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...They progressed into a more hard-edged proto-metal band in the late sixties with a style somewhat reminiscent of Blue Cheer's second album or the MC5's first live album. “Emerge” reaches the apogee of their development with this release, which features ear-shattering guitar work, great lead vocals, and a drummer (Tom Murray, what happened to you?) who utilizes a double-bass kit with an expertise akin to a Paul Whaley or a Ginger Baker. His drum solo on the extended cut "Future Of The Past" is phenomenal. If you are a fan of this kind of music you will thrive on this. Just their cover tune of "Little Red Book" (which was penned by Burt Bacharach), and which makes the cover by Love pale by comparison, is worth the price of this album.
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...This recording captures the band while rehearsing, sometimes in the late 90's. You will hear little mistakes, wrong organ chords ( I was learning) but the whole performance is FIRE.
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...Who knew that the most deranged '66-'68 teenage mayhem imaginable would come from Wallingford's Trod Nossel Studios, whose owner/producer Thomas "Doc" Cavalier (a former dentist) recorded top-flight acts as diverse as the tough 'n' melodic Shags ("Don't Press Your Luck"), the R&B-consumed Wildweeds ("No Good to Cry," featuring a Pre-NRBQ Al Anderson on vocals) and fuzzed-out punks the Bram Rigg Set ("I Can Only Give You Everything"). Sundazed presents the high-impact, garage-rock havoc-- at least two-thirds of it totally unreleased--that finally tears the lid off Connecticut's best-kept rock 'n' roll secret!
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...The album was a labor of love, collecting four years worth of eight-track home recordings from Vaughn's basement studio, each of them lovingly recorded in mono ("It was good enough for Phil Spector and Brian Wilson...," the liners intone) with Vaughn playing all the instruments himself. The result is a trip to the wrong side of the early-pop-music tracks -- trashy surf, adrenalized rock & roll, unhinged rockabilly, blues both rollicking and brooding, beer-soaked honky tonk, galloping cowboy tunes, weepy pop ballads, country, and R&B nuggets -- with nary a roots genre bypassed. Some of the names covered on Mono USA are familiar (Dion, Link Wray, Willie Nelson), some are cult artists (Lee Hazlewood, Neil), some have remained obscure despite having a measure of success (Lobo, Henson Cargill, Tom T. Hall), and some are just plain obscure (Jody Chastain, Ersel Hickey). No matter what each artist's legacy is, however, each of the eighteen songs is stellar. The album plays like an old, half-imagined AM radio station, and it inspires the same sort of excitement that a teenager must have felt listening at night to an old scratchy signal in his or her bedroom during the '50s and '60s. Vaughn's intent was neither to dramatically alter nor exactly mimic the original versions, just to resurrect some lost classics and have some fun doing so, and the joy shines through. This is not, however, exactly a conventional cover album. It is neither a genre exercise nor a vanity project, and it is not a throwaway. Instead, it is Vaughn's lifeblood, the music that made him, and the same cloth from which he is cut. Vaughn's own original songbook is filled with tunes that aspire to the same heights (or lows, as the case may be) and the same spirit as his archival selections. The album is ultimately held together by his inimitable charm and his audible love for these songs, as well as his skill as a musician and interpreter. One gets a distinct feeling after listening to Mono USA that Vaughn is among like-minded artists, that decades from now one of his own lost classics will appear on an album just like this one. - AllMusic Review by Stanton Swihart
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...this collection of live, kitchen and a bbc studio (in which the peels sessions were recorded, when i got it right) recordings from 6 dates, ranging from 85 to 89, i discovered some days ago and ordered it instantly, having been a huge fan of robyns music for almost 40 years now.
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Mysterious masked surf-guitar heroes who released a single album on the Planet Pimp Records label, then apparently faded from existence. Rumors tied them to Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet or Man Or Astro-man? but apart from the similarity in style and a geeky, sci-fi-inspired sense of humor, there was no actual connection.
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It's just me having fun with my 45's and whatever random record I pull out of the boxes. I will try to give both sides of the 45 unless one side is dull, unbearable or unplayable. I hope you enjoy. (Gyro1966)
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Something Weird has exhumed a crypt full of classic Spook Show promos and radio spots monstrously mashed together with fiendish rare surf and garage rock instrumentals.
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The Tiki Creeps' debut last year was definitely a standout, so I'm glad they've kept that momentum up by releasing a followup. They haven't shaken up the formula much: a solid mix of cool low-tempo numbers (perhaps the tiki part of their name) and a few with the guitars howlin'. "Ride Creeps Ride" is actually a bit of a twistin' number, something missing from their last one. I get a bit less of a sci-fi vibe on this one, but the creepiness definitely prevails, especially with the reverb a smidge deeper. All-in-all, more solid stuff, and I hope they keep up (or exceed) this 7 songs per year rate. - Submitted by Hunter on Wed, 08/05/2015
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...This is a big, explosive sounding record that’s always charging ahead and keeping the energy peaked, but it’s also a sonically diverse one. The latin-styled percussion on the first track launches straight into a party atmosphere. And that’s one thing I heard about their great performance at Surfer Joe: that they’re “more of a party band”, and indeed the lack of surfbeat, reverb, and focus on rhythm rather than guitar-based melodies leave little similarity to the sound of the 60’s, but I believe the fun-but-aggressive feeling is right in line. And a good party is always nice.
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...Respect is another one of those albums. I re-discovered it recently and found myself saying "Huh, I'd forgotten that this was the album 'Arms of Love' was on." Respect has some classic Hitchcock tracks ("The Wreck of the Arthur Lee," for example, and the aforementioned "Arms of Love"). While it contains some overly silly material ("The Yip Song" and the utterly bizarre "Wafflehead"), its true value is on Hitchcock's more somber, thoughtful side ("Then You're Dust," "Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom").
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Robyn Hitchcock is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. After leading The Soft Boys in the late 1970s and releasing the influential Underwater Moonlight, Hitchcock launched a prolific solo career. He lives in Nashville, TN with the singer-songwriter Emma Swift. - bandcamp
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...In addition to a number of CD-R EJ homebrews, the imprint's first commercial release, Showdown at the Hoedown, documents a scalding 1984 date with Gatton. (Great sleeve note: "...the newest instrument on stage was a 64 Stratocaster.") The sound is for shit, but the playing is absolutely frantic, as if their van was double parked in front of a police station. Speed, enthusiasm and ferocious rock determination fuel this platter, which contains a lot of the essential Johns canon, like "Madhouse," "Sugar Cookie," "Giddy Up Girl," "Rollin' Thru the Night" and "Do the Dootz." The gentle Johns instrumental track tacked on as a bonus is a bit of a moodbreaker, but affords proof that he's still at it, albeit in a far more sedate vein. - Scott McCaughey / Ira Robbins
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...In a tradition established on Distortions, The Litter again prove they were the most totally inspired – no, make that totally English-inspired – cover band to invade a US recording studio. $100 Fine includes exceptional covers of Jeff Beck (“Tally Man”), newcomers Procol Harum (“Kaleidoscope”), and last but certainly most obscure, a cover of “Here I Go Again” by Eire Apparent.
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Greetings, space cadets! "Take Off!" was EP from BEWARE! BLACK HOLES - a surf/garage/exotica instrumental band from Melbourne 2009-2022, six instro hits inspired by the likes of The Ventures, Link Wray, The Shadows, Los Straitjackets as well as old sci-fi/spy film scores. It's a twangin, melodic, foot stompin' kinda thing!
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It's just me having fun with my 45's and whatever random record I pull out of the boxes. I will try to give both sides of the 45 unless one side is dull, unbearable or unplayable. I hope you enjoy. (Gyro1966)
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In the history of rock and roll, Ben Vaughn would probably not even rate a minor footnote and chances are, you'd probably have a hard time finding more than a handful of people who have even heard of him. Such is the quirky business of pop music when a pop genius like Vaughn gets swept under the carpet while major no-talents like Mariah Carey, TLC, and Destiny's Child continue to thrive and prosper. If you're a fan of larger-than-life pop hooks, listen to "The Man Who Has Everything" and "Long Black Hair" and you'll probably be asking yourself "Why have I never heard of this guy?" The compilation "Mood Swings" is also worth the scratch and contains the Marshall Crenshaw-covered "I'm Sorry (But So Is Brenda Lee)". Click on "add to cart" soon! - By Clark Paull
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One of Canada's most popular homegrown rock groups in the '60s, though they made no inroads to the rest of North America. From the English-speaking community of Montreal, the group was very explicit in their desire to emulate the Rolling Stones, and most of their 1966-1968 singles (as well as their sole LP, from 1967) were in a raunchy R&B/blues-rock style. As songwriters their range was pretty limited, and much of their material consisted of covers or thin rewrites of popular blues riffs. Their most successful single, "1-2-5," gained small fame when it was reissued on one of the first Pebbles compilations of garage singles in the '70s. All of their material was reissued in the '80s. - by Richie Unterberger
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Monstrously Soothing Instrumental Hot Rod Garage Surf Sounds!
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Love the fat sweet guitar sounds all over this! I filed this with Khruangbin but this has its own edge. And it creates a world of its own, Listened in headphones, it's roadtrip music - insomniac music. awesome album! - yonatanh
I've been a big fan of Evan Jonhs & The H-Bombs for some time now. The price was a little more than i thought it should be but that didnt stop me from ordering it. If you already have his first album this is not as good but is worth it if you can afford to pay the extra. - By Steve Harman
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...The Litter formed in 1966 as a merger between two popular Twin Cities combos, the Victors and the Tabs. They quickly established a reputation as the wildest, loudest band on the scene. Bill Strandlof was responsible for the incendiary, feedback-laced guitar work on "Action Woman"--a local hit for the band when released as a single in January 1967--but by the summer he'd been replaced by another fast-fingered guitar slinger, Zippy Caplan. Caplan's fiery leads helped ignite the remainder of Distortions, including smoking interpretations of the Who's "Substitute," the Small Faces' "Whatcha Gonna Do About It," an intense reading of "Codine," and a comprehensive reconstruction-destruction of "I'm A Man."
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