Olga's Girls (1964)

The group is still called Blues Incorporated, but without Cyril Davies or Long John Baldry, who were present on the first record. Recording at Liverpool's Cavern Club was more a gimmick than anything else, and the music is not as well made or exciting as the group's first album. This record shows Alexis Korner's more big-band type blues work, favoring horns. At the Cavern was a good album, but not one that was going to make much noise amid the work of the Rolling Stones, the Animals, or the Yardbirds. Originally released in 1964, At the Cavern was reissued on CD in 2006 and includes bonus tracks.

This is the group's rawest and most R&B-oriented album, firmly rooted in the same influences as the Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things and including punk covers of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, et al., along with a few originals in the same vein. For those who don't get enough rough-and-ready British-style R&B and rock & roll from the debut albums by the Stones or Pretty Things, or find the playing by either band a little too tame and mannered, The Sect should be their next stop. Nobody on the British isles, other than maybe Brian Jones in his private moments on the guitar and harp, was more charmingly primitive than the Downliners Sect were on this album, which trades so freely in Bo Diddley riffs and the latter's signature beat that latecomers could be forgiven for thinking that this band had a hand in inventing them.