GODDO — Who Cares (review)

Album · 1978 · Hard Rock

3.5/5 · 2016-05-14
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Goddo was formed by Greg Godovitz after he left Fludd in the mid-seventies. After a single release of a cover of “Louie Louie”, he put together a band with Gino Scarpelli on guitars and Doug Inglis on drums. Their first album, self-titled, was released in 1977 and featured a hard rock sound with a punk edge. They began recording the second album later that year and it was released in 1978. The full album title is “If Indeed It's Lonely at the Top... Who Cares... It's Lonely at the Bottom Too”. This is usually just shortened to “Who Cares”

For this album, the band toughened up their hard rock sound, though only five of the nine tracks are of this style. Greg Godovitz (bass, vocals) sings with a sly and smooth, early American punk style but easily goes rough-edged when necessary. There are two ballads, however, where he chooses to sing smooth and clean, showing his ability to match his voice to the song style.

The opening track, “Tough Times” is an acoustic number with a cello. When Godovitz sings, “I used to be a bad boy,” you might think of The Who's “Behind Blue Eyes” for a moment. The song harkens back to those early seventies acoustic numbers about streetwise miscreants. It's short and quickly gives way to “Cock On”, an exciting hard rock number where the band's punk sound is given room to participate. It's a song about a young band playing at a high school but behaving too rowdily. They get banned but the girls and boys love the “up-yours attitude”. “The band explodes on stage / they really rock the roll / the singer splits his pants / the girls all lose control / It's c-c-c-c-c-cock on!”

After a rousing rocker, they suddenly go back to acoustic and give us a strummed ballad with harmonica and some percussion for “You Can Never Go Back Anymore”. It's not a bad piece though and once again there is a reference back to the earlier seventies with this.

Goddo then delivers two more great hard rockers with “Drop Dead (That's Who)” and “Sweet Thing”. You can find a video for “Sweet Thing” on YouTube that uses clips from some late seventies teen lust movie called “Pom Pom Girls”. This is a naughty little boy's fantasy number about a sixteen-year-old girl who gets her cake and eats it too. It once appeared on a heavy metal compilation back in the early eighties.

Either the end of side one or the beginning of side two has a short spoken track called “People in the News”. An interviewer meets with Swine Flu, the lead singer of the punk band The Degenerats, and asks what he thinks of the Goddo album so far. Swine Flu never replies. We only hear a toilet flushing.

The first track on side two then is a late seventies rock number with a heavy sound but without distortion and a saxophone. It sounds a bit like something Nazareth might have done on “Malice in Wonderland”. Then we are back to hard rock with “Oh Carole (Kiss My Whip)”. The track opens with a band member of the local punk rock group Zombat telling Carole Pope of the band Rough Trade to, “uh, kiss, uh, my whip-ah”. I don't know if these punk rock bands are real. I suppose they were made up for the album but who knows, right? The song takes a poke at Carole Pope, who really is the singer of the real band Rough Trade.

And then we get to a piano ballad, show casing Godovitz's smooth and emotive singing style in the song “Once Again”. They save the best for last, though, with their heaviest, grittiest, and Marshal stack knocking-over track “Too Much Carousing”. It's an awesome close to the album!

In 1994, the album was reissued with several bonus tracks that included alternate versions of songs, backing tracks, and an interview with Greg Godovitz. Bullseye Records Canada picked up Goddo in the late nineties and was in charge of the band's catalogue for several years. Recently though, the band are not with any label and their first three albums have become rarities.

Goddo have released six studio albums in total and four live albums plus a DVD or two. This album remains their biggest selling studio album. If you can find a copy for a reasonable price, consider yourself very fortunate. You can hear many of the tracks on YouTube and find other Goddo songs and some live performances there as well.