Return of the BOOGIE – SOUTHERN BOOGIE Pt 3

Now that the unseemly interruptions from lovers of the NIWOBIHIM has temporarily subsided, it’s time to return to the matter in hand. Unusually, that’s not a collection of laminated SANDRA BULLOCK photographs, it is instead SOUTHERN BOOGIE.

I’m going to jump out of sequence here, as we’ve only just begun our trawl via the ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND and LYNYRD SKYNYRD, because 1) it’s my blog, and b) it’s the first true BOOGIE love of my life. I am, of course, referring to the lusty lady that was MOLLY HATCHET!

They had actually been on the go since 1971, but by the time their first album appeared in 1978, the BOOGIE bubble was supposed to have burst. In flames. Tastefully named after a 17th century axe murderess called Abigail, whose nickname was “Hatchet Molly” due to the Southern prostitutes penchant for mutilating and decapitating her clients, their debut kicked off with the all time classic “Bounty Hunter”, full of hell yeahs and ‘blue steel flashing, hot lead flying’. It was actually the splendid cover that drew me in, the first of many from artist Frank Frazetta, this one was called Death Dealer! Kule or what?

Even better, they were all fat, ugly bastards who had obviously only got into music to get some hot lady action. An example for us all.

The album turned out to be less than the sum of its parts bar a better than the original take on the ALLMAN BROTHERS classic, “Dreams I’ll Never See”. A tune so good it will be played at my electric FUNERAL.

But the follow up, “Flirtin With Disaster” was the REAL DEAL. Featuring another FF cover – Dark Kingdom – it made good on the promise of the debut and is a bona fide must own album. Why? Because it features “BOOGIE No More”! One of the all time SOUTHERN ROCK foot on the monitor, three guitars wailing essentials!

Naturally, after cracking the US top twenty and going platinum, they did the sensible thing and parted company with singer Danny Joe Brown, who went on to record one cracker of a solo album while MOLLY HATCHET did the unthinkable. They hired someone even fatter and uglier! hello, Jimmy Farrar. “Beatin’ the Odds” was a good album, and the title track is a peach but it did not prepare you for the follow up

“Take No Prisoner” is probaly their heaviest album, as success piled on the pies, but more important than that, this was the album where they posed for a Manowar style cover, miraculously losing three hundred stone and some pattern baldness in the process. RAWK and roll.

DJB returned for the lacklustre “No Guts…No Glory”, an album only saved by the heavenly eight minutes of “Fall of the Peacemakers” and the pop tinged “The Deed Is Done”, but they were on a slippery slope and needed something stupendous to save them. And so it came to be.

“Double Trouble Live” – one of the best live albums. EVER. Hell, they even through in an eleven minute version of “Freebird” just because they could. Of course it didn’t work and MH were no more, bar the 1989 Dave Hlubek free album “Lightning Strikes Twice” which was so sad it actually included a Desmond Child song called “Hide Your Heart”, which became a hit for KISS! Nuff said.

The nineties and noughties * saw a bizarre world where a MOLLY HATCHET was doing the rounds which contained not a single original member who had performed on the debut self-titled album or “Flirtin with Disaster”. Although it did contain two members of the DANNY JOE BROWN solo band. Confused? At this point I am legally required to say [koff];

“In June of 2000, Bobby Ingram became the sole owner of the Trade and Service Mark “Molly Hatchet” acquired from Pat Armstrong the original manager of the band. Armstrong had the rights and a full assignment was transferred to Ingram and now is the sole and legal owner of the name, likeness, and has full rights, title, goodwill and interest in the Mark from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, D.C.”

So there.

Danny Joe Brown died on Thursday, March 10, 2005, aged 53. obituary report. He had previously left the group due to the suffering from a massive stroke in 1995. On Monday, June 19, 2006, founding guitarist Duane Roland died at his home in St. Augustine, Florida also at the age of 53.

With DEATH being a requirement for all legendary SOUTHERN ROCK band, MOLLY HATCHET pass the final test.

Listen and enjoy.

* not really MOLLY HATCHET albums
Devil’s Canyon (1996)
Silent Reign of Heroes (1998)
Kingdom of XII (2000)
25th Anniversary: Best of Re-Recorded (2003)
Warriors of the Rainbow Bridge (2005)

You can LISTEN to Flirtin With Disaster here.
You can LISTEN to Dreams I’ll Never See here.
You can LISTEN to Long Tall Sally here.

You can STEAL Dreams I’ll Never See mp3HERE!
You can STEAL Flirtin With Disaster mp3HERE!
You can STEAL Long Tall Sally mp3HERE!

You can buy the cheapskate comp here.
You can buy Flirtin’ With Disaster here.
Double Trouble Live is only on expensive import and you can find copies for sale here.

GODS Soundtrack – SOUTHERN BOOGIE Part 1

These men were once SEX GODS! But you’ll have to wait a few days to experience the mighty MOLLY HATCHET!

However, know this, it is everyones GOD given duty to restore the fat, bewhiskered, tattooed oaf to his RIGHTEOUS status at the head of humanity. First in line for beers, hoors and pies.

But how did this happen first time around. Easy. The world was once run by its rightful RULERS. The Kings ov RAWK. But even within that world there was a hierarchy. One which saw the masters of SOUTHERN BOOGIE King ov Kings.

So, I’m going to be going on a journey through this long forgotten world, to a time where men were men, their feet were a distant memory and their GENITALS, were only seen by the laydz.

It all began with the ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND, a bunch of ne-er do wells from from Macon, Georgia, who in 1971 described by Rolling Stone as “the best damn rock and roll band this country has produced in the past five years.” And they were right.

They may have turned out to be a right bunch of SHITS but with a high batting average for DEATH, DRUGS and marriages to CHER, they took BLOOZE RAWK, and spun their own never ending guitar solo out of it. I still recall my first encounter back when I was just a wee babby Mr H, my beer gut something I only dreamt of, and with only the first sprouts of whiskerdom.

In Embra toon, there was a second hand record shop called Ezy Ryder which traded out of a bizarre building, called, appropriately enough, Oddfellows Hall. One half was records, the other a smorgasbord of foul smelling hippy clothes. Don’t go looking for it, as with everything, it’s now a fuggin theme pub. In those days, I was an apprentice butcher, merrily carving up carcasses and spitting in the pies. The money was shite, but what little I had was spent on the newly discovered RAWK. Best of all, they had a bargain bin where albums long parted from their covers were sold for thruppence ha’penny.

Lurking in the bin one week was a compilation album which ahd two IRON BUTTERFLY tunes on it. Enamoured as I was, after hearing “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” on the radiogram, back when you could do that sort of thing late at night, in the world pre-programming, I plunked down my collection of farthings and scuttled off home.

But what was this? What alien yet divine sound was blasting through my headphones? How could this be? Surely no human hands could conjure up the sheer MAJESTY that was “Black Hearted Woman” by the ALLMAN BROTHER BAND? I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of SOUTHERN RAWK, and my world was never to be the same again.

My WHISKERS grew two inches overnight, my gut sagged over my belt, my tongue craved whiskey with an E. So, let’s BOOGIE!

You can LISTEN to the song here.

You can STEAL the mp3HERE!

You can buy the album that spawned it here.