To a certain extent, Cream was the British reaction to Hendrix, who himself needed to escape the States in order to create his ultimate musical statements. While the playing of the Experience was obviously tied to Americana, the combo can't be seen as a British rendering of blues. Hendrix - raised in the Northwest - was as tied to the cultural trappings of America's cities as any other guitarist.

Clapton, obviously, was fully formed by the time that the Experience began releasing material. The Yarbirds served him as a boot camp for blues guitarists as he aimed to move beyond straight coping other's load. But in this, it can be said that Clapton still had some stuff to work through.  Cream was formed as a super group, in part, because no one in that trio could carry a band themselves. Hendrix, by contrast, was really able to do anything that he wanted to musically in any setting.

Denigrating the musical prowess of Clapton isn't the aim, nor the point. But as Cream became one of the most popular groups in the Brit Blues scene over a short time, more and more folks copped the copped perspective that Clapton and his brethren saw in Americans and Hendrix specifically.

The Edgar Broughton Band, amongst others made a dash for the charts with its blues inflected chicanery. But instead of aping the avant sounds of that band, the Groundhogs embraced the model Cream left behind - so in as many ways as the Groundhogs bear a resemblance to Clapton and company, there's a modicum of Hendrix imbued in the group's tunes as well.

After a few years together and then apart, principal song writer Tony McPhee rejoined the fold at the dawn of the '70s to shell out a triad of discs that perhaps define the Groundhogs' sound. The 1971 LP Split seeks to explicate some emotional and mental issues that the singer and guitarist had to deal with at that specific time.

The entirety of the first side of the disc is given over to a four part suite bearing the album's title where McPhee laments his problems and figures that he's goin' nuts. The guitar playing - which for all intents and purposes is the reason that Split or even the Groundhogs are mentioned any longer - staggers back and forth between understood blues riffs and esoterically constructed wah wah solos. The straight blues track is not to be found on this side - nor really on the rest of Split, but there are inklings of that genre at every turn. The fourth section of the suite, for example, turns into a boogie that might make Canned Heat shake.

In its obtuse aims, that suite wasn't really meant for radio consumption. "Cherry Red," however, topped the charts for a moment with its Hendrixian guitar intro and revved up rock organization. The vocals aren't necessarily the strongest when compared to other discs in the genre. But what McPhee lacked in this particular area was more than amply made up for by his pretty transparent lyrical content and those crazed guitar solos.