The Fat Angel Sings

As with most Decca releases of the period, the name of the group was conspicuously absent from the front cover and on the back of the LP they were introduced as The Angry Young Them with an essay on this theme declaring: “These five young rebels are outrageously true to themselves. Defiant! Angry! Sad! They are honest to the point of insult!”

The Angry Young Them is the first album from the Northern Irish rock and roll group Them. The album was released in the UK in June 1965. The band’s lead singer and songwriter was Van Morrison. In the U.S., the album was released as Them with partly different tracks.This is the first UK album for Them.
And for me, the best of Van are the early Them recordings.
I know most people don’t agree, saying this is apprenticeship stuff, the real genius was around the corner.
Mystic Eyes is the perfect album opener, and the rest that follows is terrific.
You Just Can’t Win is a classic, and should be better known.
Two tracks, Little Girl, and I Gave My Love a Diamond, are available in two different versions, the album versions here I prefer to the versions on The Story of Them compilation, also known as Them Gold (double album).
Single hits like Here Comes the Night, and Baby Please Don’t Go, don’t appear here. But Gloria does.
The album that followed , Them Again, is also impressive.

Six of the songs on the album were Morrison originals, including the famous garage band anthem “Gloria“. Another song on the album, “Mystic Eyes“, was a spontaneous creation that came out of the band just “busking around” in Morrison’s words and after seven minutes of instrumental playing he impulsively threw in the words of a song he had been working on. The lengthy versions of “Gloria” that the band performed at the Maritime and the ten-minute recording of “Mystic Eyes” have never surfaced. All that is left of the “Mystic Eyes” performance is the little over 2¹⁄₂ minutes on the album that remained after splicing out from the beginning and ending. “You Just Can’t Win” was a Dylan inspired song about a gold digger, set in specific places in London such as Camden Town. “Little Girl” was about a boy’s obsession with a fourteen-year-old school girl (an earlier take on Lord’s Taverners charity album had been deleted when a four-letter word was heard in the fade out at the end). “If You And I Could Be As Two” starts with a spoken introduction by Morrison with an aggressive Irish accent. Three Bert Berns originals were included and a cover of John Lee Hooker‘s “Don’t Look Back” was considered by Morrison to be his finest vocal to date

• Van Morrison – vocals, harmonica, tenor sax
• Peter Bardens – keyboards & organ
• Billy Harrison – guitar
• Alan Henderson – bass
• John McAuley – drums, piano, harmonica

Tracklist

00:00 1) Mystic Eyes
02:47 2) If You and I Could Be As Two
05:47 3) Little Girl
08:18 4) Just a Little Bit
10:44 5) I Gave My Love a Diamond
13:37 6) Gloria
16:20 7) You Just Can’t Win
18:48 8) Go On Home Baby
21:30 9) Don’t Look Back
24:56 10) I Like It Like That
28:18 11) I’m Gonna Dress in Black
31:57 12) Bright Lights, Big City
34:33 13) My Little Baby
36:48 14) (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66