The Troggs - British Invation/Rock&Roll
29. Jan. 2007

Well looky here, the musicvideoblog is back, finally. I've been having some trouble with the blog-system here on MySpace. The problem was that I couldn't access it. I deleted all the cookies but no luck, than I deleted them again and finally I can access everything so here is a long awaited blog and this time I have chosen to talk about the Troggs. I will be posting this again every Friday or Saturday from now on (I hope). Anyways, hope you like it.

In 1966 Larry Page, a former manager of the band The Kinks, signed a band called The Troggs. The name is a shortening of the word troglodyte, which means "cave dweller". The band was formed in Andover, England, in 1964 and was led by the singer Peg Presley. The band, which mostly wrote their own material, gave out their first single in 1966 but it flopped. Then The Troggs caught their break as they came across a demo of a song by Chip Taylor, which had already been unsuccessfully recorded by the Wild Ones. The song was "Wild Things" and was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Troggs were however not able to maintain their success in the USA. They were impeded by a strange lawsuit which saw their early records simultaneously released on two different labels. The fact that they didn't tour the USA for a couple of years did not help either. Because of this their next singles, "With a Girl Like You" and "I Can't Control Myself" did not do well there. In Britain the singles were smashing hits, although "I Can't Control Myself" had such an open-hearted lust that it encountered resistance from conservative radio programmers all over the globe.

The Troggs tried to reinvent them self as a power-ballad band but few of their ballads became hits. The flower-ballad "Love is All Around Me" was a great success however and one of the Troggs best know song. It reached the American Top Ten in 1968 but it was the last big hit the Troggs ever had. The band kept on struggling in to the 70's but to no avail because their straightforward simplicity was out of place in the progressive rock of the era.

The Troggs kept quite a cult following though and that was largely due to the notorious Troggs Tapes, a 12-minute studio argument that was captured on tape while the band were unawares, with a dialog which can only remind people of the non-intelligent dialog of Spinal Tap. As punk gained momentum in the mid-'70s, they gained belated appreciation as an important influence on bands like the Ramones and (earlier) the MC5. They found enough live work (sometimes on the punk/new wave circuit) to keep going, although their records generally flopped. In 1992, they rose to their highest profile in ages when three members of R.E.M., which had covered "Love Is All Around," backed the Troggs on the comeback album Athens Andover.

Wild Thing:

With a Girl Like You:

I Can't Control Myself:

Love is All Around:

Any Way That You Want Me (then Wild Thing and I Can't Control Myself. I couldn't find Any Way That You Want Me where there were no others songs with it.)