Some Call It Arrogance, Some Call 'Em The Best Bar Band Done Good You've Never Heard Of...

Not to underestimate the broad knowledge of my readership, but how many of you remember Arrogance? If you're not from North Carolina, there's a pretty big chance you haven't heard of them. I sure hadn't heard of the band before stumbling onto them while - quite fittingly - looking for hidden gems for the All Pearls, No Swine series. as a matter of fact, the first tracks landed in that folder, but I kept finding more and more tracks of them that I liked, so I did a deep dive that inevitably ended up with an anthology. And as usual, ol' OBG goes big, with a two-disc compilation covering the best bar band you might never have heard...or heard of... 

Arrogance were nothing if not verstile and have gone through a number of different musical styles throughout their career, which is a bit of a challenge for a career overview, so this time I opted for a chronological approach, where the sylistic breaks are still noticable, but you don't get wiplash from jumping from one style to another.

They started out as a hard rock outfit in the Deep Purple mold, with numbers like "Black Death" even dipping into Black Sabbath territory thematically, They released a single with that song and another self-written effort, "An Estimation",  in 1970, but it went nowhere, so Arrogance was in a holding pattern for a bit. The entered the studio in April 1971 to record their debut album, but that project was finally shelved and only saw the light of day in 2016 as Knights Of Dreams. Knight Of Dreams shows them moving away from the early hard rock into a still hard-edged rock sound with prog tendencies. Mike Greer used two of his compositions fom the sessions, the ballads "Send Me Back" and "Night Of Dreams" - both found on our One Buck Records album of the day - on his solo debut Between Two Worlds, released on tiny local Charlotte, North Carolina-based label Sugarbush in 1973. The same year Arrogance finally got a record of the ground, also on Sugarbush. 

By this time of the hopefully titled Give Us A Break, the music of Arrogance had already changed significantly, becoming a lot more mellower and acoustic, touching vaguely on country rock, but also incorporating jazz and other elements. Sophomore effort Prolepsis also came out on Sugarbush, before Arrogance finally signed with Vanguard for 1976's Rumours. These three albums form a loose trilogy of acoustic-based music with folk and country influence. There's a ton of wonderful stuff here: Their inofficial hymn "We Live To Play" - less than thirty seconds and a capella - for one thing, recorded twice and featured here twice, And many other wonderful songs, such as "Ma And Pa", "To See Her Smile", "People Aren't Free", "Why Do You Love Me", "Sunday Feeling", and the epic "Sun Sweet".

With this kind of friendly acoustic/country-rock - even with the many wrinkles Arrogance added - falling out of fashion, the band rejiggered their sound for 1980's Suddenly, issued on  Curb Records, taking on a more modern pop sound, with light hints of power pop and the slightest sprinkle of New Wave.  Not everything on that album is great, but highlights such as "It Ain't Cool To Be Cruel" or "Bring It On Home" show a band having a second wind, though that did not result in sales, which means that not too long after the live album follow-up Lively from 1981 Arogance decided to call it quits for the time being. The band got together in 2000 for a couple of well-received live gigs, having them play a couple of gigs per year throughout the decade.

Arrogance always were first and foremost a draw as a live band, so it makes sense thar the entire back half of the second disc is dedicated to Arrogance as live performers. You can imagine the parties they got started when listening to some of this material. Most of these come from Lively, while the last three  tracks are from the band's reunion in the early 2000s, including the Dogbreath medley which compiles three of the 60s garage rock classics the band would occasionally play as garage cover band  'Dogbreath'. This medley is an exclusive One Buck Records creation.

So, this exhaustive (but not exhausting!) compilation has a bit for everyone, from the heavy rock of their beginnings, to the country-rock and stylistic mish mash of their middle year to the pop sound of their later period, and it's not arrogant at all to say they did some really god work in all of these. They might not be a great forgotten band, but definitely a band worth rediscovering. Which We LIve To Play - An Anthology gives you the perfect opportunity to, as per One Buck Records custom. Not to mention that this should do nicely as the soundtrack for the rest of your weekend...