Jon Hope's Album Reviews
Sadly, the band had lost the plot by this final Head album. It was their bid for mainstream success, and was produced by Michael Jonzun. The single "All The Boyz (At War)" even featured a talk box (the gadget that Roger Troutman and Peter Frampton used). Rich Beale (aka Clevedon Pier) is a great singer, but the songs are weak, the rhymes are pedestrian, and the group's sense of humor has gone missing. Gareth Sager and Nick Sheppard are billed under their real names rather than the great pseudonyms of past Head records (like Candy Horsebreath and Hamilton MacAdemical).
The core trio of Beale, Sager, and Sheppard is joined on this album by bassist Paul Francis and drummer Willie Ng. Nick Sheppard later joined Joe Strummer and Paul Simenon for the Clash's anticlimactic Cut The Crap.
Intoxicator is the only one of Head's three albums that was never issued on CD, and Virgin Records dropped the band after Head failed to make a dent in the charts. There is a digital only collection of early Head demos called "Bottled Vintage XXX" on the Bristol Archives label. After Beale's next band Apache Dropout broke up, he and Sager worked together again in the 90's band Pregnant (with a 1997 CD called Unusual Lover, and two posthumous digital releases on Bristol Archives).
Sager and Beale indulged a surreal sense of humor and musical eclecticism with Pregnant, which was more in keeping with the spirit of early Head. Beale later sang in a trip-hop duo called Receiver (look up their CD entitled Chicken Milk). Sager formed C.C. Sager with Steve Noble and Dave Hunter from Pregnant, and later played with Davy Henderson in The Nectarine No. 9. Henderson in turn appeared on Sager's 2009 solo album Slack Slack Music.
The core trio of Beale, Sager, and Sheppard is joined on this album by bassist Paul Francis and drummer Willie Ng. Nick Sheppard later joined Joe Strummer and Paul Simenon for the Clash's anticlimactic Cut The Crap.
Intoxicator is the only one of Head's three albums that was never issued on CD, and Virgin Records dropped the band after Head failed to make a dent in the charts. There is a digital only collection of early Head demos called "Bottled Vintage XXX" on the Bristol Archives label. After Beale's next band Apache Dropout broke up, he and Sager worked together again in the 90's band Pregnant (with a 1997 CD called Unusual Lover, and two posthumous digital releases on Bristol Archives).
Sager and Beale indulged a surreal sense of humor and musical eclecticism with Pregnant, which was more in keeping with the spirit of early Head. Beale later sang in a trip-hop duo called Receiver (look up their CD entitled Chicken Milk). Sager formed C.C. Sager with Steve Noble and Dave Hunter from Pregnant, and later played with Davy Henderson in The Nectarine No. 9. Henderson in turn appeared on Sager's 2009 solo album Slack Slack Music.
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