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April 30, 2014 by Simon Sweetman

The Vinyl Countdown # 1139

Bobbie Gentry, Bobbie Gentry’s Greatest! (1969)
BObby GentryLP
Used to play in this Irish band, up and down the North Island we’d go – weekends were spent away usually, and for a time there we were busy, really busy. And it was pretty good fun. I liked it because it was my job too – it gave me the chance to practice writing (something I’m still doing, now) every day. And then I’d make just enough coin to live by driving up the coast and playing a bunch of songs I didn’t really care about and many that I learned to love. And it got pretty interesting too – because we’d play four and five hour sets, sometimes longer even, there was a marathon gig at a biker’s club where we felt we could not leave. They simply demanded we keep playing. They kept producing cash to make us stay, drug-money twenties in wads. And so we played for seven and a half hours one night. And this was on top of me rehearsing with another band and auditioning for a third. That was a big-big day! Anyway, we started branching out and getting into some rock’n’roll and we covered a few things where we added a bit of an Irish “treatment” if you like. And other times we didn’t bother at all – just served up the song. It was at this time that I first remember hearing Ode To Billie Joe – I mean, I might have heard it before, but I learned it on stage one night, in Palmerston North. The band just launched into it – because they’d played it long ago, before I was a member. I don’t think they even knew that I didn’t know it. But damn it was a great song to play. I just Gentryloved the slinky groove/feel of it. And it had me buying up a few Bobbie Gentry bargain CDs – hearing more stuff, and getting versions of that song. Well, this is the first Bobbie Gentry record I ever bought. And I bought it just last week. As soon as I picked it up I had floods of “Irish band” memories. And that’s – truth be told – why I bought it. Sometimes (often) with second-hand record buying you just cave to the nostalgia, bow down and be down with. No shame.

Sample Track: Sweet Peony

The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown

Posted in The Vinyl Countdown and tagged with 1969, Bobbie Gentry, Bobby Gentry's Greatest!, Finn McCool, Greatest Hits, Irish band, LP, Ode To Billie Joe, Sweet Peony, Vinyl. RSS 2.0 feed.
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