Search - Them :: Belfast Gypsies

The Other Them

Laurence Upton | Wilts, UK | 11/12/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When Van Morrison called a halt to Ireland's premier R&B beat group in September 1966, after three and a half brief but explosive and highly charged years and seemingly dozens of personnel changes, Them had split into various separate factions. Two of the band, Alan Henderson and Ray Elliott, hired some more musicians and relocated to America to carry on as Them with a new vocalist. Van Morrison himself also went to America and went solo, first for Bert Berns' Bang label and then, of course, radically changing direction with the hit albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, the first of dozens of successful albums.



Jackie and Pat McAuley had between them been in various Them line-ups between June 1964 and July 1965, but had left the band before its demise, having in the meantime moved to London. They had formed a new band comprising Jackie McAuley (vocal, harmonica, keyboards), Ken Mcleod (guitar), Mark Scott (bass) and Pat McAuley (drums). They had yet to acquire a proper name in February 1966, being known simply as the Other Them, when maverick American producer Kim Fowley met up with them in the Gioconda coffee bar in Denmark Street, a favoured Tin Pan Alley watering hole. I suspect Kim Fowley's recollection of events may have an apocryphal element, but according to this album's sleeve notes, Kim said, "I went in and had a ham and cheese sandwich and saw these guys sitting at a table near by. 'Are you in a group?', I asked, as so many people who used the café were, and they replied, 'Yeah, we were in Them.' 'Oh really?' I said, 'Let's go and make an album', and that was that." He gave them the name Belfast Gypsies because of their romany-style image and had them dress in Sunset Strip clothes, but deliberately took their sound back to the primitive Mystic Eyes and Gloria-era R&B styling of classic-period Them, and recorded them in a small Denmark Street studio also used by bands like the Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things, which had a great earthy sound, courtesy of unsung hero Bill Farley, the sound engineer there.



The first single wasn't bashful about its heritage, being a raucous re-write of Gloria entitled Gloria's Dream, but Kim Fowley also brought an American influence, shaped by garage punk songs such as Louie Louie and bands like Count Five and the Seeds, with whom Fowley had been distantly involved. The B-side of the single, Secret Police, was a song of his that he taught Jackie McCauley to sing, hence the nasal Californian style of vocal he employed on it.



In America, where the band was on Loma Records, the B-side was a version of Derroll Adams' Portland Town. There are folk versions of the song by the Kingston Trio, Marianne Faithfull, Joan Baez, Rambling Jack Elliott and others, but the Belfast Gypsies gave it the full Them treatment, with the prominent organ sound familiar from hits such as Here Comes The Night. Kim Fowley also produced the second US single, People, Let's Freak Out, a thumping Bo Diddley-esque number, and possibly some of the other tracks on this album (originally only released in Scandinavia by the Sonet label in 1967 months after the band had split), but not those recorded in a Copenhagen studio while the band was on tour later in 1966 (billed as Them), though it is not specified which are which.



The album, Them Belfast Gypsies, rather mischievously had the word "Them" writ large across the top of the sleeve, and "Belfast Gypsies" in smaller letters at the bottom, so that many buyers and indeed critics assumed it was a record by Them called Belfast Gypsies.



Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness), a Donovan cover in turn nicked from Memphis Minnie, follows the Them blueprint and promotes the gypsy concept, and The Last Will And Testament is a steal from Saint James Infirmary performed as a pastiche of Them's glorious I'm Gonna Dress In Black. I would guess that these, the Alvin Roy standard Midnight Train and John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom were all initiated by Kim Fowley, even if recorded later, while It's All Over Now Baby Blue was probably a riposte to the US incarnation of Them, who had also covered the song in the wake of the version Van Morrison had recorded with Them on their second album, Them Again, after the McAuleys had left. The oddest track is Aria Of The Fallen Angels, adapted from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 In D Major, and inspired by the Swingle Sisters' version of it entitled Aria.



This Rev-Ola CD edition of the Belfast Gypsies' sole album adds half a dozen mono bonus tracks, comprising the single mixes of Gloria's Dream/Secret Police and a French EP on Disques Vogue issued as by Them, comprising Portland Town/It's All Over Now, Baby Blue/Midnight Train/The Gorilla. Of these, only The Gorilla is not also on the original album, and probably features none of the Belfast Gypsies at all but rather members of the Shotgun Express, some of whose names appear on the composer credits. As the album is also monaural, the differences on the bonus tracks all lie in the mastering. Some sound frankly identical to these ears, but Secret Police gains a few seconds, Portland Town is some 20 seconds longer, and Midnight Train allegedly fixes a varispeed mastering error on the album version, though both clock in at 3:28.



It's dumb, it's primitive, it's great. Play loud."