Thunderbuck Ram

The great thing about You Tube is the fact that music fan's have taken the time to upload their favourite tracks. It's a modern miracle and one I appreciate greatly. Like most folk, I've sadly lost, mislaid and parted the ways with some of my most treasured LP's during those unsettled hairy years before life became a warm pair of slippers and a cup of steaming cocoa. But panic not. Nearly every album and track I miss has been lovingly laid down on said Tube. Yes, I think of it as My Tube [courtesy of my brother's wit] and a good case in point is a song I adored as a teenager, which had one of the few riffs I could play by rote on my Grattan Stratocaster! A riff to die for no less but could I remember the name of the song - no chance! Too many rings on the trunk [or nicks on the plectrum!] . But then I recalled said song was on a particular type of LP, that quintessential 70's rock life-form, a 'compilation'. Now undoudtedly the most famous of all compilations was Island's 'Nice Enough to Eat', with its alphabet-sweeties cover and knock-out tracks like the appropriately titled '21st Century Schizoid Man' by King Crimson. But it wasn't that. Neither was it the double - album sampler sugar-rushes that were 'Fill Your Head With Rock' or 'Suck It And See'! But then it hit me. No, it kicked me. It was BUMPERS and the track was THUNDERBUCK RAM by the brilliant and sorely missed Mott The Hoople. Listen and abandon all hope for this is the riffdaddy!

If it's whetted your appetite, you can read a proper review of this song and its original Mott album 'Mad Shadows', by Julian Cope, a proper muso, here.

Dedicated to George the Cycling Treasurer as he straddles the saddle once more