo dung coloured vinyl format. (As all records should be) It's actually easier on the eye than the cover itself…. Wreckless E in matching leopard skin suit joyfully walloping a Rickenbacker. Short pissed Pubrocker in animal print…Form a queue, girls!

Reconnez Cherie has got a terrific opening line and then moves from lust to the imagined life of the artist selling his paintings in Paris.


"On a convenient seat by the lavatories beneath the sodium glare,
We used to wait for our bus in a passionate clutch and go as far as we dared."

He also manages to rhyme "Night in my Zodiac" with "Pac a mac."

His songs are often about the outsider in a shabby small town…maybe there was still rationing in his 1970's seaside town. There is something comical about him but his songs were really good, great tunes and clever, funny lyrics. In the 80's he signed to Go Discs, (home of Billy Bragg and The Housemartins, which proves my point really) as The Captains of Industry

If the Temptations I Wish It Would Rain has the claustrophobic, humidity of New York in the summer (think of the scenes in Spike Lees Do The Right Thing) then Wreckless Eric's song of the same name, keeps the title but makes his song feel English. The claustrophobia is from The Small Town and The Girl. The weather's still hot though. It's also got a great twangy guitar.

His alcoholic 1980's are behind him, he's still playing and he's published an autobiography, A Dysfunctional Success. As befits a great English eccentric and misplaced national treasure, he's spent most of the last 20 years in France.