Mary Mary - Los Ovnis

Sixties garage punks from Mexico play The Monkees. That sentence makes me way happier than it should. MARY MARY!

This will be the first of a few entries looking at underground sixties Mexican musicians, but to set the stage and get you shimmying in your seat with anticipation enjoy Mary Mary by Los Ovnis!

Tunes of Terror Vol. 4 - The Witch

'The Witch' makes me think of the Batman theme song on steroids. In fact the titular Witch would make the best super hero ever. A garage rock heroine roving the city late at night in a long black hearse fighting villains with sex, hair and a massive shotgun she calls her BroomStick. Goddamn yes. What was I talking about?

Right! The Sonics are old favorites here on That Song Blog. We've spoken about their brutally percussive brand of sixties rock before, so you know what to expect. It beats the shit out of you while forcing you to do a violent twist.

You know the drill- load it up and make it LOUD, because it's illegal to listen to The Sonics if your ears aren't beginning to bleed.

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.

Shanghied - The Fabulous Wailers

Shanghied - The Fabulous Wailers (Spotify)

In the late fifties and early sixties proto-punk bands began to explode out of the Pacific North-West. The Fabulous Wailers (not those Wailers) were a garage rock band from Tacoma, Washington chiefly active from the late fiftes to sixties. They are widely hailed as one of the original garage bands, and are chiefly known for their song 'Tall Cool One.'

Today I have pulled out the instrumental number 'Shanghied.' The song opens with a drum hook almost stolen straight from 'Suzie-Q' before gently gliding into two minutes of smoke filled guitars and gurning sax.

Bend Me, Shape Me - The Models

The opening thirty seconds of The Models 'Bend Me, Shape Me' (which should only ever be listened to through headphones- loudly) are the equivalent of drowning in a bath tub made of gelatin guitars while drums implode like bubbles. The song is so drenched in reverb and echo that it sounds more like a bacchanalian transmission from another dimension than a pop song.

'Bend Me, Shape Me' was initially a track by the group The Outsiders (though some claim The Models put their version out first), but only became a hit in 1967 when the so soporific-it-rivals-valium American Breed cover hit the airwaves.

There's not a great deal of information available amount The Models. They were part of the growing army of Sixties Garage girl groups and supposedly were made up of Vogue magazine models. The latter part is a little hard to verify but it's a striking image especially when placed against the sound of the song.

Unlike their contemporaries, such as The Shangri-Las, The Models didn't fully embrace pop. 'Bend Me, Shape Me,' with it's effects heavy production (courtesy of Tom Wilson) and stop'n'start rhythms is both hypnotically groovy and icily alienating. There's an edge of unease, like you're hearing music made by doppleganger Garage girls in a concrete bunker.

The Electronic Insides of Dr. Krieg - The Riders of the Mark

The reason I love sixties garage so much is because it was a hotbed of experimental sounds and creativity. It's like a drip feed of one-off bands and projects pumping you full of mutant morphine to give you wonderfully weird hallucinations. Hallucinations like The Electronic Insides of Dr. Krieg:

Much like The Monocles from a few days ago, The Riders of the Mark appeared out of an LSD saturated haze and gave us one song before vanishing again. Armed with little more than a Lord of the Rings referencing name (naturally), Riders John Hill and Don Cochrane entered the studio in 1967 wanting to make a song similar to The Beatles track 'Tomorrow Never Knows.' Only, you know- with a whole lot more angry German machine men bathing in fire (naturally).

The song is a fascinating melding of reference points and genres. The lo-fi fuzz bass and thudding steam-powered drum line feels like a blue print for thrash punk. The backwards looping guitars and organs are firmly entrenched in mid-sixties psychedelia. Electronic squeals and blips slip and slide across the foundation, boring into you like an elastic power-drill. The automaton fever dream screams echo, burst and submerge beneath the waves of sound.

Wonderful. And apparently it's an anti-war song. In so far as songs about degree carrying fire robots can be an anti-war song.

The Spider and The Fly - The Monocles

I just...

Okay. It's...

It's hard to explain. Or find any explanation. As far as I can tell, The Monocles were a garage rock band from Colorado who started out making clean cut pop, then they discovered drugs, then this happened.

It walks a very fine line between being insanely kitsch (which it is) and pretty unnerving. The echo drenched bass and drums feel like rubber bands slapping against the underside of your brain. The guitar is less played than punched, crackling with electricity and bark. The organ screams and rolls, building higher and higher before crashing down in on itself.

I don't even know where to begin describing the vocals. A bit like the Justice League narrator and Vincent Price were dropped in a blender. With a mouse. And a B movie actress.

It's not like it would ever be (or ever was) successful, but it doesn't matter. The fun the musicians were having is infectious, and it's definitely unique. It makes me wish we'd see more bizarre stuff like this today. If this doesn't open the door to psychedelic auto-tuned tornadoes of robots demolishing humanity with pop songs, then there is no justice in the world.

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.