The Hot Rats – Damaged Goods / Fight For Your Right

It’s always a pleasure to hear from Gaz and Danny Supergrass, no matter what guise they come in. After the brilliant DVD mockumentary ‘Glange Fever’ they’ve dropped the ‘Diamond Hoo Ha Men’ name and picked up Nigel Godrich for a covers project. The album is forthcoming and this double A-side is the first fruits of their combined labour which is available for us to get our grubby paws on, and it’s only available as a white label 7” from the duo’s forthcoming shows.

First up here is ‘Damaged Goods’, which was originally recorded by Gang Of Four (obviously), who weren’t one of the influences that first sprang to mind when thinking of the duo’s day jobs, and which therefore serves to highlight an aspect of the group that we’ve never heard before. Opening with the riff played on an acoustic it’s joined by Gaz’s unmistakable vocals. Rattling and throbbing along this cover really gels together when the bass (presumably supplied by Godrich) kicks in, completing the sound and making this sound fuller and fatter than we remember the original being. That’s not to say it’s better, obviously, just different.

Talking of different, the flip-side is completely not what we were expecting. Bearing in mind Supergrass classics such as ‘Caught By The Fuzz’ and ‘Richard III’ we were expecting a similarly raucous take on the punk-rap of Beastie Boys’ ‘Fight For Your Right’. Instead we get a brilliant psychedelic swirl with the vocals in a fairly high register and the impression that this was beamed in right from the 1960s. Being a covers band we’re not expecting The Hot Rats to have reinvented the wheel, still what we’ve got here is a couple of really individual takes on some classic tracks. Our appetites are well and truly wetted for the long player from these two gents (and their producer).