I often end up down music rabbit holes. Start off with something well known and about 5 hours later you've ventured down a massive journey of great music adding all sorts of tracks and albums to your library. Done it countless times across all genres (yes, including classical and opera and so on). Today I stumbled upon a band so obscure that I figured the story behind the band was worth sharing here (and to perhaps get them a few extra listens!).

It all started while browsing more great videos of 1970's New York on YouTube. Someone put a video up to some absolutely monumental sounds. Thankfully someone in the comments of said video was gracious enough to provide an ID to the song used. The track was called Street, by a band called Egor. A quick glance at Tidal brought up the track on one solitary compliation album, 'I'm A Freak Baby... : A Journey Through The British Heavy Psych and Hard Rock Underground Scene 1968-1972'. Try saying that after a few gargles! Anyway, there it was, the track in all it's rough, scratchy glory. Hurrah!

So what? Well the story behind the recording is quite incredible. I did a little more research and discovered the song was recorded in a pub (a bar for non-UK/Ireland folks) in 1970 in East London.

Apparently an unknown man arrived at the pub the night they played a gig. He suspended a microphone above the stage, recorded their set and walked off with the recording. He turned up weeks later and gave the band a record of the recording each. With that he walked off and they never saw or heard from him again.

The band went on to gig on the same circuit as Black Sabbath and rumours went around that Egor opened for Sabbath. One of the band members posted on a forum in 2014 that this wasn't true and that though they gigged on the circuit with Sabbath, they actually opened for another band called Black Widow. Unfortunately a couple of the band passed on and one of them, who was apparently very keen on LSD, disappeared without a trace and is presumed to have died young.

Anyway, cut to more recently and a 'reissue' (for want of a better word) of a split 7" recording of 'Street' appeared on Ancient Grease Records in 3 VERY limited editions (sure one edition had just 13 copies pressed). All are sold out and all probably cost about 820 trillion Pounds now (considering the original 1970 pressing has reportedly never ever surface afaik).

Here's the shop for the vinyl: https://www.ancientgreaserecords.com/

I thought the story behind the song was superb (and reportedly confirmed by band member Nick Diss though of course I stand corrected if anything I've mentioned is inaccurate!). The sad thing is, when you actually listen to Street, you have to stop for a minute and think to yourself, bloody hell, if these guys had actually made it big what other great tracks could they have brought to the table? For a track written in 1970, Street is right up there, and sounds so far ahead of it's time imho. I hope you give it a listen, here's the Tidal link, it may be available elsewhere:

https://tidal.com/browse/track/165255375

"Cool story bro"? Yes, I think it is. Their music reminds me a little of Death (the guys from Detroit who were WAY AHEAD of their time, check out the documentary A Band Called Death for more).

Hopefully more tracks by Egor will be unearthed in the future.

NOTE: The image used is of the reissue vinyl but it also contains the only photos on the Internet (afaik) of the band. I assume that the cover photo if from the gig at The Plough pub in London where the song was record in 1970?

EDIT: After magnifying an image of the reissue sleeve it states that two more tracks from the live set in 1970 have been found on a cassette dub. These are currently being restored so hopefully we will see more music from Egor!?

This track is pretty hot, especially the guitar. The guitar smokes and is very heavy. I wish the bass player could afford a better amp because it would be nice to hear him too.

To be fair though, I’m not sure there is anything ahead of its time here. We’re well into Steve Hackett era Genesis, we’re very nearly post-Hendrix completely, and more than anything to me this sounds like Hawkwind, very much like a lofi Space Ritual (world class awesome record, btw) headed by, looking at the photo...Tony Clifton?

I do know the feeling though of discovering a red hot track on a comp or something and learning that it is the only thing from that act. For example:



That thing haunts my dreams...

EDIT: I would love a sticky post explaining how to make YouTube links...

Glad you enjoyed the track! I'm looking forward to seeing what the two discovered tracks are going to be like. Hopefully more of the same.

I think there is definitely some stuff in the song and the style that puts Egor ahead of their time slightly. That opening riff is superb but as the song progresses I think it has elements of very early glam rock. There is elements of Blockbuster by The Sweet in there I think, which was 1973:



And a tiny bit of Gene Genie maybe? And that was 1972 I think.



The siren idea on Street could well have been lifted by The Sweet maybe?

According to (the always reliable ) Wikipedia, Glam Rock really started around 1971. These guys were doing a sort of version of it a year or more earlier (I think they formed in the late 1960's) though yer man Nick Diss stated in his forum post that Egor were a hard blues band and not hard rock or anything else. Have to agree with you I wish the bass was more prominent but heck there's no way of getting a better recording sadly.

Anyway, I'll roll my turtleneck sweater back up, finish sipping my triple soy hyper skinny vegan cappucino and attempt to ride my Penny Farthing home in my music snob hipster bollock strangling jeans now.

While I want to really love this stuff its all lesser or B versions of stuff as mentioned, Hawkwind, Sabbath and others that I can't think of right now.

Did find Elias Hulk about 6 or 8 years ago, cool prog rock heavy metal stuff but after a while you do understand why they only had 1 album.
Also the prices of this original stuff is just stupid crazy, so if you want to own it you pay a crazy price.
At the time Hulk was selling for a grand for the album but now you can get mastered CDs for cheap.

This sounds cool and wish they kept doing stuff as some others but its just the way it is, no money to back and they have to get a job.

Even that one band Death, it sounds cool but again its just not there so they only have a small portion of stuff out there.

As for timing...this record was made live in a club and clubs back then were more important than radio. If they had been signed and payed an advance and rented a house up north and practiced and recorded it there the records would have been hitting shops...maybe 9 months later, maybe even a year.

Things moved SO fast musically back then. What happened between 1960 and 1975 is incredible. Space Ritual was recorded in 1972, consisted totally of already known material...I’d say these guys were keeping pace with the cutting edge but not necessarily defining it.