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Rog & Pip, Our Revolution: Doin’ Alright Today

Like a lot of “lost” groups the origins of Rog & Pip are winding and complicated. The duo of Roger Lomas and Philip “Pip” Whitcher trace their origins back to mid-’60s Coventry outfit The Sorrows, which found success not in the UK, but in Italy, and relocated to capitalize on a successful tour. Lomas and Whitcher both wound up leaving The Sorrows and worked with each other in a number of iterations, including Rog & Pip, the bands Renegade and The Zips, before reuniting The Sorrows in the late ’70s. They had anticipated commercial success in working together initially, but no such luck, and their collaboration fizzled, their material faded, and more or less sat waiting for Rise Above Relics to step in and give it its due. Whether or not Rise Above head Lee Dorrian has a personal connection to these songs, I don’t know, but the shared Coventry origin and the fact that Dorrian put together the layout for this new collection, Our Revolution, at least speaks to a general appreciation beyond it’s-heavy-’70s-and-hasn’t-been-reissued-yet novelty. Rog & Pip are joined by various other players throughout the 12 songs/39 minutes of the compilation/reissue, and the sound varies from raw heavy riffers like “Evil Hearted Woman” to the deceptively memorable psychedelic bliss of “It’s a Lonely World” and even some Thin Lizzy-style dual-guitar shenanigans on “Why Do You Treat Me Like That?” and the glammy “My Revolution” and “Why Won’t You Do What I Want?” the latter of which opens the proceedings on a particularly catchy note.

“Why Won’t You Do What I Want?” is a suitable leadoff in that it captures what Rog & Pip really had to offer an audience at their best — quality songwriting and a sounds somewhere between glam’s swaggering showoffery and heavy ’70s swing. It’s an engaging blend, the one having evolved out of the other, and Rog & Pip put it to good use on the opener, offering early Alice Cooper Band-ish grit prior to “My Revolution”‘s guitar-led vocal layering. “Rock with Me” sounds earlier and is more rock and roll at its core, but in the context of the A and B sides at the start, those roots are there, and while Our Revolution might seem front-loaded, there’s strong material front to back. Songs like “Hot Rodder” and the more emotional proto-doom of “Gold” stand out stylistically, as does the aforementioned “It’s a Lonely World,” but even “Doin’ Alright Tonight” has a solid hook, fuzzed-out guitars and a touch of boogie in the groove. It’s not quite as shuffling as “Why Do You Treat Me Like That?” arrives late in the running order and feels like a complement to the opener in more than just the construction of its title, but still, it works for what it is. Closing single “Warlord” stands up to Blue Cheer‘s blown-out sensibility and rounds out Our Revolution as one of the several could-have-been-classics included, a solo ranging into some psychedelic layer work, but never losing sight of the heavy chug at its core. Whatever band they may have been in at the time, Rog & Pip brought some essential elements to their collaboration, and that gives Our Revolution a sense of flow from song to song here.

The liner notes include pics of Whitcher and Lomas over the years they worked together and a detailed biography from their days together in The Sorrows on through Lomas winning a Grammy for recording Lee “Scratch” Perry‘s 2002 album, Jamaican E.T., after spending years working in the early ska scene with the likes of The Specials and The Bodysnatchers. It all makes for a commendable document of a collaboration worthy of the attention it here receives, but that wouldn’t be the case if the music didn’t hold up its end of the bargain. Our Revolution holds no shortage of academic value simply for existing — that is, there are some collectors who will want it simply because it comes from the psychedelic/heavy rock era of the late ’60s and early ’70s — but Whitcher and Lomas made a formidable songwriting partnership. No doubt it was realizing that which led them to work together in the first place with an aim toward rock stardom, but while that may not have panned out, at least the tracks they produced are able to be appreciated by those now who can follow their own musical influences back to this time, even if filtered through the more modern heavy underground that’s developed since. Maybe that’s a cold way to approach it, but whether one takes that route or just digs into Rog & Pip to hear some underrated classic heavy rock, Our Revolution has no trouble meeting expectation with well-honed craftsmanship and appeal the timeliness of which seems to have come again.

Rog & Pip, “Warlord”

Rog & Pip at Rise Above Records

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