- Goat Live If You want It
- Udder The Bridge
- If You Want Blood, You Goat It
- Goat To Get You Into My Life
- Baby, Please Don’t Goat
- Kid
- Janie’s Goat Gun
- Billy’s Goat Gun
- The Future’s So Bright, My Goat Wears Shades
- Goat Your Rocks off
I had a lot of fun playing with titles for this post* but particularly so today writing about Goat. Nope, I don’t mean your eccentric Swedish types with a weird schtick about being a lost African tribe, although I do like ’em, I’m talking about the Brighton based UK combo from the very early 90s. They released a mini-LP called As You Like and a full LP called Medication Time that I bought on cassette mostly because I liked the cover – I’ve always been a sucker for marble or tile effect covers.
Medication Time had one really good track, ‘Lying In The Flowers’, on it; their initial effort As You Like didn’t. I’ve listened to this 1990 LP four times in the last few days and I struggle to remember much about it at all. It’s cursed with sounds that were very 1990 but not very 2016, which possibly smacks of them trying too hard, in a pinch they sound a little like The Cult doing funk rock, which correct me if I’m wrong, is not a desirable thing. The very best bits of As You Like are the shiny bits on the cover, I only realised yesterday that the pattern on the cover was the band’s name repeated over and over and the track ‘Don’t Cry’, which is a bit meaner and earthier than the rest and a lot better as a result.
From their second LP I bought the single Good Times twice. Well, once was a bit of a rubbish shaped picture disc and once was a 12″ with a metal plaque and a newsletter. The later is rather fun actually, the plaque a bit on the pointless side and the music much better. ‘Good Times’ is a good rocker with a good tune, hamstrung by production that sounds a little treble-y to my ears. The B-side on both my versions is a stonking cover of the Stooges TV Eye, which captures the white-out intensity of the original and a live version of a track from As You Like called ‘Fallen Over You’, which is more ragged and energetic.
Goat were very much of their time and I would happily pick up a vinyl copy of Medication Time if I saw one, but I can’t see myself coming back this way for a bit. I’ve just goat a feeling.
711 Down.
PS: The usual 1537 caveat applies, this is far better music than I have ever put out – I’m just a dweeb with a keyboard, these guys tried – they win.
*it’s often my favourite part of writing a post anyway.