Animal God Of The Streets

UBIQUITOUS ISN’T the word for it: Kim Fowley has placed himself just left of the epicentre of almost every major noisequake to strike Los Angeles since rock ‘n’ roll first kicked its way out of the belly of the blues.

This über-hustler learned the ropes alongside Spector and Sonny Bono, crawled Sunset Boulevard with Jim Morrison, wrote tunes for The Byrds, sang with The Mothers, participated in Warhol’s Ciao Manhattan, mooched around with Iggy, co-produced Jonathan Richman’s classic debut, fathered The Runaways and dispensed fatherly advice to Guns ‘N’ Roses.

But of course, apart from all the miscellaneous monkey business, Fowley also made records like Animal God Of The Streets, this 1974 curio which has found a new lease of life on the Jungle label.

The sounds on Animal God have aged surprisingly well, and serve as a fine reminder of a time when Hollywood underdogs didn’t pretend to be creating tablets of stone or amendments to the constitution; they just seized on the latest teen crazes – from surf to psychedelia to stooge-rock – with a mixture of genuine love and predatory shrewdness, then cranked out the product and let it fall where it may.

Given the vintage of this stuff, it’s no surprise that the record kicks off and concludes with hi-octane rockers like ‘Night Of The Hunter’ and ‘Ain’t Got No Transportation’, songs which could’ve been tailor-made for The Stooges, The MC5 or The Flamin’ Groovies.

The real Howl, however, is the ‘LA Woman’/‘When The Music’s Over’ style tour-de-force ‘Is America Dead?’, where this arch-scammer gets to indulge his Fowl-est Screaming Lord Iggy Morrison instincts over an eight-minute throb. The rest of the agenda is equally colourful: a note for note retread of Link Wray’s ‘Rumble’, voodoo hoodoos like ‘California Swamp Dance’ and ‘Hobo Wine’, and a gritty soul ballad that answers to the name of ‘Dangerous Visions’.

Rock ‘n’ roll needs Kim Fowley almost as much as Kim Fowley needs rock ‘n’ roll. Animal God Of The Streets is a righteous wail from the crypt.