KIM FOWLEY
One Man’s Garbage: Lost Treasures From The Vaults 1959-1969, Volume One
Another Man’s Gold: Lost Treasures From The Vaults 1959-1969,
Volume Two
Both Norton CDs
www.nortonrecords.com
Now in his mid-60s, Los Angeles native Kim Fowley first struck writing and producing gold as a hip teenager, often aided by schoolmates Gary Paxton and Skip Battin, with ad hoc groups like The Jayhawks (‘Stranded In The Jungle’), The Hollywood Argyles (‘Alley Oop’), B Bumble & The Stingers (‘Nut Rocker’), The Paradons (‘Diamonds And Pearls’) and The Murmaids (‘Popsicles And Icicles’). Later he was responsible for the cutting-edge ‘Papa Oom Mow Mow’ by The Rivingtons, helped Paul Revere & The Raiders get off the ground, worked in England with the likes of Dave Mason, Cat Stevens and The Soft Machine and even shows up on The Mothers Of Invention’s debut album.
The 32 tracks collected on this pair of simultaneously released projects are just a few of the dozens of records the savvy entrepreneur also either wrote, produced or sang on and were originally issued on countless local labels – you can see them all in the accompanying booklets that also feature Fowley’s incisive commentaries on each title. His affinity for the novelty song and angst-ridden anthems of the teenage variety is also abundantly evident throughout.
Garbage picks include the gritty surf-styled instrumental ‘Bodacious’ by The US Rockets (“designed to get the dirty bitches to shake their asses”); ‘The Rebel’, an insane “radio drama rock record” by The Players; Althea & The Memories’ doo-wop influenced ‘Dedication Time’ (“a big record in the barrio”) and Fowley himself, with Mars Bonfire, on the proto-punk ‘Surf Pigs’. You get the idea.
If possible, Gold seems even more of a gas with fare ranging from the absolutely hilarious, Zappa-esque playlet ‘Memories Of A High School Bride’ (by the aforementioned Players), an inspired take-off on Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B Goode’ called ‘Surfers Rule’ from The Rituals (with PJ Proby on vocals), two monster instrumentals by The Renegades (‘Geronimo’ and ‘Ghost Train’) and Fowley’s own name-checking travelogue ‘Big Sur, Bear Mountain, Ciro’s, Flip Side Protest Song’. More please – I can stand it if you can!
Gary von Tersch
JANIS IAN
The Secret Life Of J Eddy Fink / Who Really Cares
BGO CD
www.bgo-records.com
Life must have been tough for a kid who had made a hit record, had the music biz to contend with, a very keen mind and growing up to do – all at the same time. If ‘Society’s Child’ saw the 15-year-old Ian commenting on the silliness of the outside world, by the time of The Secret Life Of J Eddy Fink (recorded at the ripe old age of 16 in 1968, and her third album for Verve/Forecast), she was evidently politically and philosophically pissed off. After the psychedelic flavoured For All The Seasons Of Your Mind album (’67) Ian moved towards an amalgam of styles, from the almost Music Machine ‘Talk Talk’-like nihilism of ‘Sweet Misery’ to the haunting brilliance of ‘When I Was A Child’. Although lacking anything quite as incisive as ‘Society’s Child’, the album’s variety of approaches worked well.
At 18 Ian closed the decade with a fine, fine album that primarily offered a brighter outlook with a poppier appeal. On Who Really Cares (’69) Shadow Morton’s darker creations were replaced by the more rounded production of Charlie Callelo, who supported Ian’s restrained and wistful songs. Although not a success at the time of release it’s easy to imagine the driving soul of ‘Sea And Sand’ having been a major smash hit.
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills
THE JU JUS
You Treat Me Bad
Break-A-Way LP
www.break-a-way.de
Cicadelic CD
www.cicadelic.com
Michigan garage band The Ju Jus are revered by collectors for their three singles on Fenton and United. All six sides are included here along with eight good quality unreleased cuts. Formed as a “joke” Beatles spoof in 1964, they soon became more serious with the addition of Ray Hummel on guitar and lead vocals.
Although they changed vocalists over time, Hummel’s tremulous vibrato predominates, most notably on the title track. Whilst the recordings range between ’65 and ’67, for me, it’s the unreleased ‘Sometime Or Other’ and ‘If You Really Love Me’ that show the evolving pop side of the group’s work and would have made a great fourth single.
Mike Dugo’s interview with band member Rod Shepard form the liner notes, which relate the band’s full history. They clearly had a lot of potential, some of which at least, is at last belatedly realised here.
Paul Martin
PRINCE LASHA ENSEMBLE
Insight
Dusty Groove CD
www.dustygroove.com
Prince Lasha, a saxophonist from Texas who was a friend and contemporary of Ornette Coleman, made this one-off record with a group of British sidemen in 1966, while living here.
Comprised of a combination of originals and standards, soulful grooves and plaintive ballads, the set has the feel of a Mingus or Monk record. Lasha’s plastic alto sax is the highlighted instrument, but all the players sound great and there is some nice harp work that calls Dorothy Ashby to mind. ‘Nuttin’ Out Jones’, written by Lasha for Elvin, is a cool vibe that could fit nicely on Mingus Ah-Hum. The other five tracks all make for pleasant listening, but at times sound too much like the kind of thing that could be acceptable background sounds at a polite dinner party.
Still, a standout jazz record that fans of all the aforementioned players will want to check out.
Brian Greene
THE LITTER
Emerge
Lilith Records CD/LP
Brian Greene’s excellent history of The Litter in a previous issue of Shindig! gave somewhat short shrift to the band’s third album, Emerge. The band’s line-up had substantially changed by this point and the music had moved on from garage rabble rousing to hard-rock bombast but, if anything, I enjoy this one more than Distortions or $100 Fine.
Straight out of the traps with a pair of monster openers, ‘Journeys’ and ‘Feeling’, this album is a force majeure. The covers of ‘For What It’s Worth’ and ‘Little Red Book’ show spades of invention in ripping up the original templates, with the latter particularly enjoyable. The final long track, ‘Future Of The Past’ is a powerful epic blighted slightly by an exceptionally long drum solo but it still moves and shakes and packs a harder thump than a boxing kangaroo on steroids.
Essential for hard-rock fans and recommended to anyone who enjoys a blast of balls-out rock power.
Austin Matthews
FJ McMahon
Sprit Of The Golden Juice
Rev-Ola CD
www.revola.co.uk
Originally released on Tiger Eye over 40 years ago and since lost to the world, Spirit is a haunting, evocative and totally riveting slice of late ’60s loner folk. A Vietnam veteran, FJ (Fred) returned to the US in 1968 after a particularly harrowing tour of duty in SE Asia. Literally shell (and culture) shocked by his experiences, he sought catharsis in the studio, recording nine songs of sparse and spare beauty.
Peering “under the rocks and behind the scenes”, Fred recounts tales of things “that won’t be nice to see”. You can sense the alienation and detachment in every mournful breath.
Whilst in truth the backing arrangements remain pretty much constant throughout, they never appear samey. Curlicues of bluesy guitar occasionally counterpoint the ever-present shuffling rhythm but the real strength lies in the lyrics. This is a post comedown album unlike any you’ve heard before.
Gary Thorogood
THE MORNING DEW
The Early Years: Topeka, Kansas 1966-69
Break-A-Way LP
www.break-a-way.de
Cicadelic CD
www.cicadelic.com
Morning Dew’s lone, self-titled LP appeared on Roulette in 1970 with little promotion or sales. Today, originals are prized psychedelic items. However, The Morning Dew began in ’66. This anthology traces their recorded path up to the point of the Roulette album via their two Fairyland singles and unreleased demos.
As an aural prequel, what this set reveals is a band progressing in both confidence and ability. All 14 tracks (bar a cover of ‘Stepping Stone’) are penned by the band’s guitarist and singer Michael Robinson. Hear them make the transition from garage pop pleasers such as ‘Touch Of Magic’ and ‘Winter Dreams’ to the lysergia of 1968’s ‘Sycamore Dreamer’ and the Moby Grape-like ‘Rainbow Woman’.
This is a document that makes sense of their eponymous album. Their story is told in full in the liner insert, whilst Cicadelic have also issued it on CD if you prefer that format.
Paul Martin
THE NEW AGE
All Around
RD CD
www.rd-records.com
The New Age were Californian freethinkers spearheaded by the mercurial talents of singer/songwriter Patrick Kilroy – his star, however, would be extinguished all too soon, dying from Hodgkin’s on Christmas Day 1967, not long after these tracks were completed. With flutes and viola, Susan Graubard was the group’s weaver of exotic pathways; visionary in her writing and playing.
Smitten by ancient musical forms, they studied under Indian musical guru Ali Akbar Khan, his teachings soon put to good effect; the approach and emulations rife in Jeffrey Stewart’s hypnotising tabla infusions, and Kilroy’s reaching fretwork.
Existing only briefly, they nonetheless played many San Fran underground haunts, and the likes of ‘Dance Around The Sun’, the expansive ‘Bhairavi’, ‘Alone In A Wonderland’, plus illuminating additional material, have provided a truly amazing legacy; one of America’s best-kept folk-weird secrets. RD’s enhanced CD-ROM features group history and poster gallery.
Lenny Helsing
THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR ELEVATORS
7th Heaven: The Music Of The Spheres – The Complete Singles Collection
Charly CD
www.charly.co.uk
The Elevators need no introduction in this parish, and many of you will already own the 10 CD Sign Of The 3 Eyed Men box set. “So why,” you may ask, “do I need an 18 track compilation CD containing the group’s singles?” In short, there’s no reason that you do. But then as collector/completist/borderline obsessive-compulsive isn’t a new Elevators package, housed in a nice hard cardboard digibook, more than enough of an incentive? It’s limited, looks good, sounds great and sits tidily on the shelf… so just buy it.
And whilst you’re at it, reacquaint yourself with the great white wonders that are ‘She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own)’, ‘Reverberation’, ‘Slip Inside This House’, ‘Splash 1’ and ‘Scarlet And Gold’.
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Psychedelic States: Mississippi In The 60s
Gear Fab CD
Gearfab.swiftsite.com
This series reminds me of those souvenir fridge magnets you buy in the shape of each state you visit in the USA. This being the 18th volume of the series, you’d need a big fridge door! As usual you get a lucky dip assortment of by and large cracking little 45s. The Raving Blue were perhaps the only band I’d heard of amongst the 29 tracks.
Excellent folk-rock comes in contributions from Substantial Evidence, Soul Survivors and Bob Morrison, whilst full-on psych comes in the form of Flower Power’s ‘Mount Olympus’, which degrades into a drum solo midway through.
The Strags’ ‘Psychedelic Soul’ shows the crossover from garage to psych with a great Electric Prunes “buzzing fly” guitar number and The Lancers please with the great garage pop of ‘You’ve Got To Fight For Her’.
So, something for everyone and no sign of the quality declining either.
Paul Martin
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Where You Gonna Go?: Motor City Garage Bands 1965-1969
Cicadelic CD
www.cicadelic.com
OK, it’s Michigan but don’t be looking for any nascent Iggies or a Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith here. What we have is 26 have-a-go garage pop, frat and moody New England type ballad sides.
This package is being sold on the strength of The Unrelated Segments and Tidal Waves which are relatively well-known. The pick of the rest for me has to be Trenton’s Lykes Of Us whose 1968 self-pressed (500 copies only) ‘7:30 Said’ b/w ‘Tell Me Why Your Light Shines’ stands head and shoulders above the rest as a professional and very catchy pop gem with just a hint of Kinks. Their unissued ‘I’ll Sing You A Love Song’ is a great ballad as well.
Overall, this is an interesting historical document and the booklet has detailed liners and pictures. It contains enough variety to please the mid-60s generalist but there’s nothing especially Detroit sounding about any of it.
Paul Martin
THE LEMON DROPS
Sunshine Flower Power
Cicadelic 2-CD
www.cicadelic.com
Trepidation did strike when seeing a 2-CD set of the previously issued Lemon Drops material. Great that it is, a more striking cover, fuller liner notes and a different title may not have been quite enough to warrant another release. Fortunately, after spinning the discs I was proved very wrong. The sonic upgrade heard here (all from the master tapes) is quite incredible – far from The Beatles’ remasters, you understand, but very good for a one-single garage band.
So who were The Lemon Drops? And why all the fuss? How can unreleased material from a one-single band be worth the excitement?
The group of very young lads from Chicago (aged between 15 and 17 when they made their sole single, the brilliant Pebbles classic ‘I Live In The Springtime’ in 1967) have, on the strength of this record alone, entered the hallowed halls of garage band royalty.
Interest in The Lemon Drops was high for a fleeting moment. Their flower power, psychedelic folk-rock sound was somewhat interesting; part commercial hippy pop à la The Strawberry Alarmclock, often Donovan-like and marked by meandering electric guitar ragas – but yet somehow more dangerous and garage than those acts. They were a smash locally and money was invested in them, but on two counts excessive studio time and misfortune led to the incomplete recordings remaining unreleased until the ’80s.
Early photos depict the lads with swept over surfer dude hair in atypical US flower power gear and the musical mix of British Invasion, garage, Byrds, Love and harmony pop on their earliest outings showed scope. Later when placed in RCA studios their attempts at cosmic hippy whimsy fed through the garage band engine, oddly enough, resulted in quite a “new sound”. Think of the dream garage/psych formula and it’s all there: fuzztone, raga, 12-string jangle, pounding drums, harmonies. Psychedelia with punked up inflections… you get the picture. (In fact, ’90s garage/ psych legends The Mystreated concocted a very similar sound.)
Sunshine Flower Power is the final word on The Lemon Drops. And the song ‘Crystal Pure’ with its pop harmonies and snarled vocals, fuzz and wah defines their incredible sound best. (Note for the hardcore collector: the stereo raga version of ‘Sometime Ago’ and stereo version of ‘Theatre Of Your Mind’ are also previously unreleased and new to CD for the first time.)
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills
THE ROYALTONES
Detroit Rock'n'Roll Began Here!
Ace CD
www.acerecords.com
The Royaltones were late 50s/early 60s instrumental pioneers, creating tough, well recorded singles featuring surprisingly modern sounding guitar and sax. Unlike most early instro groups, their style owes little to the Ventures or to the surf tradition, having its roots in 50s r&b and rock'n'roll. There are some great driving tunes here, arrangements for dances long forgotten. The band were also expert at moody slow-burners like 'Lonely World'. There are the usual excellent Ace liner notes, documenting numerous personnel changes. The only slight problem is that the 30 cuts here were singles, never intended to be played back to back for 70 minutes. I find them more satisfying in shorter LP- side bursts.
Phil Suggitt
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