A set of Day-Glo references to present to your next lucky employer

Many thanks for the excellent article on Creedence Clearwater Revival and their breakout year of 1969 [MOJO 308]. CCR were that rare commodity – an American band that didn’t bore you to stupefying tedium with meandering doodling (hello Grateful Dead) or facile political sloganeering (hi Jefferson Airplane). I’ve been getting MOJO since Issue 4 and cannot recall similar attention given to CCR.

It would be equally heartening to see something about The Edgar Broughton Band, those hairy, noisy musical anarchists whose first four albums gather no dust in my collection. Why they are ignored is beyond me. Along with Groundhogs, Hawkwind and Van Der Graaf Generator, they brought loud comfort to my teenage brain that was otherwise smothered by the likes of America, James Taylor, Don McLean, Carly Simon and the Eagles.

I recall the Broughtons’ melancholic 1971 single Hotel Room played on the local Wellington commercial pop station, 2ZM – owned and operated by the New Zealand state broadcaster, the NZBC. Along with other under-utilised gems like The Mothers’ My Guitar, Hawkwind’s Silver Machine and Life In Botanical Gardens by Randall’s Island (AKA Elliott Randall), Hotel Room was programmed right through to early 1975, until the station adopted the dreaded American Top 40 radio format. After that, it became wall-to-wall Toto, Foreigner, Bob Seger, Doobie Brothers, Captain And Tennille, Linda Ronstadt and more bloody Eagles.

As an aside, whatever happened to Gaye Bykers On Acid? Their 1987 debut album Drill Your Own Hole included a cracking cover of the Broughtons’ Call Me A Liar, the furnace temperature flipside of Hotel Room. Please MOJO, keep them freaks a rollin’, and give the Edgar Broughton Band the credit they long deserve.

Greg Cotmore, Wellington, New Zealand