The Men With The Golden Gonads: Play… and other Misses – album review

Album Review

The Men with the Golden Gonads: Play The Men with the Golden Gonads and other Misses (Spinout Nuggets)

12” Vinyl (Ltd to 300)

Out now

Lost, legendary Garage-Trash / Surf-Beat combo from the Medway finally see the release of their album on vinyl. Mostly instrumental, mainly covers, The Men With The Golden Gonads was the brainchild of Tim Webster who sadly left this world on 20 June 2020…  The 70th release on Spinout Nuggets is solid gold says Ged Babey.

I would argue that this is one of the best Garage/Trash albums you’ll ever hear by what is essentially one of the most derided of musical groups by (us) music snobs: the covers band.

Not that The Men with the Golden Gonads were a lame wedding reception band, playing versions of ‘the hits’. Quite the opposite.  They were a garage band in love with the old rock’n’roll classics and obscurities that they enjoyed playing.

The opening Hawaii 5-0 is full of bum notes but is utterly life-affirming, ending with a battle between guitar, saxophone and drums to dominate proceedings.

At times on this solid gold, perfect piece-of-trash album, the music, rather than the actual musicians, sounds drunk. Giddy, sped-up, grinning like a loon, delirious and happy.  Add alcohol to the listening experience and it’s unbeatable, dance around the kitchen stuff.

Produced by Billy Childish and recorded in Red Studios in Kent in 1990 and 1991 copies of these recordings have been available to those in-the-know for some time, but never officially released.

I first noticed The Men with the Golden Gonads cover version of the Shadows classic The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt on YouTube under the dyslexic working title ‘Fickle Cunt’. That was enough or me. I knew I was gonna love this band.

It’s not just stinging, raw garage versions of the tremolo twang of the Shadows and the sax’n’surf of the Hawaii 5-0 theme and the obligatory Pipeline. An instrumental take on Oscar Brown Jnr’s The Work Song is a pure garage-mod dancefloor delight as is Lee Dorseys Ride Your Pony bringing an almost Famous Flames vibe to the Medway.

Sounds Incorporateds Theme From Crane is one of those archetypical Sixties themes that accompanies footage of a party scene from a movie of the time and shows a kinship with the early James Taylor Quartet.

The Small Faces Happy Boys, Happy is another worthy of James Taylors bunch only with sax replacing the Hammond, and a great (unspoken) introducing each member of the band section where each instrument has a few seconds in the spotlight.

The Batfink Theme is another sax and swagger beauty that walks like Peter Gunn and talks like a garage John Barry – if you know what I mean.

This is just a jam-packed, non-stop party of an album.

So, who were the mysterious Gonads, apart from local legend Tim Webster?

Tim made plenty of racket in his time, mostly with The Sputniks (releasing a 10” album in 1986), Timmy Tremolo and The Tremolons (who featured on three of compilations on Billy Childish’s Hangman Records), Johnny Gash and plenty more!

The Men With The Golden Gonads also included Tim’s brother Stephen on saxophone, with Russ Baxter (Phase, The Treasures Of Mexico, The Discords, and currently Secret Affair) on drums, Tony Cook (The Gravediggers, The Fugitives) on bass, Presun Amin (Envy) on organ, and Dave Gibbons on trumpet, some of which had also played with Tim in The Tremolons.

This album contains fourteen of those recordings, which includes eleven of the band’s favourite songs to cover, and three of Tim Webster’s originals (Hot Fish Yoghurt, The Girl with the Golden Gash and The Men with the Golden Gonads).

The Men with the Golden Gonads may have had a jokey name, but made some seriously inspirational music.  Raw, live-in-the-studio Fifties/Sixties party music which ripped the Space/Time Continuum a new arsehole at the dawn of the 1990’s.

And that is me being objective… I’ve cut out all the exaggeration…

Buy from here

All words Ged Babey

Source: louderthanwar.com