Rare Earth were a Heavy Metal band (sorry, I couldn’t resist that pun)! ‘Get Ready’ has pride of place on my personal ‘Rock On’ playlist amongst Clapton, Tull, Doors, Pink Floyd, AC/DC and Steppenwolf. Seriously, this song is that good!

Unfortunately, they never really became mainstream. Though funnily enough, I first heard them on ‘A Date With You’ when I was maybe 18. The sing just stuck in my head and it took me about 10 years to find a copy for myself! Frankly, even at the hostels, they were a niche act. Which is a real shame, because they had the makings of a great music machine, able to reimagine other people’s songs in ways that were inconceivable to the original artists. Their biggest hits were a “rock reworking” of soulful hits from the Temptations “I’m losing You” and “Get Ready” and both of these were more successful that the originals.

“Get Ready” is originally a Smokey Robinson ‘Motown’ tune sung by The Temptations from ’66. You can imagine what it sounds like – melodic, lyrical, smooth 60s dance music. It’s a love song. Ella Fitzgerald covered it in a stomping R&B beat and it became bit more urgent. Rare Earth’s version is a 21 min explosion of mind-bending lead guitar riffs, thrumming bass guitar that makes your appendix vibrate, keyboards that sing and drums that blow your head off. I recently introduced Naresh to the full 21-minute version at his house – at high volume on his huge speakers and fabulous amp. When we finished , Naresh sat there shell-shocked, with me grinning from ear to ear watching his reaction!

This one track occupied the entire B side on the Get Ready album , which also had the excellent ‘Tobacco Road’ on side A. Unfortunately, its difficult to get air play for a 21-minute song. So, a 3-minute cut down was done and that very quickly got to #4 on the US Billboard charts. Can you imagine how much good stuff was left on the editing floor to do that? The entire band were amazing musicians but the star was their lead singer and drummer – Peter Rivera. The skill needed to play like that and sing lead vocals at the same time is mind boggling!

Here’s the 21-minute original for all you head-bangers. It is one of my top 10 favourite songs. It MUST be heard at volume turned up to 11. You will be rocked!