My girlfriend bought this suspiciously anonymous looking Italian Chuck Berry “best of” for £3 from Rat Records in Camberwell(1) a few months back, and let me tell you, it is a blast... if not entirely for the reasons a hopeful punter may have been anticipating.

Basically, after dropping the needles it takes about a second for one to realise that the “Golden Greats” presented herein are not the famed studio recordings that made Mr. Berry a star, but instead some really shonky, mud-covered live recordings emanating from a time and place unknown, but, judging from the sound of the backing and recording quality, I’d guess no earlier than the 1970s.

Now, ol’ Chuck understandably gets a lot of shit for spending the majority of the career travelling the world peddling cynical, increasingly half-assed reiterations of a bunch of novelty songs he wrote over 50 years ago, but from my own jaded POV, I’ve gotta say, I think this stuff is bloody brilliant, verging on some kinda cracked, Alex Chilton/Replacements-style anti-genius in places.

Initially, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, hearing Berry lurch his way into a grinding, half-speed version of ‘Carol’, the backing group sounding like Stackwaddy being forced to play at gunpoint after a 24 hour marathon session whilst the man himself hollers like a belligerent megaphone-jerk in-between launching cack-handed, ‘is-he-actually-wearing-gloves?’ level guitar solos that certainly make me feel better about my own compromised abilities. (All that indie / underground “hey, you don’t need to learn to play guitar” stuff? Check it out - apparently Chuck’s booze-addled brain beat us all to it!)

In the end, you simply celebrate, for this is chaotic, ridiculous, beautiful stuff – pure, drunken rock n’roll slop, created for the none-more-rock n’ roll reasons of harvesting money, creating a bad atmosphere and fleecing stadiums full of white people.

“I’m CHUCK BERRY, and I couldn’t give a fuck!”, the recordings on this LP seem to announce, and the result is more punk rock than a pile of every Sex Pistols record in the entire world, and a hell of a lot more fun to listen to too.

I think we need a shiny, multi-disc remastered edition, complete with a bonus DVD so we can rejoice in the sight of the arthritic duck-walks that no doubt accompanied every one of these glorious abominations, and see the when-the-fuck-is-this-gonna-end looks on the faces of the gnarly pick up band guys that this particular night’s promoter had roped in. And an extra ‘behind the scenes’ feature in which we get to see Chuck sitting in a jacuzzi with a bottle of rye for ninety minutes, laughing his ass off.

Quick, get me the number of Deja Vu Records, based out of Italy, whom I’m sure are still legitimate international holders of the rights to these recordings, and…. oh, yeah, right, hang on a minute….

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(1)A GREAT shop by the way – I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s a collector’s paradise or anything, but if you’re in the mood for buying some great, random old LPs, its shelves see the polarities of “pretty cool stuff” and “pretty reasonable prices” intersect in most pleasing fashion. Definitely a strong contender for South London’s finest record emporium: check ‘em out.

Labels: album reviews, Chuck Berry