It was the late ’70s and disco and adolescent stadium rock — Styx, Journey, etc. — were the dominant musical strains at my high school. Like many of my friends, I was listening to Boston, Kansas and the like, along with country rockers like the Eagles and California bands like Fleetwood Mac. I had yet to connect with the massive upheavals of the time that would alter music forever, and was resistant to bands that I now find essential.
That’s when I first encountered Dave Edmunds and his British cohorts on the radio — Gram Parker, Joe Jackson and Nick Lowe — and heard something different, something that made ultimate sense to me.
These late ’70s English rockers offered an alternative to the overly theatrical and pretentious rot that I had been listening to, something cleaner, something tighter. They were an entry point into the punk and roots rock movements that have defined my own musical tastes for the past 25 years.
Edmunds was among the first of the rockabilly/roots rockers to bust through, electrifying me with songs like “Crawling from the Wreckage” and “Girls Talk”, from the sparkling Repeat When Necessary. His guitar-and-drums driven sound was very different from the ponderous, over-produced music of the time. It had a striking, vital beat and its simplicity was moving in and of itself.
That Edmunds was not the best of the roots rockers is not important. When his music is placed alongside that of The Blasters, for instance, its flaws become apparent. Edmunds can sound a little too polished and a little too careful in his recreation of the late ’50s/early ’60s rock sound, whereas The Blasters fully inhabited their music, creating something dangerous and new. But Edmunds was — for me and many of my friends — a touchstone, lending me entry into a musical world where groups such as The Blasters and X and The Clash held sway.
The early summer release of the solid, if flawed, compilation disc From Small Things: The Best of Dave Edmunds offers a useful overview of Edmunds’ career, although there are a number of songs that I wish had been included. Conspicuously absent is any material from Rockpile’s Seconds of Please (recently re-released by Sony).
The disc features some of the more obvious material — such as his cover of Smiley Lewis’ “I Hear You Knockin'”, which features Edmunds’ vocal processed through a telephone. The song — which hit the top 10 in both the United States and England — was probably his biggest hit and remains one of a handful of Edmunds songs that continue to cycle through the classic-rock radio format. It also includes a pair of mid-’70s British hits that hearken back to late ’50s soul-style ballads, “Born to Be With You” and “Let It Be Me”.
The key to understanding this disc is the inclusion of about a half-dozen songs from his Rockpile heyday, music that could not be recorded under the name Rockpile because of contractual obligations. Edmunds and Lowe each recorded two solo albums backed by Rockpile. The tunes — “I Knew the Bride”, “Crawling from the Wreckage”, live versions of “Girls Talk” and “Ju Ju Man” and his cover of John Fogerty’s “Almost Saturday Night” from his first post-Rockpile album Twangin’ — are upbeat rockers that give a full sense of what Edmunds can do. (Licensing issues forced the inclusion of the live cuts instead of the original and superior studio versions.)
Two other songs from 1982’s D.E. 7th — a crunchy version of Bruce Springsteen’s “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)” and the country rave “Warmed Over Kisses (Leftover Love)” — are also excellent examples of Edmunds at his best. He takes the Springsteen tune, released by Bruce on the recent Essential Springsteen box, and makes it sound like a vintage piece of rockabilly. “Warmed Over Kisses” rings with an authentic Nashville feel.
“Information” and “Slipping Away”, from his work with Jeff Lynne, are solidly listenable songs, but not of the same quality as his work with Nick Lowe. They have an infectious beat but seem canned. And the soundtrack cuts — “Stay With Me Tonight”, “Do You Wanna Dance” and “Run, Rudolph Run” — are interesting only because they are available as part of a larger Edmunds package. “Do You Wanna Dance”, in particular, lacks any real energy and, when compared to The Beach Boys’ version, seems perfunctory. I’d rather have seen inclusion of his blistering version of Bob Seger’s “Get Out of Denver” and the hit “Queen of Hearts” from Repeat When Necessary.
Overall, From Small Things: The Best of Dave Edmunds is a serviceable compilation, worth the purchase for Edmunds’ fans looking for a quick overview on compact disc (all of my Edmunds albums are on vinyl), while we wait for something more definitive to come along.