The Primevals
On the red eye

Try explaining to Jeffrey Lee Pierce that the first time I got my hands on "Fire of love", my comment was "Not bad these guys, they sound like the Primevals".

Which is a bit like declaring "Not bad this Frank Sinatra, he sounds like Michael Bublé".

And yet, despite hearing the first stirrings beneath the cold ground, the comparison is not at all blasphemous if the terms are just reversed; and had I been less ignorant (then, now, and forever), I would have exclaimed "These Primevals are strong, they sound like the Gun Club".

So rephrased, the statement makes total sense.

Who the Primevals were I'll tell you right away.

For those who can make sense of what I write, I'll just say that at the start of their career (early Eighties) they recorded for the Parisian New Rose: that's enough, because these dapper guys certainly piled the Primevals somewhere in a hidden recess of what's left of the microcephalic; so, a quick dust-off that clouds the memories is all it takes, and you're done.

For everyone else, the Primevals came from wicked Scotland and were a rock-blues-beat group that sounded a lot like the Gun Club, though they lacked that sense of pervasive despair in every composition, instead possessing a brightness completely unknown to Jeffrey Lee and his companions. Only, to mention that rhetorical figure that mixes part and whole whose name escapes me, singer Michael Rooney wasn't Jeffrey Lee, so the Primevals weren't the light, and if you've done without them until today, you might as well continue sleeping soundly.

Only, too bad for you, you've missed something, because the Primevals from the '84-'87 period were truly a force to be reckoned with.

Nevertheless, fortune always favors the ignorant, and from the heavens a few years ago fell “On the red eye”, a collection that brings together the group's first two LPs, the extraordinary "Sound hole" and the solid "Live a little", along with contemporary mini-LPs, EPs, singles, and assorted tracks. I scooped up the collection a few days ago, to follow up the little cassette on which "Sound hole" was recorded and which, about a decade ago, gave its final sigh and peacefully departed, tapes and all: requiescat in pace.

And truly, ten years without "Saint Jack" were hard to face. Because no matter how much I've pogoed to "Saint Jack", there's no equal, neither "Blitzkrieg bop", nor "White riot", nor anything else. It was house pogo, of course, since I've never even touched the Primevals live, and I don't even know if they ever roamed these lands, but it was always pogo; and still now, when that riff starts, when near the end they briefly drop the drums and guitar and then Michael comes in singing "Saint Jack Saint Jack", the little head comes alive with fictitious life and starts going up and down, up and down, which is the only pogo I allow myself these grim days.

The riff of "Saint Jack" is unbeaten, but truly all the Primevals' riffs at the time of "Sound hole" were killer, with that omnipresent slide guitar always in pull. And if you relish the Gun Club's outbursts, tracks like "Preaching the blues", "Ghost on the highway", "Sleeping in blood city", in "Sound hole" you find your fill: "Prairie chain", "Primeval call" or "Dish of fish" are hard to forget, once approached.

Not to mention the unconventional blues pouring out from the grooves of "See that skin", "Spiritual" and "Fire and clay": here it’s all electricity to move legs at just less than frenetic rhythms.

No doubt, "Sound hole" is one of the many underrated masterpieces crowding the Eighties.

Nor is the production scattered elsewhere any less impressive, with a particular nod to the garage vibes infiltrating "Sister" and "She’s all mine", that "Lonesome weepin blues" which sounds like a hundred percent New Christs were it not for the harmonica and the inevitable slide, much like " See the tears fall" with that riff that sooner or later I’ll remember where I’ve heard it before, and the percussive hammering of "Lucky I’m living", and here no matter being forty, I start pogoing again like the pimply brat I was long, long ago.

This is pure rock’n’roll, nothing new but just grand rock’n’roll.

And if native Glasgow had borne before them just that Alex Harvey who self-proclaimed "sensational", the Primevals - these Primevals - what hyperbolic praises would they have deserved?

Only, even though every beetle is lovely to their mother and kids are dear to their family's heart, it’s even truer that no one is a prophet in their own land, so practically no one in Scotland and the UK pays them any mind; and they remain on the continent, coddled by the genius New Rose who stamp their logo even on the second LP, "Live a little".

It’s another excellent record, less than "Sound hole", but nowadays it would still make people scream miracle.

Still rock-blues, as evidenced by "All of the virtues" which, like the instrumental "Highway" and "Burden of the debt", comes straight out of the debut album, the convincing "Fertile mind", "Follow her down", "Bleedin’ black" and "Early grave", but especially the splendid "Cotton head" and here we return to the Gun Club, those of "Miami" tackling "Run through the jungle": a tribal blues that, again, drips electricity and hits terribly hard.

At New Rose they realized they had a band with guts as hard as nails, hence they reserved a spot for them in the celebratory "Play New Rose for me"; and they got it into their heads, and succeeded, to cover "Diamonds, furcoat, champagne" by Suicide. Priceless.

And you also find this included in "On the red eye".

Mandatory purchase, if you don’t have either "Sound hole" or "Live a little", but even if you have both. just for the pleasure of seeing the New Rose brand etched on a record once more.