EAT: Classic or Dud!

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Been exhuming lots of discs lately for the purposes of rippin'em to my iPod/iTunes, and recently rediscovered two little gems by flash-in-the-pan, way-pre-Britpoppers Eat. Lazily lumped in with worthy peers like the Wonder Stuff (Eat mainman Ange Dolittle and Miles Hunt were best friends, and Doolittle even sang for the Miles-less `Stuff line-up under the name, We Know Where You Live), but Eat's two LPs are both strikingly original stuff. The first one, Sell Me a God is steeped in bizarre swampy blues, surreal wit and loping, twisted funk, whereas their all-but-forgotten second album Epicure (featuring an altered line-up) concentrated on more straight-ahead rock/pop (notably the absolutely perfect song that is "Shame").

To have been lumped in with the post-Grebo gang was to undeservingly write them off, I think. The drummer, Pete Howard went on with Miles Hunt's short-lived/ill-fated Vent 414 then vanished. Dolittle did the one-off with WKWYL then formed the unfortunately-named Big Yoga Muffin years later, basically picking up where Eat left off (and in opening for the reunited Wonder Stuff in 2000, revisited some Eat tunes).

Anyone remember them, and what say you if you did?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 10 February 2004 15:34 (twenty-two years ago)

love the Eat album number 1. swampy rock fest. and the Big Yoga album got some airing in my house last year and brought plenty-o-smiles.
very good album. crap name and even worse cover though.

― mark e (mark e), Tuesday, 10 February 2004 16:13 (twenty-two years ago)

The name "Eat" didn't ring any bells until I also read the name "Ange Doolittle" which made it click.

I vaguely remember seeing them at Reading Festival and being quite impressed with Mr Doolittle but perhaps less so with the group as a whole - certainly I never got 'round to buying one of their albums and fwiw I don't remember being that impressed by We Know Where You Live (or indeed Vent 414 for that matter).

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Tuesday, 10 February 2004 16:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I liked Mr and Mrs Smack but thought they were pretty dull otherwise. Remember the lead singer being interviewed in a 'Just Say No' piece on the perils of heroin addiction a few years ago.

― flowersdie (flowersdie), Tuesday, 10 February 2004 16:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Really like EAT, first got into them after seeing the video for Skin on Night Network and I bought the album. Epicure is a great british indie rock album and Ange has a brilliant voice, even if he did rhyme 'L.Ron Hubbard' with 'waiting in the cupboard'.

― mzui, Tuesday, 10 February 2004 21:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Seconded on the first album love. In fact...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 10 February 2004 21:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I knew Ned would approve.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 10 February 2004 21:58 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Christ, can ILM answer all of the questions I had about bands from my middle school years that I heard on Certain Damage comps? I think it can. Now I just gotta track down the first album, dammit...

― js (honestengine), Friday, 20 January 2006 17:54 (twenty years ago)

seven years pass...

tombstone.

classic.

simple as.

― mark e, Saturday, 21 September 2013 19:01 (twelve years ago)

great guitar intro!

― many machines on ilx (MaresNest), Saturday, 21 September 2013 19:21 (twelve years ago)

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