Garage-Mania
with Robby and the Nurse
Top 25 Garage Bands of All Times
Part 3
Hi everyone! Garage Rock lives at GARAGE-MANIA on www.wprnd.org from Cerritos College, CA. with your hosts Robby Russell and his zany sidekick Nurse Cheril. We would like to thank all of you for the great response from my first two columns in RCN.
We will continue our picks for our favorite 25 Garage Bands of all time, starting where we left off, and count down from #11 to #6. But in case you missed my last 2 columns, here are the bands from 25 to 12 25 - Barry &The Remains, 24 - Gonn, 23 -Count 5, 22 - Sonics, 21 - We The People, 20 -Moving Sidewalks, 19 - Kenny & The Kasuals, 18 -The Haunted, 17 - The Lords,. 16 - MC5, 15 - The Stooges, 14 - Human Expression, 13 - Chocolate Watch Band, and 12-New York Dolls.
Our selections are of course subjective and are partially based on airplay on Garage-Mania. We welcome you to agree or disagree with our picks and remember the focus is from 1965-1972.
We will continue to offer any reader of RECORD CONVENTION NEWS a free copy of one of my Garage-Mania Shows on CD. Just e-mail me directly from my web site www.robbyrussellshow.com. And now here are our choices of the best garage-bands starting from# 11.
#11 - Chesterfield Kings ? “I’m Five Years Ahead of My Time”, “Stems and Flowers”. Ok. We broke our only rule that the bands we selected have to be pre - 1972. Unless you check the copyright date, you would swear that this upstate N.Y. band with pudding bowl haircuts and Beatles boots existed two decades earlier. Formed in 1979 in Rochester N.Y., The Chesterfield King’s faithful re-. creation of ‘60s guitar rock and garage punk is so spot-on that it’s almost impossible to discern their version of garage rock classics with the original. The Chesterfield Kings led the garage rock revival of the early 1980’s with obscure covers and also duplicating the look and feel of garage/punk bands of the Sixties. We recommend their Sundazed cd Where the Action is and their 2003 effort Mindbending Sounds to all fans of Garage-Mania. Robby and Nurse Cheril had the pleasure of seeing them live last year at the Galaxy in Garden Grove and meeting the band backstage. They were all real cool, they put on a fantastic show.
#10 - Paul Revere and the Raiders - “Just Like Me”,
“Steppin Out”
Paul Revere was born in 1938 in Harvard, Nebraska. He grew up in Boise, Idaho. After high school he went to barber college, opened up his own shop and later opened a drive-in restaurant the Reed ‘n Bell in Caldwell, Idaho. In his spare time he played keyboards in a local band.
One night in 1958 a young 16 year old lad named Mark Lindsay asked if he could sing on stage with the band, and history was made. Lindsay became a permanent member in the group soon replacing the band’s lead singer. In 1961 they had their first hit record called “Like Long Hair” - an instrumental which went to # 38 nationally.
Things were looking up for the Raiders but before
they could record another record, Revere was drafted.
The band actually continued as Paul Revere’s Raiders
with a young Leon Russell on piano but without Revere’s leadership the band dissolved. Because of his family’s Mennonite religion, Revere was eventually granted Conscientious Objector status completing his military service as a cook at a mental institution in Wilsonville, Oregon.
In 1962 Revere and Lindsay reformed the band along with drummer Mike Smith joining. The band returned to the local dance scene, quickly becoming known for its crazy antics on stage .They became one of the most popular bands in the Northwest. On April 25, 1963, they recorded their version of “Louie Louie” a week earlier than the Kingsmen. Both bands recorded the song in the same studio.
It was about this time Revere and Lindsay discovered their look. While in Portland they passed a costume shop and discovered some George Washington type uniforms. They rented the costumes, and the gimmick was an instant hit. Revere had some costumes made for the entire band.
On June 27, 1965 they were hired by Dick Clark to be regulars on his new TV show “Where the Action Is”, giving the band national exposure. In November, 1965 they began a string of hits starting with “Just Like Me”, “Hungry” and “Kicks”. The
band still performs today, still rocking and selling out wherever they play
We have one last fact about this band: The Raiders appeared on 520 “Where the Action Is” on ABC in 1965-66.They also had a five day a week summer show called ‘Its Happening” on ABC in 1968-69 This gives the Raiders a grand total of over 720 network appearances. This makes them the most televised musical group of all time.
#9 - Music Machine - “Talk Talk”, “People in Me”
The Music Machine from L.A. was led by Shawn Bonniwell. The band had only one hit record, “Talk Talk”, which reached number 15 in November, 1967. We at Garage-Mania feel this is the perfect example of what garage rock is about. Swirling farfisa organ, fuzz guitars, pounding beats, and evocative vocals create a primitive, raw and loud wall of sound.
Bonniwell wrote the song in 1965 in 15 minutes while he was waiting for his girlfriend to finish primping for his date. It was recorded in studio C at RCA in L.A. in just two takes. We recommend their cd Turn On - The best of the Music Machine which was released on Collectables Records in 1999.
We find it amazing that the Music Machine had just one hit record when you consider the standard of their material. Perhaps they were just too far ahead of their time. “My songs threw the cement and dirty laundry, in with the orange juice and cookies” says Bonniwell when asked to describe his music. For more information check out Bonniwell’s autobiography ‘Beyond the Garage’.
#8-The Standells - “Dirty Water”, “Riot on Sunset Strip”
Although the Standells talk about Boston as their home town in their hit record ‘Dirty Water’, they were actually from L.A. The song became a theme song for the Boston Red Sox a couple of years again when they won the World Series.
The band was formed in 1962 by guitarist Tony
Valentino and drummer Gary Leeds. Leeds left the
band finding more success with the Walker
Brothers. Leeds was replaced by original
Mouseketeer Dick Dodd. They appeared in the movie
‘Get Yourself a College Girl” And in the TV show The Munsters. “Dirty Water”, produced by Ed Cobb, reached number 11 in April 1966. Cobb helped to toughen them up from their clean cut image. They appeared in, and wrote the theme song for the psychedelic exploitation movie ‘Riot on Sunset Strip” which also featured one of our favorite bands - the Chocolate Watch Band in 1967.
By 1968 the band’s popularity started to wane with Dick Dodd leaving the band. Lowell George, later of Little Feat, was briefly in the band. With the changes in musical tastes and the impending San Francisco acid-rock scene, the Standells became an oldies attraction and faded away.
At the Chesterfield Kings concert Robby and Nurse Cheril attended last year, Dick Dodd came up on stage to sing ‘Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White”. It sounded awesome.
#7 - Electric Prunes - “Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”
It is my opinion that ‘Too Much to Dream” is one
of the greatest rock singles of all time. It is a 3 minute masterpiece, filled with echo-drenched fantasia, jampacked with shimmering guitars, fuzz leads and lead singer James Lowe’s eerie double-tracked vocal.
The song was written by Annette Tucker and Nancie Mantz who were professional song writers. It was originally conceived as a slow piano ballad and been covered by Jerry Vale of all people. It came out in November, 1966 and reached number 11 on the U.S. charts.
The band was formed in the San Fernando Valley in L.A. They were discovered by a real estate agent named Barbara Harris who heard them practicing in a garage. She introduced the band to David Hassinger, the resident engineer at RCA records who recorded several Rolling Stones records. Their first demos were recorded at Leon Russell’s house where he had built a recording studio called Sky Hill Studios.
The success of “Too Much to Dream” made the band an instant success and they toured constantly. Many thought the title was “Too Much to Drink Last Night”.
In 1968 the band changed musical directions with the release of their psychedelic classic “Mass in F Minor”. This was a concept rock album mixing Gregorian music and psychedelic pop with vocals in Latin. The opening track “Kyrie Eleison” is widely known. It was used as the back ground music for the acid trip in “Easy Rider”. There were many personnel changes in the band. At one time Kenny Loggins, who later found success with Jim Messina, was in the Prunes.
In 1999 the band got together for the first time in 30 years in a recording studio. The Electric Prunes have since started to tour again. They have a new concert DVD called Electric Prunes - Rewired and released a new album in 2004 called California. For more info about this band go to their website electricprunes.com.
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