The Troggs

小简介
The Troggs是60年代早期的一直成功的乐队，Troggs据说是troglodyte的缩写，乐队来自英格兰南部城市Andover，无论在英国或是美国各大排行榜上都可以见到他们的歌，包括他们最出名的两支单曲也是被翻唱无数次的"Wild Thing"和"Love Is All Around" ，特别是后者因它的沈暗唱腔，他的迷药音符，显得更绝异。俘虏了万千乐迷，此碟在英碟榜十五星期冠军，如非经理人要求唱片公司停制造此碟，以免此曲过於热度澎涨而影响之后歌曲，不然冠军星期必不上於此！后来Wet Wet Wet重唱了The Troggs的Love Is All Around，乐迷仍无不被TheTroggs那种成熟而动听的歌唱迷倒。虽然乐队的音乐像大多数早期的英伦入侵一样旋律上朗朗上口，但其实The Troggs确是对后来英国的garage rock和punk rock产生过重大影响的一支乐队，Iggy Pop和Ramones等都承认The Troggs对他们的影响相当大。
乐队成员——
* Reg Presley - born Reginald Maurice Ball
* Chris Britton - born Charles Christopher Britton on 21 January 1944 in Watford, Hertfordshire - Guitar
* Pete Staples - born Peter Lawrence Staples on 3 May 1944 at Andover War Memorial Hospital, Andover, Hampshire - Bass Guitar
* Ronnie Bond - born Ronald James Bullis on 4 May 1940 in Dene Road, Andover, Hampshire. Died on 13 November 1992 at Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Romsey Road, Winchester, Hampshire - Drums
Remembered chiefly as proto-punkers who reached the top of the charts with the caveman rock of Wild Thing (1966), the Troggs were also adept at crafting power pop and ballads. Hearkening back to a somewhat simpler, more basic British Invasion approach as psychedelia began to explode in the late 60s, the group also reached the Top Five with their flower-power ballad Love Is All Around in 1968. While more popular in their native England than the U.S., the band also fashioned memorable, insistently riffing hit singles like With a Girl Like You, Night of the Long Grass, and the notoriously salacious I Cant Control Myself between 1966 and 1968. Paced by Reg Presleys lusting vocals, the group — which composed most of their own material — could crunch with the best of them, but were also capable of quite a bit more range and melodic invention than theyve been given credit for.
Hailing from the relatively unknown British town of Andover, the Troggs hooked up with manager/producer Larry Page (who was involved in the Kinks early affairs) in the mid-60s. After a flop debut single, they were fortunate enough to come across a demo of Chip Taylors Wild Thing (which had already been unsuccessfully recorded by the Wild Ones). In the hands of the Troggs, Wild Thing — with its grungy chords and off-the-wall ocarina solo — became a primeval three-chord monster, famous not only in its original hit Troggs version, but in its psychedelic revamping by Jimi Hendrix, who used it to close his famous set at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
Wild Thing made number one in the States, but the Troggs momentum there was impeded by a strange legal dispute which saw their early records simultaneously released on two different labels. Nor did it help that the band didnt tour the U.S. for a couple of years. As a consequence, the fine follow-up singles With a Girl Like You and I Cant Control Myself didnt do as well as they might have. In Britain, it was a different story — they were smashes, although I Cant Control Myself had such an open-hearted lust that it encountered resistance from conservative radio programmers all over the globe.
The Troggs tempered their image on subsequent ballads, which utilized a sort of pre-power ballad approach. These werent bad, and a few of them were British hits, but they werent as fine as the initial blast of singles which established the bands image. Love Is All Around, which restored them to the American Top Ten in 1968, was their finest effort in this vein. It was also their final big hit on either side of the Atlantic.
But the Troggs would keep going for a long, long time. In a sense they were handicapped by their image — they were not intellectuals, certainly, but they werent dumb either. They wrote most of their songs, and their albums were reasonably accomplished, if hardly up to the level of the Kinks or Traffic, containing some nifty surprises like the gothic ballad Cousin Jane, or the tongue-in-cheek psychedelia of Maybe the Madman. By 1970, though, they were struggling. They continued to release a stream of singles, most of which had a straightforward simplicity that was out of step with the progressive rock of the time, all of which flopped, though some were fairly good.
The Troggs image as lunkheads couldnt have been helped by the notorious Troggs Tapes, a 12-minute studio argument that was captured on tape while the band were unawares. The Spinal Tap-like dialog helped keep their cult alive, though, and as punk gained momentum in the mid-70s, they gained belated appreciation as an important influence on bands like the Ramones and (earlier) the MC5. They found enough live work (sometimes on the punk/new wave circuit) to keep going, although their intermittent records generally came to naught. In 1992, they rose to their highest profile in ages when three members of R.E.M., which had covered Love Is All Around, backed the Troggs on the comeback album Athens Andover.