Graham Reid | | 2 min read
The Thief, by Motion
There's not a lot of fun and frivolity in pop and rock these days. You wouldn't expect U2, Coldplay, Radiohead, Beyonce or Taylor Swift, for example, to release anything as juvenile as Yellow Submarine or as dumb as Neanderthal Man.
It's true that a gimmick song can make you a bit of money but can also kill a career. It's hard to come back after one, especially if you have something more serious to say.
From the Thirties to the late Fifties there were plenty of silly, stupid or just crazed songs but by the mid-Sixties when careers were being formed and becoming viable all that seemed to go away, except for a few courageous or couldn't-care-less types.
This 28 song collection isn't all yuck-yuck or bizarre – there's some straight and sentimental doo-wop – but songs with titles like Gorilla Hunt, The Mad Scientist, Meet the Bongo Man, TNT in a T-Shirt, Yes Master! and The Blob (by the Altecs, the Zanies, Johnny O, Rebels, the Whips and the Zanies again, respectively) speak for themselves.
Yes Master! by the Whips is a vaguely Middle Eastern-type instrumental romp with a faux whip-crack and a woman breathing “yes master” every now and again. Hmm.
It would be fair to observe that only one name here might be familiar – Bobby Troup who wrote Route 66, he weighs in with his jazzy/Mose Allison-type take on Willie Dixon's Seventh Son – but you'd have to admit a part of you wants to here what Tony Casanova would sound like. (Not what you think actually, it's bent rockabilly from '59 entitled Boogie Woogie Feeling.)
These are songs – mostly from the late Fifties to the mid Sixties – where teenagers and and young adults (who grew up with rock'n'roll, probably read Mad magazine and watched B- grade flicks at the drive-in) got into a studio and just had fun. Then thought up a name for their band, like Basil and the Baroques (kinda serious surf guitar with folk-power pop on It's No Use) or Chuck Miles and the Styles (Rock That Boogie from '62, closer to jump jive than rock'n'roll).
Los Corvets, apparently “the Beatles of Ecuador”, are here with a faithfully fuzzed but Hispanic version of the Stones' Satisfaction (at least it seems like Spanish) and guitarist Johnny Z (Dave Porrazzo, aka Johny Zorro) offers a truly bizarre Midnight Beach Party of no fixed style.
Haight (in Haight-Ashbury) Street by Opus Five from '68 is one of the latest here and it's hard to know if it is taking hippies seriously or taking the piss. Either way it's pretty odd. Might be read as an early stab at a What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding . . . but it's not.
There is some strange stuff scattered about here but Spencer's Van Dykes garageband r'n'b I'll Blow My Mind is a bit of a find.
The Thief by Motion is . . . Well, hear it for yourself.
So sci-fi schlock-pop, B-grade horror flick instrumentals, doo-wop, white-boy funk, strange psychedelic pop (Leave Me Behind by The South Hampton Story) and a whole of people who chose not to go by their own names. Good booklet giving such background as is available.
And The Mad Scientist, Yes Master! and The Blob.
What's not to enjoy?
It's called stupid fun. Not enough of it out there.
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