Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Incense and Peppermint

From 1978, here's the charmingly monikered Johnny G. and his irrepressible ode to generational warfare, "The Hippys Graveyard." (As in "I don't want to go to...").

You know what to do -- just click on the play button below and enjoy.





I actually had this -- one of the very first singles on the then fledgling Brit label Beggars Banquet -- when it first came out, and I used to play it constantly to taunt some of my friends who weren't quite getting with the late 70s punk/New Wave program. Sadly, I lost it, along with most of the rest of my seven inch vinyl collection, during the Great Girlfriend Crisis of 1980, and I've been looking for a replacement mp3 for ages. To my delight, I just found this one over the weekend at the wonderful Always Searching for Music website, which has all sorts of cool stuff from the period; make sure you go over there and give its proprietor, the estimable Gary Ching, some love.

As for Johnny G., he was an ex-pub rocker who, like Nick Lowe (although obviously on a less exalted level) had some brief rock biz success in the early 70s and then managed to find himself a niche in the briefly eclectic wake of the Sex Pistols.


Anyway, it's way catchy and pretty funny still, I think; certainly, it's one of the more unjustly forgotten artifacts of its era. As always, if you can't get the download thingie to work over at the divShare link, just e-mail me and I'll shoot you the mp3.

Now if I could just find a link to Johnny's equally hilarious 1977 single "Call Me Bwana"...

3 comments:

NYMary said...

Sadly, I lost it, along with most of the rest of my seven inch vinyl collection, during the Great Girlfriend Crisis of 1980, and I've been looking for a replacement mp3 for ages.Taking somebody's records is just mean.

MBowen said...

But she left his amplifier.

Noam Sane said...

Great tune, thanks Steve.