Scorpio Rising: Peace Frog (1992)

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Scorpio Rising: Peace Frog (1992)

For a short while Scorpio Rising out of Liverpool seemed to point a new direction in British rock post-Stone Roses. They formed the year of the Stone Roses' impressive debut and had a similarly psychedelic approach to rock guitars and dance beats.

After their single Watermelon and EP IF, they were in demand on the live circuit, released their album Pig Symphony and were doing all the right press.

Then they were courted by Seymour Stein of the famous US label Sire (Ramones etc) who flew to the Marquee to see them. They signed and it was all go.

Then it all went wrong: they shed their bassist on the subsequent tour, recorded their album for Sire with Steve Osbourne who'd done the Happy Monday's Thrills'n'Pills and Bellyaches . . . and Sire refused to release it.

The band broke up in '94.

They left a small legacy and an untrained ear might hear a lot of Manchester-baggy in their sound. A trained ear will hear that too, to be honest.

But they had an aggressive edge which many in the Madchester movement didn't even want to go near.

As witnessed by this, their version of the Doors' Peace Frog. Written by Jim Morrison and Robbie Kreiger in the studio, it refers to various autobiograhical matters in Morrison's background (as a child seeing the car accident which involved some Native Americans, being arrested in New Haven) as well as the '68 street riots in Chicago at the Democratic Convention.

Unusual stuff for a band from Liverpool to cover at the height of E-days -- but they did name themselves after Kenneth Anger's cult classic movie so . . . 


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