MP3: Groop Dogdrill / Jackie O & Personal

Okay now here's a great band that should have been bigger. I always thought of them as sort of a British (and thus more serious) version of Supersuckers, and their tunes were certainly as good. Groop Dogdrill were Pete Spilby, Damo Fowkes and Hug Kelly, all from Doncaster, or 'oop naaarth' as we Southampton folk like to call anywhere above Portsmouth (actually it's just me). They formed in 1995 through an advert in Guns and Ammo (!) and released their first single, Gentleman's Soiree, some time in 1996. Follow up singles were Gracelands, Lovely Skin, Oily Rag, Jackie O and Personal, all of which featured on their 1997 debut Half Nelson. That year they toured with (the legendary) Cable and (the also legendary) Goldblade, and gained a ton of good press.

I got into them a few years later in 2000 shortly before the release of their second album, Every Six Seconds. It was clearly better than the debut, but unfortunately by this time the press had lost interest and so no one paid much attention to it. I managed to see them once at the Joiners Arms in Southampton, which was on the Every Six Seconds tour, and they only managed to draw a crowd of around 150. Despite that they were absolutely incredible and I managed to grab my very first setlist after the show. Live they had the sort of intensity thats clearly lacking from the performances of most of the namby pamby pomo guitar bands we currently have to put up with, and so it was a shame that more people didn't get to see them.

That's not to say the band didn't translate well onto record, and the two mp3s here clearly show that. Before I get onto them, as far as I can remember the band were dropped a while after I saw them, and despite rumours of new songs and resigning, not much more really happened. Shame. Anyway the first mp3 here is the single Jackie O, which rocks - my - ass. Completely. Check out that distorted bass. Lovely. The second was another single from the first record, Personal, and is probably my favourite song of theirs overall. Reminds me of Gentlemen-era Afghan Whigs, and indeed the more introspective stuff had a much bigger place on their second album, which is well worth seeking out. The intro is just fantastic, and that drum roll goes straight into the top 5 of my top 10 drum rolls ever, if I ever decided to make that list (suffice to say something on the first Wildhearts album would go on there). Anyway for more info on the band you can check out this mini site or this section of the very useful Five Miles High site. Enjoy.

Download: Jackie O - MP3 2.62mb (rapidshare)
Download: Personal - MP3 3.20mb (rapidshare)