Simply Saucer - Cyborgs Revisited - OG Vinyl Classic EX

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67

"For Canada's Simply Saucer offered the same kind of originality that was present in other post-glam outfits such as early Cockney Rebel or Neil Merryweather's Kim Fowley-ish Space Rangers. And, just as both Steve Harley and Merryweather himself used their Bowie infatuation as a mannequin on which to hang their own personal lyrical fetishes and stylish musical neuroses, so did Simply Saucer's Edgar Breau conjure up a whole raft of imaginary Cannuck ne're-do-wells to travel with him and his group on their extremely idiosyncratic musical travelogue.

But whereas cosmopolitans such as London's Harley clothed it in a Biba 1974 Faux Franglais of violin and Spanish guitar, and L.A.'s Merryweather filled all the spaces up with Mellotron 400 and divebombing fake-Mick Ronson apocalipstick, so it was the ultra-provincial Edgar Breau's destiny to bring some kind of Modern Lovers-take on decadence to downtown Hamilton, Ontario.

Possible? Well, by mixing his Lou Reed-fixation with lashings of Barrett-Floyd and early Roxy Music B-sides1, Edgar Breau cooked up an artrock as cooly-uncool and as bifocalled as Jonathan Richman's first Modern Lovers LP or even the beguilingly amphetamine and over-arranged provincial garage-prog of the Soft Boys' A Can of Bees.


From the limited perspective of this retrospective album, it's fair to say that Breau was an excellent songwriter and man of great musical taste. The story goes that, when S.S. booked a session at Daniel Lanois' studio in July '74, Breau brought in Velvets and Stooges albums to show how he wanted them recorded.

Breau's voice sounded like Lou Reed being Mick Jagger, Doug Yule being Mick Jagger, David Bowie being Mick Jagger, even Jim Morrison being Mick Jagger. And within the (self-imposed?) narrow confines of his guitar playing, Breau conjured up some truly great rhythm and lead playing. His "Now I'm Lou/Now I'm Sterling" stance surely predated punk by so many years that his friends and contemporaries must have adjudged him a mere rip-off, little knowing the necessary myopia required to pull off such a feat. And he was a neck-wrenching Monster Movie at the wah-wah, who pulled it off in the same way that no others could, except perhaps Can's Michael Karoli.

Breau's other great strength was as a canny band leader, too. He chose highly unlikely musicians to accompany his muse and then he gave these other members plenty of space. I hate to imagine how limited was his pool of prospective musicians in 1974 Hamilton, yet Breau somehow found three equally forward-thinking psychedelic psoul brothers in Neil DeMerchant, Kevin Christoff and the mythologically-named Ping Romany. Local Canadian writers still talk of them "performing a weird mixture of Velvet Underground/Syd Barrett/Can/Pink Fairies material in their formative years," which was hardly the way to the top in London '74, let alone Hamilton, Ontario." Julian Cope

Contains an insert with comments by Edgar Breau.  EX/EX condition.

$4 Media Mail, $7.00 Priority in US.  Combined shipping available, just ask.