As a 16 year old rockabilly/psychobilly in 1980 on £28 a week after giving my mum £10 a week board, there wasn't much money left for records, especially as beer was 50p a pint! I wasn't aware of a garage revival as such until much later, bands like the Stingrays and the X-men all had quiffs and crossed in to the rocking scene without ever using the 'g' word. The Vibes, later the Purple Things, also were be-quiffed! Im not sure when garage came to be used to differentiate between the scenes, it's a question Ive had with several people of similar ages who were there as well.
You young whippersnappers don't know how lucky you are with the internet, everything now is accesible. Press coverage was sparse to say the least and apart from a few 'bigger' bands American garage was pretty hard to get hold of and bloody expensive if you could find it, a collecion took years to build up and not a couple of hours downloading from the web.
Anyway, for me, the best garage bands available to me at the time were the Vibes/Purple things, Stingrays, Tall Boys, Prisoners, Turkey Bones and the wild dogs(check out goldfish and helicopter man). Always found the Milkshakes a bit too 'beat' for me but like later Childish bands. The garage goodies vol 1 album was probably the best British comp at the time as well. Hope this answers the question?
"old timers"? Well, aren't you just the cutest little thing!? Growing up in Boston, Lyres were my favourite band by a wide margin at least 10 years before I heard the phrase "Garage" or "Garage revival". They were just the best rock'n'roll band in town or any town. Also loved the Malarians.
It's different every Monday, otherwise it would make Mondays that much more mundane. Since Mondays are always a busy day for me and I hate them, it's usually something along the lines of Black Flag, Discharge, SSD...etc. Last Monday on the transit rush hour commute, I was listening to Exodus and Hellhammer demos.
By the time I've arrived to my job and had my dose of aggressive music, I take it down a notch. I normally listen to 60s garage music all day, cause it's pleasing to me and non-offensive to the store patrons. Started last Monday morning work day off with the Nazz S/T and then Around the Grapefruit album, then mix tapes, I think. I hate Mondays.
I'd say that the Strange Boys are one of the top bands with the same kinda vibe as Black Lips. Plus, maybe it was a bad night for Black Lips when I saw them live (in Bristol, England) around 4 or 5 years ago, whereas Strange Boys totally rocked.
Try to listening Death By Unga Bunga... maybe you like them. This is young rock combo from Norway that plays a mixture of punk, garage, soul, power pop and surf!
That's off the top of my head... I do a Garage, Surf, and Lofi show but Black Lips are pretty unique not sure if there's much that's real similar to them.
Hey y'all. I recently started getting into the Black Lips a lot and was wondering if any of you fine folks knew of more bands with a similar happy-go-lucky, hand-clapping vibe? I especially dig bands that dip between multiple genres, or are sorta uncategorizable.
She didn't actually write "Making Believe," but she had the first hit with it back in the '50s. Lutz Vipinderwoman said:
The kitty fell into the well....I never knew she had written Making Believe (which I love). My old band covered both Amigo's Blue Guitar (and Honky Tonk Angel). I've always liked her.
The kitty fell into the well....I never knew she had written Making Believe (which I love). My old band covered both Amigo's Blue Guitar (and Honky Tonk Angel). I've always liked her.
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican July 20, 2012
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, you wrote us some songs.
And because July 14 would have been Guthrie’s 100th birthday, it’s a good time to celebrate his impressive body of work, which in turn celebrates all of us — when he’s not calling a pox on cruel vigilantes, bankers who rob you with a fountain pen, and others who would oppress the people.
I realized that Guthrie had transformed from a dusty old counterculture outcast hero into a mainstream icon eight years ago when I was covering a campaign speech by President George W. Bush in Albuquerque. At the end of the rally there was canned music — upbeat, if not quite inspirational, instrumental versions of patriotic songs. And among these was “This Land Is Your Land” by Guthrie.
I couldn’t resist needling a Republican friend I saw there. “Do you realize they’re playing a song written by an admitted communist?” He looked at me like I was crazy.
But a lot of people take this stuff seriously. At least they used to.
According to the Roadside America website in an article about the Guthrie statue in the the town of Okemah, Oklahoma, where he was born, local folks “remembered him mostly as a socialist who wrote a regular column, `Woody Sez,’ for The Daily Worker — the newspaper of the American Communist Party.”
It’s true that there were lots of bitter feelings about Woody’s politics among conservative elements in the Sooner state. I remember visiting there in the mid-’70s when the idea of the Okemah statue was first being discussed. The Daily Oklahoman was frothing over the notion of building a memorial for a commie folksinger. As Roadside America notes, “It wasn’t until 1998, 31 years after his death — and after everyone who disliked him had also died — that the town erected a statue in his honor.”
So you can listen to the songs of Woody Guthrie these days without being labeled a dangerous subversive. And there’s lots to choose from.
Here are my Top 10 Guthrie covers.
1) “Do-Re-Mi” by Ry Cooder. Guthrie meant for this song to be good-natured and humorous, a warning to poor folks against being lured to California to find work only to be exploited and mistreated once they got there. But on his live album, Show Time!, Cooder, aided by Flaco Jiménez on accordion, combines this with the Mexican polka “Viva Sequin” to turn “Do-Re-Mi” into a fiesta.
2) “Vigilante Man” by Hindu Love Gods. The Love Gods was a one-off project by Warren Zevon, backed by members of R.E.M. in 1990. This is a straightforward folk-rock version led by Zevon’s ragged voice and Peter Buck conjuring up the music of both Luther Perkins and Ennio Morricone on guitar.
3) “I Ain’t Got a Home in This World Anymore” by Bruce Springsteen. This appears on a 1988 various-artists compilation called Folkways: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. It was just a few years before that when Springsteen’s manager turned him onto Joe Klein’s biography Woody Guthrie: A Life, which was instrumental in politicizing Springsteen. Springsteen also did a rocking version of “Vigilante Man” on this tribute album, but his mournful, acoustic version of “I Ain’t Got a Home” goes straight to the heart.
4) “Philadelphia Lawyer” by The Maddox Brothers & Rose. This is a tale of revenge — well, perhaps just Old West justice — about a cowboy who loses his sweetheart to a slick attorney from the East. I’ve got it on a collection called America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band Vol. 1. Rose Maddox would record it again as a bluegrass number a few decades later on a solo album, This Is Rose Maddox.
5) “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” by The Byrds. Guthrie wrote this song in 1948 after reading about a U.S. government plane deporting 28 people to Mexico. The plane had caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon in California and crashed, killing everyone on board. Guthrie was saddened by the tragedy and angered at the fact that the victims weren’t named. The Byrds did this song as a country waltz, powered by those trademark Byrds harmonies.
6) “Pretty Boy Floyd” by The Byrds. Again with the Byrds. In their early days they were known as devoted Dylan interpreters. But they also did well by Guthrie. Years before I’d ever heard this song, my Oklahoma grandmother used to tell me the story of the famous Robin Hood-style bank robber delivering a truckload of groceries to the poor in Oklahoma right before Christmas one year during the Depression. Most of the world, me included, first heard this tune, done as a bluegrass romp on the landmark 1968 country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
7) “Hard Travelin’ ” by Simon Stokes. Guthrie sang this as a happy hobo tune. But Stokes, with his gruff voice and minor-key arrangement, makes a listener believe that he’s traveled every mile and barely survived the journey. Stokes sounds like a hobo who would rip out your spleen and throw it in the pot with his Mulligan stew. He sounds scary in the song even when he does a verse in a strange falsetto.
8) “Grand Coulee Dam” by Lonnie Donegan. This song celebrates a massive public-works project of the ’30s — an economic stimulus package on a scale we can’t even imagine these days. True story: in 1941 the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon, hired Guthrie to write music for a film about the Columbia River and public power. This song, “Roll on Columbia” and several others came out of that arrangement. Skiffle King Donegan’s 1958 studio recording of this song is a spirited take that gets faster and faster as the song progresses.
9) “Dust Bowl Refugee” by James Talley. This song is from Talley’s excellent tribute album, Woody Guthrie and Songs of My Oklahoma Home, which was recorded in Santa Fe at Stepbridge Studios in the 1990s. This is one of Guthrie’s finest if not that famous Dust Bowl ballads, and Talley did it justice.
10) “This Land Is Your Your Land” by Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings.Guthrie wrote in response to Kate Smith’s “God Bless America,” which he thought was pompous. “This Land” has been de-fanged to the point that it’s no more controversial than a summer camp singalong. But Jones, the most significant soul singer to arise in the last 10 years or so, puts fire and defiance back into the tune.
I also put the Danectro Longhorn in the cool guitar category. The design is funky but Danelectros have a historic reputation as great sounding cheap guitars. Some of them are admittedly too cheap.
This month's show is now on the GaragePunk jukebox featuring the following tracks:
One Girl Man – The Lost Agency, I Cried – The Chains, Death of a Romantic – The Smugglers, Pop Song – Mikal Cronin & Ty Segall, Dokks – The Hussy, A Simple Mistake – Indian Wars, My Soap Won’t Float – The Regiment, Haunted House – Dead Ghosts, Get Along – Mikal Cronin, I Bought My Eyes – Ty Segall Band, City Hall – Graham Coxon, My Momma Said – Epsilons, More Cigarettes – Cheap Time,
96 Larmes – Jack of Heart,
Bottle Up and Go – Leadbelly,
You Know I Got to Do It – Leadbelly, Test Drive – The Mummies, Swami – William Penn Fyve, Alice the Goon – Wobbly Lamps.
Broadcast every month for your listening pleasure from the Thames Delta in the UK, Laggers, Miggins and Coop will be spinning vinyl from their record collections, aiming to play stuff that you might not hear on other shows at the Hideout.
Glad you enjoyed it Jason, the 7" is available direct from us here. Only 100 of the 250 limited singles left, they are selling quickly. Get one before they're gone folks.
Jason Feldmann said:
This is a really cool sound. Just listened to the 2nd song -- She Wants Me Dead -- thanks for posting to the cloud for all to hear and appreciate. And incidentally, two and a half minutes might just be the perfect song length. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all kinds of music, and dig on opus-like songs from Pink Floyd, Mars Volta, Sleep, Grails.... but sometimes bands just need to get to the point and kick out the jams.
Polyvinyl Craftsmen said:
Wobbly Lamps from the UK. Check their new single here
fender reverb (reissue) when it works, i've had some probs with it.
Premier reverberation when the Fender is broke
i use 3 different levels of distortion, and usually decide on the fly what sound i want depending on mood, intensity, the room, the audience, etc.
they are SD-1, DS-1, and little big muff.
Otto, let me ask you this... so you have the fender reverb because you like it better than the reverb on the twin? or is something wrong with the twin?
