Once again Richard came up with a candidate worthy enough to appear here! Enjoy his write-up here:
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Was nobody interested into this? I listened to these albums a lot. And i love them to bits. Mid eighties I have seen him live at the local youth centre where he was a yearly guest. Performing for a dedicated full house. I must have some fan-club memorabilia somewhere.
Johnny G is a Jonder miracle. He played with Geraint Watkins, Brett Marvin, The Rumour, Ed Hollis and Steve Lillywhite, he has a fan club song made for him, makes Original reupholstered songs, has great Original songs, sings la-la-la songs, has triple-titles and is the originator of a brand new style of music The Hipswing, The G-Beat or as I want to call it Pub-Reggae. Oh and he has a wonderful sense of rhythm, just listen.
In 1972 he made his first EP before disappearing only to come-back with a handful of singles and the LP Sharp/Natural. After that he managed to persuade his label (beggar's banquet) to release a second album G-Beat, but with a free extra bonus album. Well that did not work, commercially. How he got the label to do it a second time with his third album Water Into Wine one can only guess.
Eventually he and his label parted ways. In 1984 he released what would be his purest musical output, Sand Dance Ska. By now he was a regular One-Man-Band touring The UK and Western Europe with occasional assisting musicians. His original way of interpreting covers and mixing them with outstanding original songs made him a welcome pub-musician.
After Sand Dance Ska he made an album with John Spencer - Out With A Bang , with whom he had worked in 1978 on Spencer's Louts album that was called The Last LP. It was 1994 when a double cd was released one cd live and one best-of cd. You can find a Utube channel here, including Glastonbury performances.
About the music I can be short. It is clean, accurate, pristine and a lot more jubilations. There are quite a few versions of Blue Suede Shoes with different names. Wella Wella Wella, Blue Blue, Leave Me Alone and Blue Suede Shoes. Music is taken from many sources:
*Sharp/Natural
*G-Beat (+ G-Beat 2 bonus elpee)
*Water Into Wine (+ Pure Beaujolais bonus elpee)
*Sand dance Ska
*Moments (1972 EP)
*John Spencer's Louts - The Last LP
*John Spencer/John Gotting - Out With A Bang
*John Gotting - A Month Of Sundays/The Best Of Johnny G (2CD)
He also has great wit about him. There is a song called Call me Bwana/The Educated Monkey, and you can write a philosophical treatise about it, that's how clever it is. In short, it is a song using British supremacy as a mocking point developing it in a comment on UK 1976 depression overlayed with a nod towards first generation skinheads using reggae as identification pattern (we're treated worse than them blacks, in our own country) while reverse engineering Monty Python's what have they done for us sketch (which was two years after the fact), into a 2 part 4 minute song with the punchline Everybody's Somebody's Orang-Utan (and there are no Orang-Utans in Jamaica). The sleeve image is blackface - as controversial then as it is now.
P.S. Most of the tracks are rips from different sources and are all not my vinyl rips. G-Beat 2 and Water Into Wine (Pure Beaujolais) and John Spencer's Louts are my own vinyl rips. A Month of Sundays/ The Best of Johnny G is my own cd-rip. No tracks are taken from Passport To Paradise for the simple reason that I do not have it in any form. (Please help).
Many thanks Richard!
I started digging a bit as well but unfortunately it seems that Johnny is no longer active musically. Trying to find photos of him performing live in the 1980s online also got me nowhere, only 2 pics of him playing at the 2019 Ealing Blues Festival... Considering how popular he was back in the days this seems odd to say the least!
I did discover perhaps his latest recordings on Soundcloud from 2018 with a blues harmonica player called Koko Harp...
