Rockpile - Seconds of Pleasure LP
I was introduced to this as something of a “lost” Nick Lowe record, which isn’t really fair since fellow U.K. rocker Dave Edmunds actually conceived the band, with Lowe joining a few years later. Pub-rock, power-pop and 60s-era Everly Brothers vocal harmony rock are tossed in a blender on this one, producing some foundational English new wave on the bands’ one and only full-band LP.
The history of the band is all over the place, so I’m going to paraphrase. Dave Edmunds records a solo album titled Rockpile in the early 70s, touring under the name Dave Edmunds and Rockpile. The band breaks up, and Edmunds heads back to the studio to record a bunch of other people’s records, including a power-pop take of Nick Lowe’s pub-rock outfit Brinsley Schwarz. Lowe ends up doing some session work on Edmunds recordings, a new incarnation of Rockpile comes together with Lowe on bass, does some touring and ends up backing both Lowe and Edmunds on their solo output. To make things more confusing, the members are signed to different labels (Lowe to the seminal Stiff Records, Edmunds to Zeppelin’s Swan Song label) making the release of an actual Rockpile band record a licensing nightmare. As the 70s end, the band backs both Lowe and Edmunds on two hit-producing solo records (fookin’ ‘ell, this is the band that produced “Cruel To Be Kind”), contracts are fulfilled and Rockpile uses the window to release their one and only LP, Seconds of Pleasure, on F-Beat (owned by one of the Stiff Records co-founders) in 1980. The record features Lowe and Edmunds sharing the song-writing duties, and all four members take turns on lead vocals.
Nick Lowe might claim two of the biggest hits (album opener “Teacher Teacher” and the original version of his “When I Write The Book”), but the whole record is chock-full of gorgeous power-pop jams and perfectly executed roots-rock throwbacks. After searching for the better part of a year, I found my copy in the crates underneath the racks at Phonoselect. Pro tip: there' was a second one in that crate if you’re up for doing a little digging yourself.
