Garbage Days Revisited #102: Crazyhead - "Desert Orchid" (1988)

 

"Gonna dim the lights, gonna draw the blinds, gonna blow that fuse, it could be mine..." - Crazyhead - What Gives You The Idea That You're So Amazing, Baby?

Here's the thing right - if Desert Orchid had come out in about 1992-93 then I guarantee you, I'd have been all over it. Unfortunately though, it came out that crucial two years before I'd started properly getitng into guitar music and hence this band very much passed me by. Crazyhead were an early doors grebo band from Leicester who sprung up around the same time as the original progenitors of the movement - the Wonder Stuff (obviously), Pop Will Eat Itself (once they'd got out of their awkward C86 jangly stage), Gaye Bykers on Acid (who sadly I was never that big a fan of - sorry guys), Diesel Park West (the indie face of the movement) and of course the Tattooed Beat Messiah himself, Zodiac Mindwarp.

Sound-wise, they were a bit of an odd one - almost like an exact halfway house between the gleefully scuzzy zero-fucks-given attitude of the Love Reaction and the snotty upstart pop of the Stuffies. Initially it worked pretty well and the group's first four singles, released on Food records back when it was still an indie, were pretty much a perfect quartet of scuzzball rock with indie sensibilities. Kicking off with the fantastically named What Gives You The Idea That You're So Amazing Baby?, the even more fantastically named Ballad Of Baby Turpentine, Time Has Taken Its Toll On You and a cover of the Sonics' Have Love Will Travel, it initially seemed as if Crazyhead couldn't put a foot wrong.

And then Food got bought out by EMI. And it promptly all went to shit for the poor buggers. Basically, Crazyhead were kept on the label as both What Gives You The Idea... and Baby Turpentine had made the Top 3 of the indie chart but with Food no longer being an indie, they were suddenly expected to be able to go out there and compete with the big boys. And although they were a good band in their own right, they kind of fell between two stools - not as poppy as the Wonder Stuff but not as heavy and leering as Zod. Time Has Taken Its Toll On You and Have Love Will Travel both scraped the lower reaches of the Top 75 but that wasn't gonna be enough to keep EMI happy and they were gone from the label a year or so later. Around the same time, Food would sign up a little known Colchester band called Blur and...well, the rest is history.

Crazyhead would at least get to stick around on Food long enough to put their debut album Desert Orchid out and it's held up pretty well - certainly listening to it now, it deserved a lot better than to get slung headlong into obscurity. The likes of In The Sun and Jack The Scissor Man take the whole grebo scuzziness off in a more melodic direction, I Don't Want That Kind Of Love is exactly the sort of attitude laced scumminess that all the best bands of this genre had and Cardinal Phink even dips a toe into Doorsy psychedelia. A bit of an underrated gem which deserves checking out.

Crazyhead would retreat back to the indies to lick their wounds and put a sophomore album, Some Kind Of Fever in 1990. It was pretty much a straight continuation of their debut but sadly not quite of the same quality - there's nothing truly awful on here but a lot of it verges on being a bit on the anonymous side to these ears although Above Those Things, Movie Theme and the sinister title track are all decent enough. It wasn't gonna be enough to keep the band's heads above water though and they'd split for good in 1992. Drummer Vom (not to be confused with the Dr & The Medics/Crybabys sticksman) would make the obvious move across to join the Love Reaction while the others would resurface in the first of many Crazyhead reunions in 1998 which gave way to an odds 'n' sods compilation called Fucked By Rock and a "better than it really had any right to be" EP called 13th Floor which saw the group leaning back into the frenzied garage rock that informed a lot of their best stuff.

Crazyhead still occasionally fire up the old Harley engines to do the odd reunion gig here and there and a couple of their members were also part of the rather good Swamp Delta band with a couple of off duty members of Gaye Bykers on Acid who sadly as of time of writing still haven't reached the album stage. But either way, I think this band were arguably cursed with actually arriving a year or two too early for their own good - I wouldn't have blamed them if they'd seen the likes of the Senseless Things, Mega City Four and Ned's Atomic Dustbin all taking a not entirely dissimilar formula into the charts in 1991-2 and thought "ah man, that could've been us". Fate's a bugger like that sometimes. But either way, Desert Orchid is an excellent slice of tuneful scuzziness that definitely bears seeking out for those who missed it first time out. Grab a pint of some seriously hefty brew and a bag of scratchings, crank this bastard up and enjoy yerself.