A Midwest 60's Invasion.

I don't know.

Here's a couple of things.

Breakout (1964)

Some instrumental madness from the Invictas. The Discogs entry for them simply says "US group probably from Michigan" and mentions that they later picked up a singer and changed their name to Ruth Anne & the Footsteps. Now you know as much as I do.

The Invasion is Coming (1967)

A nice little garage rock number about an alien invasion. Maybe. It's not like the lyrics really make a whole lot of sense on any closer examination. They don't need to. It's a garage rock song. It's better if they don't.

According to Discogs these guys were from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and had previously called themselves the Ethics. They had second single.

I wish I had that one too.

The Homer & Jethro Project #49

Need to plow through a couple of fresh posts tonight.

#49

October 1964 - lsp-2954 - Fractured Folk Songs


I'm going to assume that the title alone should give you an idea of what we're dealing with here at the tail end of the great American Folk Revival that was part of the many musical streams killed off by Limeys in this year. It was a sad time. But at least it got Dylan to go electric.

Little Maggie
Mama Don't Whip Little Buford
The Playboy Song
I Don't Give A Hoot (For The Nanny)
So Long (It's Been Good To Know You)
Goodnight Irene
Why Don't You Wash Your Feet
After The Hangover's Over
Rye Whiskey
Fractured Folk Song
Jimmy Drinks Corn
The Funny Farm

The Homer & Jethro Project #48

#48

And so it goes.

March 1964 - RCA 47-8345 - I Want to Hold Your Hand / She Loves You

Like they did with  Elvis the decade previous, Homer and Jethro had to go with the times and attempt to lampoon the then current fad. So they made this one which I won't linger on.
The less said the better.

July 1964 - lsp-2928 - Cornfucius Say

So yeah, 1964 was a different time. Civil Rights were being fought for hard in the streets as well as equality and and end to racial discrimination, but apparently Asian stereotypes were still game.

(See also Mickey Rooney's yellow face portrayal of "Mr. Yunioshi" in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for even cringier shit)

But it is what it is and to deny that it existed is to deny where we started and how far we've come and still need to go.

(One really shouldn't be looking for racial sensitivity in the comedy from half a century ago anyway.)

So at this point our boys were still doing their Kellogs Corn Flakes work. There were another couple of commercials too. One that is a surreal take on the pervasive nature of advertising and one that would probably prompt an Asian American boycott nowadays. (and I'm not sure I'd blame them.)
At least they have their names on the back of their shirts so you can tell them apart.

This leg of the Corn Flakes campaign even came with its own Cornfucius Joke Book (here in a nice .pdf format from my own personal copy.) that could be gotten as a premium for sending in your box tops collected over the course of many many breakfasts and bachelor dinners.

Contents therein assured to entertain six year olds and grandparents.

Of note on the record is another version of the Frank Loesser tune "Slow Boat to China" (see H&JP #10) and two more particular favorites in "Cousin John and Cousin Mabel" and Cy Coben's great working man's lament "My Boss". He wrote a lot of songs for Homer & Jethro, but this is the clear winner.

Cornfucius Say
Doin' My Homework (While I Watch TV)
Cousin John And Cousin Mabel
Doctor Foo Man Choo
Mother Goose Is Chicken
A Slow Boat To China
Gonna Send 'Em Home
Oh Golly, Cornfucius
Darlin' You Look So Good To Me
Chow Hound's Lament
My Boss
Monsters Of The World, Unite!

Mankato's Finest

Back to the States for today.

Minnesota to be precise.

It's the Gestures!

Run Run Run (1964)

Released at the start of the so called British Invasion only much better than most of the crap flooding our shores from across the pond.
The Gestures hailed from Minneapolis suburb Mankato.

This wasn't some lame rehashed watered down British Invasion shit

If you listen to the music and musicianship underneath you can hear a solid underpinning of good old US Prime A Surf in all of it.

And these kids can play. It's tight as fuck and all American,baby

And the songs, Dale Menten (guitar, vocal) originals, are polished and performed perfectly.

I'll take this over just about anything contemporary to it.

Don't Mess Around (1965)

And then they do it again. "Don't Mess Around" is pure fucking genius. There's so much that happens in two minutes and twenty seconds. That bass line. The syncopation. Those guitar tones. All of it.

I love this tune.

B-side is another sweet 1-4-5 stomper.

Four sides of pure wonder.

Things Forgotten

Back in the Stone Ages of the 80's before the compact disc there were relatively few options for a poor fellow to have his music on the go. There was the transistor radio, of course, but that kind of tied you to what was on the radio and it was pretty bleak. You could spend some dough and get a ghetto blaster style boombox, but then you'd have to share and not everybody was amenable to that.

Then came along the Walkman and by the early part of the decade the price came down enough to be economically feasible for a penniless schmuck like myself to afford one and make his ever expanding record collection go portable. This involved lots and lots of cassette tape compilations that would be carefully chosen in the morning and carried around with a journal of juvenile profundity and various other bits of detritus in an over the shoulder man bag purchased at the Army/Navy store on Boylston st. I'd usually carry five or six ninety minute cassettes of most recent purchases. I loved making tapes. I traded tapes with other like minded individuals. I made compilation tapes for potential dates. (which is in itself a very special courtship ritual that's all but lost today.) I liked doing it.

Fast forward to the 21st Century and as I start digging into the 60's Garage/punk/psych box that I haven't really paid attention to in quite a few years and I start remembering how much I absolutely fucking loved this shit and I can still almost recreate the track listings of certain tapes that I played over and over again....

 The Lyrics (1967)

From San Diego. Both sides are quite good garage rockers of the era. This is their third single of three. It's the second one with the snotty bluesy "So What" that's been comped to death, but I personally listened to this single a whole fucking lot and still can't decide which side I like better.

 The Muffins (1966)

The Muffins were most likely from Rhode Island. They're kind of a mystery. They back two different vocalists on this single One side of this is a reverb drenched romantic ballad as performed by John Broughton called "Walk Alone" which is cool enough by itself if you're like me and like that moody New England garage thing.
But it's the garage punker "One More Time" on flip that gets all the action. This one is fronted by the inimitable Shawkey Se'au that gets all the panties damp in collector circles. Primitive and repetitive and wild. Just like the doctor ordered.

 the Novas (1964)


The Novas were from Minneapolis and threw down this love note to famed wrestler Crusher Lisowski in 1964 during some of the last gasps of the US surf music era that would be unceremoniously killed off by a bunch of lame English bands that year. But here's your opportunity, you turkeynecks to finally do the eye gouge in the safety of your own home.

The Other Singles Box

For a long while I was also pretty obsessed with 60's garage/punk/psych records. I dug deep and picked up as much as I could afford along with the other multiple musical obsessions I had. (Keeping up the prolific output of The Fall alone was enough to break any starving twenty-something's bank or at the very least put a sizable dent in one's beer money.)

I broke into that box the other day with a decision to finally do away with the arbitrary vinyl segregation of that crap from the rest of my crap. It was all going to be one gigantic pile of vinyl crap from now on. There's some really good stuff in there.

Since that's how I roll, I'm a gonna start with some of shit from the New England area because that's what I wanted to listen to when I pulled this shit out.

 

Hey Little Bird (1964)

I'll Keep Seeing You (1966)

The Barbarians are probably the famous names here. They have two big claims to fame. 1. They made an appearance in some cuts of the "T.A.M.I. Show" along side of such big names as Chuck Berry, Beach Boys, an amazing James Brown and a really really baked Rolling Stones. They performed their first single "Hey Little Bird" and 2. the drummer, Moulty, had suffered an accident earlier in his youth and had lost a hand and drummed with the aid of a prosthetic hook. Not really a gimmick, but something interesting. (there was at least one other 60's percussionist with a hook in the Cryan' Shames which though hardly qualifies as a trend makes you go hmmm...) This does however come into play for the B-side of "I'll Keep on Seeing You" which features a rather over the top inspirational number entitled "Moulty" about persevering in what you want to do in life despite the setbacks you may encounter along the way....Forgive me, I'm getting misty just thinking about it...

It is truly a camp classic that I'm sure Moulty regrets agreeing to do to this very day. I can't blame him, but still I find it a rather guilty pleasure. The one thing I've found of note about this particular recording is that the actual Barbarians don't actually play on this one. Instead, Moulty's passionate inspirational plea is backed by the Band (you know, the one who backed Bob Dylan) without Levon Helm. I'm not sure that they keep this on their resume, though.

 Is This It (1965?)

Georgie Porgie put out a number of singles with a couple of different groups during the 60's. This is maybe the second or third one. Here's an interview with him. It's one of those ones where the A-side is kind of crap, but the B-side is gold. "You've Been Gone a Long Long Time" is a little garage pounder slathered in a shit ton of reverb. I'd forgotten how much I really loved this song. It's also one that for whatever reason hasn't been comped to death like most of its ilk. I have one long suppressed memory of making an epic journey home one lysergically inspired evening many many years ago because I really really needed to hear that song because it was calling to me and it was exactly the way my head sounded that evening. It was pretty blissful and we probably played it a dozen times before moving on. Ahhhh, youth.

Rag Bag (1965)


Little John & the Sherwoods on the Fleetwood label. The A-side is a reasonable garage number about dating a girl from the other side of the economic tracks. Not bad, but listenable. The money side is on the flip with "Long Hair". It's a lovely snotty fuzzy manifesto regarding hair length the upshot of which appears that despite society's disapproval of their coiffures, they're still banging society's daughters anyway. I find that message a lot more inspirational than "Moulty".