Ragged Co.

What needs to be said about Ragged Co. that hasn't already been said?  Storming out of Birmingham, they quickly earned their reputation as the "really bad boys" of mid-'60s English rock.  What a team:  flamboyant front man Homer Bedloe; sidekick riff-master Wendell Gibbs; lady's man bassist Joseph Carson; in-the-pocket drummer Charley Pratt; and journeyman guitarist Orrin Pike (who had replaced slide wizard Roger Budd, who had replaced founder and blues obsessive Floyd Smoot).  

Their output over the next 20 years was prodigious . . . erratic . . . ebullient . . . complicated . . . energizing . . . polarizing . . . mesmerizing.  Still performing today in some form or another (Gibbs patented a walker/guitar stand combo), they are for many the definition of rock and roll -- if rock and roll was a never-ending geriatric circus.