Nuggets/Pebbles/BackFromTheGrave etc tunes that are nothing like Beatles

[IdleRich]

I don't wanna keep just listing tunes... so last post tonight doing that.

I just love the arrogance of these lyrics...

"The things I do, you'd never try... what I get for free, you gotta buy"



I love the poptasticness of this next one. I first bought a Pebbles thing by random when I was on a day trip to London when I was like 16, took a chance on this music that was totally unknown to me and when I put it on I was really blown away by the primitive raw energy and how fun and catchy and pop it was - from that momenton I fell in love with this music. This one is a great example of that, feels like it could be a number one in another world.



This one is one of my favourite sevens that I have, love the way it starts off at full tilt. Disappointingly seems to be an anti-drugs song



So to even thingsout let's have one that takes the opposite view. An absolute killer organ belter- which is another thing in fact, far as I know Stones or Bearles never used an organ like this but there ia a whole subgenre of organ garage... how can that be dismissed as derivative sub-Beatles gear?

Also this one is a relative cheapie but every bit as good as the ones that cost ten or even a hundred times as much

 

[IdleRich]

Will listen tomorrow if I can, gotta go bed now. I do like a lot of garage rock.

Just to be clear, this is the sort of thing (from the nuggets album) rich definitely DOESN'T want

Yeah, I think that I can go out on a limb and agree with you that that does sound a tiny bit like The Beatles. I didn't know it. I wouldn't describe myself as a huge Beatles fan but this track is something I rather like on a first listen (admittedly maybe primed to do so by the Bs themselves) so in my book that makes it... well, at least, not hugely inferior to the band they rip off.

 

[IdleRich]

Although a lot of these bands were reactive to the Brit Invasion - primarily Stones Yardbirds Them Kinks Animals - it's not like they didn't have any recent American stuff to draw on - Link Wray, the noisier surf bands, the Sonics / North West sound, "Louie Louie" ... it's a moot point whether they access Bo Diddley direct or via the Brits indebted to him .... but there's wild black American music they could also have drawn on, probably depending on whereabouts they were based and what was going on locally, to be picked up off regional radio stations.

I reckon there are a lot of tunes that were covered by garage bands that are the same, or at least the same sort of things as the Steatles (as I'm now calling them for ease of writing) did, but it's quite hard to say - as you say in fact - whether they covered them because the Steatles did, or simply cos they had the same sort of influences. In fact, I'd guess that the truth is that some groups likely heard them via the Brits and some heard them straight from the horses mouth. So there isn't really a single answer answer to that question.

Train Kept-a-Rolling has been covered so many times. Yeah it was done by The Yardbirds, but before that Johnny Burnette covered it (I forget who sang it originally) so it's very hard to say what inspired the Precious Few to do this brutal take



Another classic is Who Do You Love - one of the most famous records ever and covered by countless bands. I have this version with the adlibbed extra bits at the beginning and I think it's absolutely blinding. But have no idea whether or not they were influenced in covering it by any UK band - honestly I have no reason to think that they were, when you look at the personnel on the record I'm fairly sure they would have known plenty about the tune without any need for some Brits to hold their hand...

 

[IdleRich]

I love the poptasticness of this next one. I first bought a Pebbles thing by random when I was on a day trip to London when I was like 16, took a chance on this music that was totally unknown to me and when I put it on I was really blown away by the primitive raw energy and how fun and catchy and pop it was - from that momenton I fell in love with this music.

So in a sense this kind of sound was one of my first loves... but I do realise that it has a limit to it. Sometimes I do think there is something a little odd about all these old men obsessing about songs that are two minutes long and made accidentally by some kids in a half hour. It doesn't really develop... or if it does develop, it develops into a different sound and then the purists disown it. I hate it when you hear people saying "It can't be garage it has a saxophone" or whatever.

I think I mentioned before that a friend of mine once organised a huge event at the ICA which was a repeat of event that happened in, say, 1967 at Alexandra Palace called the 14 Hour Technicolor Dream. I suppose he did it as the 40th anniversary and he got some of the original bands (The Pretty Things headlined I believe) and some other appropriate bands old and new. Thinking about it now, it sort of grew out of his control in the end, he had posters designed by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat and talks from famous old hippies and scenesters and all of these people wanted paying. All of this was incredibly expensive and he was exposed to potentially enormous (or in fact potentially ruinous) costs and so he needed to sell all these tickets so as not to lose an absolute fortune and naturally enough he put adverts everywhere he possibly could and also did more targetted stuff aimed at email lists of mods and whatever that he knew from record collecting and going to Mousetrap and so on. One guy sent this hilarious reply about how he wouldn't be going cos in his opinion psych ruined the mod scene in 1965 or whatever and took it in a direction of which he didn't approve - and made it clear that, like a moron who insisted he would keep on using pounds shilling pence or those Japanese soldiers who carried on fighting WWII until the seventies, he was still fighting his personal battle against the encroachment of psychedelia into his music. The difference being that even the most stubborn of Japanese soldiers surrendered after about 30 years when their commanding office was pulled out of civilian life to fly to their deserted island and order them to stand down, whereas this guy is no doubt fighting Mod War 1 to this very day and will never surrender as long as he draws breath.

I always find something interesting (by which I mean fucking stupid) about people who have strict rules for what music they consider acceptable and it is particularly common amongst scenes such as garage and northern soul etc. I've seen northern soul boards where people are arguing to the literal day about who span a particular record first. As a result of this kind of thing you get mods or garage collectors who have a cut off date - by which i mean if you ask them what music they are into they won't say "sixties" they will say "I collect US garage up to April 1967". So far I've never heard anyone say "I collect US garage up to the 15th of April 1967" or "... up to quarter past four on the 15th of April 1967" but I wouldn't be surprised if there is someone out there who would give that answer.

But, cos in terms of musical fashions, Europe (in fact the rest of the world) was a bit behind the US and UK, that meant that they kept the faith a bit longer and allowed the collectors a bit of wriggle room, that is to say, if you have someone who stopped buying UK mod stuff made after April 1966, it may be that considered it acceptable to buy Italian stuff up to August 68 or, with slow reacting Belgium, even Feb 1969 was still not quite beyond the pale. So you get ebay sellers saying "Killer monster Euro psych dancer from 68 but sounds like 66" and similar.

Obviously I just made up the actual months where the acceptable cut-offs are, but going by this collectable phased-to-fuck Belgium banger, 1968 was apparently ok for tbat country



Oh and speaking of loads of phasing, here is a latter day (relatively) Spanish one.

 

[forclosure]

you lot are missing 2 really obvious non-beatles sounding tunes

 

[IdleRich]

Well we're not aiming for an exhaustive list necessarily, the idea is to disabuse people who are of the belief that, apart from a few exceptions, US psych-garage music can be described and then dismissed as "a load of stuff that sounds like an inferior version of The Beatles or the Stones (or The Yardbirds)".

I guess that whether it's generally inferior or otherwise is a matter of personal taste, but to say it's all the same sound as The Steatlebirds is simply factually wrong - and yeah each new different sounding tune buries that idea deeper



And that's why I'm tending to pick tunes that have very distinct differences. So I picked some tunes based on instruments that the Steatlebirds didn't really use - eg the farfisa organ ones - or with crazy fuzz that they never got near (Ron Wray Light Show) or bleeps and electronic fx way beyond any I've heard from the Yardonetles (Dirty Filthy Mud) or a mad phased drum solo (CA Quintet) etc etc

 

[IdleRich]

Or this one based rather effectively around a siren

 

[IdleRich]

Then you have ones with this kinda talking style- probably inspited by Dylan but arguably if you imagined future descendants of these tunes you might just about something similar to rap evolving eventually. Leaving any debate on that aside though for the moment, it's a style very distinct from the Beating Rollbirds







And rather neatly - putting Kim Fowley has reminded me that he made a song perfect for the electro pop thread...

 

[bassbeyondreason]

Cheating because this predates The Beatles and Stones, but it's on Back From The Grave 4 and is wild:

 

[IdleRich]

He really rips into 'em doesn't he. I got this one on seven which is bonkers...


Always makes me thikng of the tune below - and I love the way that when you consider the two of them next to each other, it's like you're not looking at a continuum or anything like that any more, it's just... someone shouting like crazy over the top of some bonkers banging noises will always be cool... it could be cavemen banging rocks together or futuristic synths, as long as it's wild and raw and dirty...

 

[william_kent]

The Monks - Monk Time

it's speed time - it's hot time - it's Monk time!

primitive rhythm, half spoken half shouting, organ, fx

 

[IdleRich]

Mildly amusing story about that Green Velvet tune. There is a club in LIsbon called Le Baron which is a owned by the same guys as the posh ones in Paris and London but, cos it it's in Lisbon, it's obviously not so posh.

The booker is this guy Kevin who is a nice enough guy I guess but also a bit of a hipster twat. When he first heard Liza and I playing at Music Box one time he said "oh you guys are perfect for Le Baron, it's cool and weird and blah blah blah" so we started playing there quite regularly, and, as far as I could tell, it was pretty popular with the crowd. But then Kevin started getting cold feet and he kept saying "Oh it's too weird" or "It's too dark" even though he was rarely there. And then he came down to check on us and he started moaning and saying that next time we had to play loads of happy clappy disco house or something.

So next time he came especially and he said "You'd better be playing loads of light funk and disco and stuff" - and bear in mind, I had been trying to move in that direction, I was playing stuff that was lighter, but it was never gonna be enough for him until we were playing as bland as he does. In fact it's even worse cos it's not natural for me and playing stuff that was kinda half what I wanted and half what he wanted meant that you end up with something that is neither here nor there. Anyway he was getting increasingly annoyed and he said "Unless the next song you play is really light you're banned from playing at Le Baron" and Liza said "Fuck him" and played Preacher Man by Green Velvet.

nb Kevin came down to the time we booked Lena Willikens and started telling her that the music at that night, which at that point was the warm up dj Ana Pacheco, was just too weird and would never be popular.

 

[IdleRich]

The Monks - Monk Time

it's speed time - it's hot time - it's Monk time!

primitive rhythm, half spoken half shouting, organ, fx

A band who were prepared to cut their hair like that - you know they were serious.

 

[IdleRich]

Also in that kinda crazy style that sort of reminds me of Bunker Hill but different you've got the Rivingtons







And then in a kind of precursof of "bastard pop" that you got inn the early 2000s, Trashmen put those songs together to make

 

[bassbeyondreason]

He really rips into 'em doesn't he. I got this one on seven which is bonkers...


Always makes me thikng of the tune below - and I love the way that when you consider the two of them next to each other, it's like you're not looking at a continuum or anything like that any more, it's just... someone shouting like crazy over the top of some bonkers banging noises will always be cool... it could be cavemen banging rocks together or futuristic synths, as long as it's wild and raw and dirty...

Oh this stuff runs DEEP:

 

[bassbeyondreason]

Yardbirds rave-ups intensified into proto-hardcore:

 

[bassbeyondreason]

Hard to believe a Hendrix cover would involve making something less extreme:

 

[IdleRich]

It always amuses me that Hendrix said he was influenced by Kenny Rogers (kinda)

 

[bassbeyondreason]

I personally love the moody and eerie, Byrds-influenced folkroci stuff as much as the punk:

 

[IdleRich]

Then of course you've got the euro stuff,

The Motions


Added a Grace-slick-alike on vocals and bam.... the first time I heard this I almost came in my pants