The Sect

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.

This double-CD set is essential listening – not just for Downliners Sect fans, but for anyone who's ever worn out copies of any of the first three Rolling Stones albums or owns anything by the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, Them, the Graham Bond Organisation, the Animals, early John Mayall, the Shadows of Knight, or any of countless blues-inspired American garage bands. In content, it's approximately equivalent to Charly's Yardbirds Ultimate Collection, encompassing the complete contents of the Downliners Sect's three original LPs, from the bluesy "Baby, What's Wrong" to the pounding, proto-psychedelic "Glendora." Thus, listeners don't get the EP and demo tracks "Cadillac," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Beautiful Delilah," or "Shame Shame Shame," and "I Can't Get Away from You" and "Roses" are also missing from the other end of their history – all of which are present, along with a lot else, on See for Miles' Definitive Downliners Sect: The Singles A's & B's, which is the perfect complement to this set.

Downliners Sect - The Definitive Downliners Sect: Singles A's & B's (1994) {See For Miles Records SEECD398 rec 1963-1967}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 308 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 185 Mb
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© 1963-67, 1994 See For Miles Records | SEECD 398
Rock / Blues Rock / British Beat / British Invasion

Definitive, yes – both sides of all eight of their Columbia singles, both sides of their one Pye single, their 1965 The Sect Sing Sick Songs EP, their ultra-rare self-released Nite at Gt. Newport Street EP from early 1964, and demos of "Cadillac" and "Roll over Beethoven" from 1963 and 1964, respectively. Twenty-nine songs in all, spanning 1963-1967, many of which didn't make it onto the three albums they released during this period. Good? No, not really. As performers the Sect didn't only verge on inept, they were at times downright careless, as if they couldn't be bothered to polish things a bit in the studio.

The second Downliners Sect album has always confused the uninitiated because of its title. At the insistence of their producer, Mike Collier, the band plays some country music such as "Ballad of the Hounds" and "Wolverton Mountain," but also branches into folkier sounds on "Hard Travellin'" (done in country style, but known best in the early '60s as a folk standard) and even brushes up against protest music on "Little Play Soldiers," but the big surprise comes with gospel numbers like "Wait for the Light to Shine" and "Waiting in Heaven." The group's primitive nature comes through loud and clear on the loud Bo Diddley-based backbeat on "I Got Mine" and most of the rest here, which not only makes a lot of it work really well but generally turns this album into yet another brilliant outing for the band, if not quite the same as the first album.

The Rock Sects In was the Downliners Sect's final official studio album, though you'd never guess from the intensity with which they approach covers of "Hang on Sloopy" and "He Was a Square" – they were becoming less enchanted with the direction in which music was going around them, and losing enthusiasm for recordings, in particular, but that didn't stop them from generating this fuzzed-out classic. They could still hold their own with anyone in music this side of the Kinks, and on "I'm Looking for a Woman," with its shimmering Bo Diddley guitar pyrotechnics, they even managed to outdo the Stones on their similarly conceived "Please Go Home." The sound is beautiful throughout the CD, and there's a very full and informative annotation of the group's history, but it's the presence of bonus tracks like the fuzzed-out lust-fest "All Night Worker" that make this essential listening.