Split Infinities

If there’s one thing you can rely on the all-powerful and all-seeing 1537 for readers, it is strong moral character and irreproachably puritanical lifestyle advice. Don’t do drugs my followers. Drugs are bad and nothing good ever comes of them*.

The Groundhogs Split, addressed this very point almost exactly 50 years ago. Unlike your humble correspondent, lead ‘Hog Tony McPhee knew exactly of what he wrote …

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As recounted in the excellent sleevenotes in my copy of Split the heavy psychedelic progressive blues suite that takes up the first side of the LP was inspired by a serious mental ‘aberration’^, a months long episode brought on by smoking some grass given to the band in Huddersfield. The way McPhee talked about it the situation sounded more like incipient psychosis, a complete mind/body split.

Enough context. ‘Split, Parts I-IV’ is a great challenging ride. The Groundhogs were part of the British blues boom^^ but had already veered away creatively from that template, McPhee and chums cutting loose and heading on for the wide blue yonder. Fittingly ‘Split’ is based in and around the blues without being totally ‘of’ them, they drag in all manner of appropriately trippy progressive tropes.

What stops ‘Split’ being a museum piece is the real fury in a lot of the playing and the free almost-jazzlike playing of bassist Peter Cruikshank and drummer Ken Pustelnik. This music is amazing, veering from standard 60’s rock fare to clean chiming blues guitar, to detuning, crashing feedback and wailing one-chord flailing^*. ‘Split’ really channels the anguish it was forged from with all manner of exciting/disturbing guitar squalls and flurries.

‘Split, Parts I-IV’ is a big thing to take in, but worth it. This was no self-indulgence, much more something that needed chronicling and release. A real cri de cœur, as we Welsh say.

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Split kicks off side 2 with the Groundhogs’ most famous song, ‘Cherry Red’. An incendiary proto-punk classic of unhinged blues rock, recorded in a single take with a brilliant bludgeoning riff and Tony McPhee switching from gruff dude, to falsetto vocals; becoming his own female backing singer at one point, as that Cope fella put it. It is absolute fricking genius, the guitar tone captured by the band in their self production, aided by a young engineer called Martin Birch, is perfection.

I have some issues with the next two tracks, ‘A Year In The Life’ is a quiet ballady one, which despite some odd touches harks back to the 60’s rather than the decade ahead, whereas ‘Junkman’, hmm. Written as a searing indictment of fast food by staunchly vegetarian McPhee is a decidedly odd stop/start 60’s pop song shot through with weirdness and stinging and/or distorted guitar; conceptually it gets a thumbs-up, but it is very much of its time.

I think Split saves its very best for last with ‘Groundhog’. A song short at the end of the sessions, they threw together a cover of John Lee Hooker’s ‘Groundhog Blues’. It’s an astonishing thing sounding more like Malian desert blues than a bunch of British blues guys in 1971 ever should have. Hooker always was the most African-sounding of those big blues guys to my tired old ears, a lot of his music was also wonderfully strange too but the Groundhogs take his track and really take it trans-continental. The playing by all three is just perfect on this track too.

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My copy of Split is a snazzy 2LP red vinyl RSD2020 version limited to 1400 copies*^, sadly not an ancient heirloom passed down through generations of my family. The second disc features a bunch of instrumental and alternate takes of ‘Split, Parts I-IV’, which sound great but are not displacing the originals for me anytime soon.

What is great though is the instrumental take of ‘A Year In The Life’ which gains a quiet gravitas in that form, it is a far better cut. The other cracker is ‘Cherry Red (Take 6)’, with a false start, bonus swearword and even more oxyacetylene guitar breaks. Is it actually better than the first take version on the LP proper? some days it can be.

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Despite being personally picked by Mick Jagger to support the Stones on their ’71 tour on the strength of this LP, the Groundhogs never quite got the leg up they needed. The Groundhogs legacy was seemingly to be discovered and revered by, ultimately inspiring, other musicians. They were a seriously top drawer act and they make my blood run cherry red.

When you look round to see me
You turn right in your bed
The warmth of my body will heat you
Make your blood run cherry red,
Cherry red, cherry red

1062 Down (into the spiralling vortex of your own mind).

*unless you are remotely linked to the creative arts in any way, shape or form and then you’ll probably paint all my favourite pictures, write all my favourite books** and definitely DEFINITELY definitely make all my favourite LPs.

**that Jane Austen was titted off her bodice on Regency crack every single day of her life. I think I read that somewhere.

^which is not a sick day excuse I have used at work yet. ‘Yes, sorry, a bit of a serious mental aberration today. No, fine, I’ll be in tomorrow’.

^^I thoroughly recommend their Blues Obituary for some great, if old-fashioned sounding, Brit blues kicks.

^*last phrase stolen from Julian Cope’s description of it. He’s a fan.

*^now available from Fire Records website for much less than I paid for it folks. Bum!