Most retrospectives of the late 1960s and early 1970s musical counterculture tend to focus on the gentler side, the pastoral underground that kept the spirit of folk Eden alive. What still remains unfashionably overlooked is the scungier reaction to the hippy idyll: those artists whose refusal to smoke the peace pipe was expressed in a rawer, more desperate form of heavy blues-aftermath rock. Cast as willing outsiders from the start, the likes of Groundhogs, Pink Fairies, and Global Village Trucking Company were slated to play outside the fence, slamming and jamming protests and gurning crudities from the back of a flatbed truck. Mudflecked descendants of Winstanley’s Diggers, arriving in clapped-out vans, to announce the wilting of flower power. Music from a paradise garden turned to mud. The most enduring of these were The Edgar Broughton Band, a righteous, Beefheart-loving brigade formed by Broughton brothers Robert (aka ‘Edgar’) and Steve, with bassist Arthur Grant, in mid-’60s Warwick. With in- again-out-again guitarist Victor Unitt, the outfit delivered a pounding to the Tolkien-tranquilised hordes of UFO and Middle Earth, taking up a strategic position in the Notting Hill scene in ’68, from where they were signed to Blackhill Enterprises and became an early addition to EMI’s ‘alternative’ label, Harvest. This generation of the underground – which effectively lasted until the economic crises of the Heath administration, only to dissipate into the nationwide commune scene and the rugged ordeal of outdoor free festivals – fell into a curious blind spot in UK politics, with general rage against the Man and the Machine, but few specific issues to grapple with. How much more angry energy would’ve been generated had Britain stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the US in Vietnam? As this four-CD set – comprising five LPs plus an unreleased Hyde Park concert from 1970 – reveals, EBB had rage (and humour) in spades. “Death Of An Electric Citizen”, from debut Wasa Wasa, is a Beefheartian romp, as is single “Apache Drop Out”, a curious mix of Safe As Milk boogie and pastiche Shadows. And in channelling their hate into “Out Demons Out!”, the ritual chant of the festival community, taped at a ‘live studio’ concert at Abbey Road in December 1969, they found their vocation. Riffing off The Fugs’ Pentagon-cleansing anthem, “Demons” is goof-off protest folk with a throbbing bluesy vein. Shortly after came the single “Up Yours!”, a V-sign to the political process that today’s student dissenters would be wise to adopt. Sing Brother Sing (1970), full of “songs about child molesters, nymphos and the imminent apocalypse”, according to one review, and The Edgar Broughton Band (1971) were the group’s zenith. Concerts reveal EBB in their element, but surprise subtleties such as the string arrangements and stereo guitar effects on “For Dr Spock” and David Bedfords’s orchestrations on “Evening Over Rooftops” show the group – now back with Unitt – to be more inventive in the studio than their scuzzy image might suggest. “... Rooftops” aspires to epic status, a skyline meditation, uncannily pre-echoing Neil Young’s “Like A Hurricane”, while “The Birth” is lanky and goosey-loose, gritted with hoarse harmonica. For Inside Out (1972), they decamped to a Devonshire mansion. Its remoteness from city life is audible in more laidback, country-ish textures, though “Homes Fit For Heroes” and “Double Agent” still dealt with contemporary issues. Oora (1973) keeps on trucking through triumphalist rock (“Things On My Mind”) and austerity folk-rock (“Eviction”); the end of the Harvest story but not the band, who continue the mission to this day. In this new age of cuts, riots and harsh winters, their music might just start making sense. Rob Young Q+A EDGAR BROUGHTON What are your lasting memories of the Notting Hill scene? I mostly remember the characters and the apparent sense of freedom that pervaded everything. It seemed as if music poured out of every window at times. Why did “Out Demons Out!” need to be written? I was a fan of The Fugs, who presided over a mock exorcism outside the Pentagon USA. We adapted this simple idea to focus the frustration of our audience against the things they despised. Much later it took on a life of its own. More recently, it was an expression of political frustration and also tribal unity. There is a humour present in the recordings that was very much a part of our tongue-in-cheek approach to things. It was fun, and looking back I think it proved to be one of the few occasions when the live Edgar Broughton Band was successfully captured on tape. What have you been up to? I’ve always been involved in political action. This year I’m playing a series of solo shows called ‘A Fair Day’s Pay For A Fair Day’s Work’. I play peoples’ private events for a day of their wages – a practical, socialistic exercise. I have 14 dates booked so far. People can book me directly through my website, edgarbroughton.com. I will be involved with the political action that will grow against this nightmare coalition. INTERVIEW: ROB YOUNG

Beauty comes in many guises. On 2006’s Real Life, Joan Wasser’s first album as Joan As Police Woman, it arrived as a fractured, fragile thing, dispensed via pensive piano pieces and a voice that spoke of a life spent on the edge of some vertiginous emotional precipice. Already 36, Wasser was one of those intriguing NYC art-music propositions: classically trained, she was a protégée of Rufus Wainwright and Antony Hegarty who had collaborated with Lou Reed and had also been Jeff Buckley’s lover at the time of his death in 1997. Buckley wrote the slinky “Everybody Here Wants You” as a hymn to Wasser’s magnetism, and listening to Real Life it wasn’t hard to understand why. The beauty in evidence on follow-up To Survive (2008) was sparkier, more diverse. While the emotional centre remained spectral torch songs like “To Be Lonely”, elsewhere Wasser edged towards a funkier, fuller sound. A further hint of changing priorities came last year with the limited-release stop-gap album Cover, where she tackled songs by everyone from Public Enemy to Adam Ant, suggesting she had outgrown her previous parameters. The Deep Field turns that suggestion into fact. There is beauty aplenty in these 10 songs, but anyone yearning for the delicious ache of old will find it only fleetingly. It’s there on the sparse, almost tribal rhythms of “Flash”, which stretches out hypnotically over eight minutes, and most obviously on “Forever And A Year”, a beautiful ballad which Wasser sings like Eurydice at the gates of Hades. Though it’s where we find the album’s title phrase, referencing one of the universe’s furthest flung galaxies, “Forever And A Year”’s ravishing melancholy turns out to be anomalous. Instead, The Deep Field attempts to articulate the beauty of happiness, a trickier concept to convey than sorrow. Wasser has always been in thrall to ’70s soul, but The Deep Field goes in with both feet. It’s a fully fledged attempt to capture the cosmic mixture of funky fun, lush production values and sonic adventurousness heard on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Sly Stone’s Fresh and Stevie Wonder’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale, with a touch of Funkadelic to taste. Odd, layered harmonies break into the mix and then swiftly depart; analog synths squelch; songs wander off into unexpected corners and then zip back to nail a killer chorus. When it all clicks it’s deliriously good. “The Action Man” is rapturously melodic, climbing to a slow fade of warm brass, low strings and blended voices which suggest that all four Stylistics are hiding in the headphones. “Kiss The Specifics” must surely have fallen off the end of Al Green Is Love, while “Chemmie” is Wasser making like post-Supremes Diana Ross and letting biology do all the heavy lifting: “It’s elemental, a force of nature”. This turns out to be a lyrical manifesto for the entire album – stop thinking, start feeling, trust your instincts and keep moving. On “The Magic”, Wasser is looking for “the right way out of my mind”, a question which might seem more profound if the song didn’t sound like Flight Of The Conchords’ “Mutha Uckas”. Even when The Deep Field doesn’t quite work it remains compelling. “Nervous”, a proggy-soul broth with Moog synths and a bit of Bowie thrown into the pot, meanders around trying to work out exactly what it is before stumbling upon a gloriously uplifting chorus. “Human Condition” is strange soul muzak, on which regular vocal foil Joseph Arthur unveils his karaoke Barry White, Wasser comes on like late period Joni Mitchell, and cheesy bass honks over maddening chord changes. It’s intriguing, but you might not want to live there. The Deep Field fearlessly maps out new territory for Wasser without ever quite allaying the suspicion that she’s playing against her more obvious strengths. But that’s the thing about taking a leap forward. It’s almost inevitable that something precious will get left behind. Graham Thomson Q+A Joan Wasser How conscious was the decision to change tack with this album? To Survive felt too heavy, I wasn’t liking some of the vibes, so I did the Cover record to get out of my own boring head. I felt that liking only half the songs on To Survive wasn’t a good enough percentage, so I changed things. I’m sure people do expect something from a new Joan As Police Woman record, but I hope I’ve written music broad enough in the past that there’s space for whatever this record is. It feels the most like me, because it is. You sound much more upbeat. Why? I’ve come out of a really difficult period and I feel a lot happier. I’m sorry if that upsets anyone! I refuse to be in this wonderful life and be miserable. The soul influences have always been there but they’re much more overt this time. I always return to soul music, I listen to it a lot. When I started writing music I felt I wasn’t really worthy or capable of writing the kind of music I really wanted to listen to, but I allowed myself to do that more this time. It’s my favourite stuff, the ’70s soul stuff. That music has carried me through a lot. INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON