Incredible Hog

Like so many early 70s bands, the three-piece London-based group Incredible Hog were a by product of the 60s British Blues Boom. In an attempt to mix melodic pop with heavy rock and intelligent, meaningful lyrics, guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Ken Gordon and bassist Jim Holmes, who'd actually been at school together and played in the band Speed Auction, formed Incredible Hog in early 1972, the name actually being a play on the then highly popular 'Incredible Hulk' comic book series. Various auditions finally brought the group a permanent drummer in the shape of South African-born Tony Awin. However, getting any kind of gigs at the time was not easy, so in an effort to solve the problem the band set up their own club, The Pig Sty, which was based initially in Ilford and then in Forest Gate, East London. By booking adverts in the then prestigious Melody Maker, the band's name started to get known though they still failed to attract the attention of a record company. A determined Ken Gordon then marched into the offices of Dart Records and refused to leave until someone had listened to his band's demo tape. After waiting all day, and having been threatened with ejection by the police, he managed to get the tape heard and within two weeks, Incredible Hog were signed by the label! The album was recorded in 1971/72 at Mayfair Sound Studios in London’s West End! We were all very disappointed with our sound and felt that it only captured half of our live power in performance. I was not allowed to turn my Marshall 100 watt amp to full volume, which I needed in order to create a powerful distorted sound (we didn’t have “Master Volume” in those days), so I was constantly struggling to find enough guitar sustain. I was also in a separate sound booth from Jim and Tony and I was unable to make eye contact to give them their cues; we never really arranged the songs Tony and Jim just followed me! The album took about 10 random days over a period of several weeks to record; this was because we were using the downtime of a former cabaret singer Paul Raven who had changed his name to Gary Glitter! The credit for the FX must go to our producer Roger Watson and our sound engineer Trevor Vallis who had the imagination to find an inspirational sound effect related to the lyrics! We did not want so many ‘Sound Effects’ on the recording’s we wanted a ‘Heavy Rock’ sound not ‘Pop’! My strongest memory was walking out of the studio when they put the ‘Baby’ in ‘Tadpole’; but we realise now that it gave the band an unusual sound of its own!