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Pearls Before Swine was an American psychedelic folk band formed by Tom Rapp in 1965 in Eau Gallie, now part of Melbourne, Florida. They released six albums between 1967 and 1971, before Rapp launched a solo career.
With high school friends Wayne Harley (banjo, mandolin), Lane Lederer (bass, guitar) and Roger Crissinger (piano, organ), Rapp wrote and recorded some songs which, inspired by the Fugs, they sent to the avant-garde ESP-Disk label in New York. The group took its name from a Bible passage: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine ...." (Mat. 7:6, KJV), meaning: do not give things of value to those who will not understand or appreciate them. They were quickly signed up, and recorded One Nation Underground (1967), featuring songs of mysticism, protest, melancholia, and some controversy in the case of "Miss Morse", which spelled out an obscenity in Morse code. The album eventually sold some 200,000 copies, although management and contractual problems meant that the band received little reward for its success.
The strongly anti-war themed Balaklava (1968) followed, inspired by the Charge of the Light Brigade. Rapp has said "The first two albums are probably considered the druggiest, and I had never done any drugs at that point. I smoked Winston cigarettes at that time, so these are all Winston-induced hallucinations." The album covers featured paintings by Bosch and Brueghel, while the records themselves included interpretations of the writings of Tolkien and Herodotus as well as archive recordings from the 1890s, with innovatively arranged songs using an eclectic variety of instruments....(read more at Wikipedia)
Pearls Before Swine achieved little fame or commercial success, but became an enduring cult band whose reputation lasted beyond their era and influenced other artists. In 1975, the NME Book Of Rock wrote that the "music of Velvet Underground, Nico, Lou Reed, David Bowie shows strong influence of Rapp's swimmy, mystical lyrics and arrangements" (pp 282-3). Later artists who cited them as an influence included Dream Academy and This Mortal Coil. An article in Zigzag on the origins of the Sex Pistols described the young Sid Vicious, before he joined the band, "with a Pearls Before Swine LP under his arm"(ref.).
Although Peel didn't play tracks by them very often - only a few show plays have been found so far - their LPs for Reprise Records were favourites of Bob Harris, who featured tracks by them, and from Tom Rapp's solo albums, in his early 1970s Sounds Of The Seventies shows. The Use Of Ashes (1970) included Rapp's song "Rocket Man", the inspiration for Elton John's chart hit of the same name.
Nothing was heard from Tom Rapp after his final solo gig in 1976 (as support act to Patti Smith), and rumours circulated that he had died of a drug overdose, no doubt fuelled by the dreamy and sometimes doomy atmosphere of his songs, but it turned out that he (like Barry Melton of Country Joe & The Fish) had left the music scene to work as a civil rights lawyer - and, in contrast to Pearls Before Swine's image in the UK as a mysterious psychedelic band (their album sleeves featured reproductions of paintings rather than group photos) once the group began touring in the early '70s they became a politically active band, in much the same way as CJ&TF.
In August 1999, Peel revisited the group by playing their 'Morning Song' track from the LP 'One Nation Underground' on two of his programmes and made the point that the album was one of the few records to have Esperanto writings on the back of the cover[1].
Festive Fifty Entries[]
None.
Sessions[]
None
Other Shows Played[]
Morning Song
List may well be incomplete - please add further plays/details if known
unknown Top Gear late 1967: Uncle John: Song (album - One Nation Underground) ESP-Disk
06 November 1968: Images Of April (album - Balaklava) ESP Disk 1075
10 July 1971: unknown (mentioned in David Cavanagh, Good Night And Good Riddance, pp 106-7)
24 August 1999: Morning Song (LP-One Nation Underground)' (ESP Disk)
August 1999 (FSK): Morning Song (LP-One Nation Underground)' (ESP Disk)
↑This was because, according to Wikipedia, the ESP-Disk label "originally existed to release Esperanto-based music"[1]. Its first release was entitled Ni Kantu En Esperanto although it seems to be the only Esperanto LP ever issued on the label.
