The Downliners Sect are a British R&B and blues-based rock band of the 1960s beat boom era. Stylistically, they were similar to blues-based bands, such as The Yardbirds, The Pretty Things and the Rolling Stones, playing basic R&B on their first album The Sect. Critic Richie Unterberger wrote: “The Sect didn’t as much interpret the sound of Chess Records as attack it, with a finesse that made the Pretty Things seem positively suave in comparison.” (More from Wikipedia)
Ron Silva says of the meeting of the Crawdaddys with Greg Shaw: “In my opinion it would be fairly safe to say that [Steve] Potterf and I blew Shaw’s mind that day. We walked in, and Potterf had this absolutely devout Brian Jones thing going with the hair, and we both had the complete Downliners Sect ’64 look from head to toe. It was totally ridiculous and great at the same time. Shaw said, ‘Go back to San Diego and make an album, preferably for next to nothing, if you don’t mind.’ We didn’t.”
(January 2015/2)
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With their experience in Norway fresh on their minds, Mal and the Primitives decided to become one of several expatriate British rock bands that began to appear elsewhere in Europe by the mid-1960’s. The Downliners Sect and Alexis Korner followed a similar route. Perhaps the best known is the Sorrows; unable to follow up their 1965 hit “Take a Heart” in their home country (also included on Nuggets II), the group relocated to Italy in 1966 and recorded a highly esteemed Italian album in 1968, Old Songs New Songs. I have the first official reissue of Old Songs New Songs in 2009 on Wooden Hill Records; a second CD includes an early demo of the album plus a concert performance from 1980. A full cover by the Sorrows of the early Bee Gees hit “New York Mining Disaster 1941” is included on this early demo; only a single line from “New York Mining Disaster 1941” made it onto their album.
(May 2015)
