Gerdundula (single) by Blake

'Dog of Two Head' by Status Quo was the first album I owned. That's me with my original copy in the picture. It was released in the year I was born and it is one of my favourite albums. As far as I can remember, my parents bought it for me in 1980 after I fell in love with the 'What You're Proposing' single and the Quo shuffle. Why they chose to buy me this relatively obscure release rather than the single's parent album, 'Just Supposin'', is beyond me. However, I'm glad that they did because this album left a deep impression on me and meant that my introduction to Quo started in the right order. I think I got '12 Gold Bars' next and then I got the epic collection, 'The Music of Status Quo Volume 1, 1972-1974', both on tape. 'Hello' followed on record and then the behemoth double LP, 'Live'. I think 'Blue For You' came after, on cassette. Following John Coghlan's departure in 1981, it soon became apparent that the magic years were behind the band, but by this point I was absolutely hooked on their seventies releases.

Of course, being a Quo fan in the eighties provided its fair share of social challenges, nearly as much as being a McCartney fan! I'm not sure if I got ribbed at school more for 'Marguerita Time' or 'We All Stand Together'. I didn't really care though; unfashionable or not, I loved the music. I was especially drawn to the pre-'Rocking All Over The World' LP years. In 1977, the band seemed to make a determined effort to strive for a more commercial sound and a lot of their rough edges and, sad to say, creativity, seemed to get sanded down in the studio. This is certainly not the case with 1971's 'Dog of Two Head', which sees Quo transitioning from their organ driven five piece line-up with Roy Lynes on keys, to a stripped down, heavier guitar based unit ('The Frantic Four'), that would fully find its 12 bar boogie groove on 1972's 'Piledriver'.

'Dog' is my favourite Quo record, however, because at this point in the band's career they seemed to be open to so many musical influences and it is an incredibly eclectic album. 'Umleitung' (German for 'diversion') is a slow and lengthy blues-infused song featuring brilliant guitar work from Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt vamping on piano. 'Nanana' is a joyful, acoustic guitar and piano based sing-a-long that features the vocal group, 'Grass'. 'Someone's Learning' is a heavy rock song by Alan Lancaster with the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland as its subject. 'Mean Girl' is a fast paced blues-y shuffle and later a top twenty hit. 'Railroad' wonderfully combines three disparate songs in one and 'Gerdundula' is completely out of left field. Sounding like Persian trance music, the story behind the title is that the band had a couple of loyal female German fans named Gerd and Ula, hence 'Gerd und Ula'. With no bass or drums, the song had originally been the B-side of the 'In My Chair' single. It was re-recorded for 'Dog of Two Head' with a slightly different arrangement. My version is an amalgam of the two. Curiously, although written by Rossi with long-term collaborator, Bob Young, the song was credited to 'Manston and James' on the record. Why the duo used these pseudonyms remains a mystery, but it may have something to do with a change in publishers to Valley Music.

The song has been performed live by the band several times over the decades. Both live and recorded versions of the song are taken at a frantic pace (is this where the nickname comes from?) and there was no way I could record the guitar parts that fast, so my version employs a slightly less frenetic tempo.

Blake was discovered under a pile of records in a Cheltenham bedsit in 2003.

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