Why Don't You Smile - The All Night Workers

'Why Don't You Smile' is an early piece of sixties garage drone from a pre-Velvets Lou Reed and John Cale (along with Terry Phillips and Jerry Vance). It was the heavy (and frankly far superior) B side to the bopping single 'Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket,' released under the band name The All Night Workers. While Reed and Cale's performing on the record is debated Cale did revisit the song solo later on in his career, but there's something undeniably special about the original article.

From it's Northern Soul vocals to it's droning psych-blues backing, the song slowly inhales before blowing viscous technicolor fumes down your ears. The record was cut towards the end of Reed's tenure as a staff writer for Pickwick Records. The session band consisted of a myriad of rising sixties musicians including Lloyd Baskin (of Seatrain), Mike Esposito (Blue Magoos) and the rumored involvement of Peter Stampfel (The Holy Modal Rounders).

It's a fascinating look at the experimental drone rock sound Reed and Cale were concurrently developing with The Velvet Underground and a powerful piece of classic garage in it's own right.

A tip of the hat to Popsike.com for filling in the gaps in my knowledge on this rare single. Also! A second version of the song that's less clean, but heavier for that real drone sound.

I Wany Candy - The Strangeloves

So this song was going through my head on a loop yesterday. Not the version in the video mind you, the one by Bow Wow Wow which Beavis and Butthead (critics extraordinaire) unanimously voted sucks.

So I decided to look up where the song came from. It was written by the song writing/producing team FGG Productions, made up of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer. The trio had already written hits for a string of other artists, most notably with 'My Boyfriends Back' for The Angels. In late 1964, presumably tired of sharing royalties with other artists, the trio decided to create a band to perform their work.

Taking a page out of The Monkees play book, the trio created a fake back story for the band to set the public's imagination on fire. They decided the band needed to be exotic (makes sense) so they settled on being from Australia (well...), and they needed a feel good care free back story (okay sure-) so they decided they were sheepfarmers (what?). Not just sheep farmers! (Oh-) Wealthy sheep farmers! (-kay.) And, because it was the sixties, all of their names would rhyme- making them the Brothers Niles, Giles and Miles Strange of The Strangeloves!

So. The story didn't really catch on. But the music did, especially the Bo Diddley-raga drum lead 'I Want Candy,' which is an undeniably catchy song. And sounds a bit like a lounge band playing in the middle of the jungle. Which can only ever be a good thing.

Thank God for wealthy, eccentric, bored, sheep farmer brothers.

Roll Over Beethoven - The Sonics

Before you even DARE hit play, turn your volume up to max. If you're not on a computer with big speakers put on headphones. NOW. It's illegal to listen to The Sonics without nearly blowing out your eardrums.

The Sonics are a band made of drums. Every sound has the crack, whoomp, bang of a snare hit so hard it explodes. Every drum strike is like your heart being suffocated by a bomb. Guitars aren't strummed, they're punched. The pianos sound like they're being smashed with hammers. With every scream ripping out of Gerry Roslie you can feel eyes bugging out of his head like a pair of pounding kick drums while he throws up a cascade of cymbals.

When not ripping apart cover songs to shreds, The Sonics were happy to sing about the sexual power of witches, recreational strychnine drinking, and slowly going psychopathic from love.

Proto-punk doesn't even begin to describe or do justice to the pure brute force of this sound. Every song they touch sounds like it has rabies.