Guitar George - Who Is Innocent 12", 1987

Guitar George - Who Is Innocent?" 12", 1987

Another Martin Hannett produced rarity, though he only produced the last two songs of the three represented here. I'm posting this for my new friend from near Boston who seems to be nearly as much of a Hannett freak as I am and said he was dying to hear this.

I didn't remember the record being very good, but upon playing it again, I was rather charmed. It's sortof just...regular American rock and roll...sortof the standard sort of sub-punk rock stuff a lot of folks were doing in 1979. I'm really bad at describing music that sounds American. I'll leave that to someone else and forget about Stiff Records & Nick Lowe for the moment. I seem to be becoming slowly more intoxicated as the night wears on. But anyway yeah...and the last song called "Manchester Boys" hit me in such a charming way that it led me to know exactly what record I wanted to post next on this blog from a London area band...

But back to this Guitar George record - here's the really insane part. This record was made by the same fucking dude that Dire Straits were singing about when they said "Guitar george/he knows all the chords". Now I absolutely HATE DIRE STRAITS. I wish they would go to another island far, far, away and DIE quickly, but isn't it weird that they were talking about a real man when they sang that and that this man had the honour of being produced by Martin Hannett? Look at the Wikipedia site about this guy, this is really neat. He actually was British, then, I wouldn't have guessed that somehow. And he played with all sorts of folks, even the bloody Pixies! His myspace site is also cool.

Oh yeah, and I could have sworn I read John Peel played the A-side of this record "Who Is Innocent?" Seriously I could have sworn I read that somewhere. My new friend from near Boston told me that early UB40 appeared on the same label as this, Graduate Records. Go figure.