Jolly Tambourine Man – “Apple Strudle Man / Sweater in Sri Lanka”
The early 80’s in Canada had one of the craziest independent music scenes, we had bands like Voice and Welcome Home dropping their EP’s in Edmonton and Montreal, respectively. In Toronto, we had Steve Rhodes and Stew Black releasing music as ‘Jolly Tambourine Man‘
Now, the A-Side (Or B-Side), is the bands best known song, “Apple Strudle Man” which opens with some crazy percussion and drums, the guitar is pretty intense too. We also get some crazy accordion playing on this one before going back into the guitar. Steve Rhodes comes out on vocals, and he has this dark, almost Nivek Ogre sound to him. The song even has wolves howling on it. At least I think that is what it is. You can listen and watch the music video here.
The B-Side (or BB Side) is “Sweater in Sri Lanka” which definitely has more of that punk sound to it, it’s loud and heavy with the droning vocals, and pounding percussion and bass lines. Honestly, I do know there are cassettes of Jolly Tambourine Man that appear out there, I’d love to get my hands on one of those because this single has been pretty good, it’s right up my alley with a lot of what my work playlist is.
Catalog Number:
ALS/03
Credits:
Producer, Scratch & Additional Percussion – Michael Sarazen
Vocals – Steve Rhodes
Guitar & Vocals – Stew Black
Drums & Incidental Guitar – Ian Burton
Accordion – Caroline Savage
Percussion – Mike Armstrong
Sax – Howard Zephyr
Recorded & Mixed at Wellesley Studios, January 1984
Engineer – Jeff McCulloch
Distributed by Record Peddler, 115 Queen St E. Toronto
Released:
1984
Find it on Discogs
