The Cravats, The Very Things, DCL Locomotive C/D?

Classic!!! I was raving about Land Of The giants on last year's reissue thread. DCL Locomotive EP might be my favorite thought. I'll write more later, gotta run!

I love the Cravats but only have most of their stuff on mp3 although I do have a couple of the Small Wonder 7"s. Been meaning to get that retrospective. Don't know anything about the Very Things or DCL Locomotive - what do they sound like? Similar to the Cravats?

Main difference is that they don't have Svoor Naan's sax upfront. Any space is filled with twangy guitar and soundtrack samples.

The Very Things "Bushes Scream" LP is an absolute masterpiece of garage psych. If you like the Cravats at all, you need this. I posted a shorter cut of this video on the rolling garage thread a few days back, but the full version has now surfaced. (Let's see if I've figured out this formatting business!)

The Very Things - Bushes Scream

DCL Locomotive are best remembered for their stunning work out on "King Midas in Reverse"

OK. I'm back... yes, the Very Things are much more psych-oriented than the Cravats, thick layers of slowly warping guitars instead of punky blasts with sax. Longer songs, too. I have a great live boot of the Very Things where The Shend intones portentiously, "people are leaving... but we are not afraid! we will carry on!"

Their Dada Cravat Laboratories flexi discs are great as well, crazed cutup manifestoes. Sadly, these did not get reissued on the 2CD comp which seems to have been rather poorly compiled and is not complete even though there was room on the damn discs. Still it beats paying $20 on eBay for "The End" 7" like I did before this came out - now I am glad because a great track from that single got left off.

Mutantsounds, Shards Of Beauty, Thing On The Doorstep, Phoenix Hairpins, and Saltyka's Music Site have posted everything discussed here iirc, including the Babymen record (another name for the band).

DCL Locomotive only put out one EP but it has their very Cravats-sounding cover of The Hollies tune on it and is really great.

You paid $20 for The End 7"? Ouch. I got it a year or so ago for £3.19 including shipping, also on Ebay! It pays to wait sometimes.

I hate when they do these anthologies and leave off songs despite having the space to reissue everything! Makes me not want to buy them and just seek out the originals. [/completist]

yeah I don't know what the psychology was that caused them to leave off a few songs from In Toytown and from the singles. I guess the CD is still a good resource for somebody who says "well I've heard of this band and want to check them out". More like a greatest hits than an anthology, but it could have been a completist's dream so easily...

And I highly recommend both the Very Things regular studio LP (The Bushes Scream, I did find that for a dollar so I guess it all evens out) and the CD following it about having a laugh or whatever because that includes their first excellent single, "The Gong Man". The third one is live, iirc.

The In Toytown LP does tend to go for quite a lot on Ebay so that sucks that it's not all on the CD, if it had all the album tracks I'd definitely pick it up and then hunt down the missing singles as they can be found for reasonable prices (I've seen most of them sell for around the £3-7 mark). Oh well.