Bedazzled!

The Creation - A Collection Of German 60's 45 Picture Sleeves

More @ Anorak Thing (based on a tip from Stupefaction)

Derek's Daily 45: Morgen - "Of Dreams"

"There's something about the mix of (Steve) Morgen's wispy vocals mixed with fuzzed out, raw psychedelia that's very appealing here. A bombastic vocalist would turn the track into a relatively generic track, but the childlike vocals and lyrics add an English-like edge to the track, which truly elevates during the more restrained chorus-like section (staring for the first time around :48). "

"Morgen's LP is very rare and very collectable, but for my ears it's this single that's priceless." via Derek's Daily 45

Silent Footage from 16mm "Music Video" Shoot - 1960's - Color

Some very cool footage of 60's teens dancing and general "Hard Day's Night" style romping. Uploaded by XenonExplosion who notes: 

"Bought a box of empty 16mm and 8mm reels, with a few of them full of leader... and THIS footage!"

"If anyone knows what it is or who the band is, or even the date, please share... It looks like a student film or "music video." (yeah, I know, it's on Film so it's not a video...)"

"It has no soundtrack, and the sprocket side is very dark so I could barely make out --DACHRO-- on the edge, which leads me to believe this was shot on Kodachrome. The video doesn't do the colors or the sharpness justice, they're incredible!"

"I left the sound intact so you could hear the splices go through the projector. Some of the footage is continuous stock even though the angle/scene changes, but most of it is cement-spliced together. Fascinating stuff!"

Underground Sunshine - "Birthday" on American Bandstand - Rare Wisconsin Garage

"Wisconsin's Underground Sunshine perform their "one hit", a cover of the Beatles' 'Birthday', on...well, you know the show."

"The Underground Sunshine consisted of Bert Kohl, Frank Kohl, Jane Little and Chris Connors." Uploaded by 60sgaragebands 

"The What's New"

from left: Jay Huling, Colin Scot, Kevin Shipman and Carl Berg

The What's New have always fascinated record collectors: mistakenly listed as a Florida band, they released two EPs in France but nothing in the U.S.

Their story starts with the Yachtsmen, a folk group founded by students at Long Beach City College in 1959. They became regulars at Disneyland in Anaheim, releasing an LP on Disney's Buena Vista label (BV-3310), "High and Dry with The Yachtsmen" in 1961.

On the LP the group were Carl Berg (vocals, guitar), Ray Jordan (vocals, banjo, string bass), Jay Huling (aka Jay Hulingpart, vocals, guitar, bongos), and Bill Reed (vocals, bass). Other members included Kevin Shipman and Mickey Elley.

Kevin Shipman created a video history of the Yachtsmen & What's New with photos and music.

 

The Yachtsmen continued performing at Disneyland for the next several years, adding Scot Thistlewaite (stage name Colin Scot).

Scot had been playing banjo and guitar with a ragtime duo called Bud and Scotty at Coke Corner in Disneyland, with Bud Hedrick on piano.

 

 

Bud Hedrick and Colin Scot at Coke Corner, photo courtesy Bud Hedrick.

Scot was born in the UK, moved to Canada in the late '50s where he went to Sir Adam Beck Collegiate High School in London, Ontario, then moved to California where he attended Cal State University at Long Beach.

 

In October, 1965, French chanteuse Line Renaud and her husband Louis "Loulou" Gasté saw the Yatchsmen at Disneyland and brought the group over to Paris in January, 1966.

The band changed their name to the What's New though they still look very collegiate performing "Des mots d'amor" with Line Renaud on French TV. They performed at the Casino de Paris, and opened for the Beach Boys and Michel Polnareff at the Olympia on October 25, 1966.

They recorded their first EP in July, '66 at Gasté's own studio in Paris, scoring a French hit with a single version of Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain". Their first EP also has their version of Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind" and two songs by Randy Sparks of the New Christy Minstrels, "Huckleberry Finn" and "Driving Wheels".


Their second EP showcases four original songs by Colin Scot, putting a sharp folk-rock sound behind Scot's plaintive lead vocal and the group's harmonies. It includes the now-famous "Up So High" ("Got no use for LSD, every time you look at me I'm up so high") and the excellent "Get Away" which moves from dreamy verse to tough chorus.

The What's New disbanded in early 1967. Colin Scot became part owner of a nightclub called Kahuna's Cave in Cala Mayor, Palma de Majorca, and toured the folk circuit in the UK in the late '60s. In the 1970s he released LPs on United Artists and Warner Bros, with a final single "Mandolin Man" / "Boris" on RCA in 1977. He died in Amsterdam in 1996 (though I've also seen it listed as 1999).

Chas Kit writes about garage bands at Garage Hangover
What's New EP scans courtesy Jeff of the Limestone Lounge and Obsolete, Yachtsmen LP scan from Vintage Disneyland Tickets

Welcome Chas Kit of Garage Hangover!

I'm very excited to announce our newest guest blogger, Chas Kit of the awesome Garage Hangover blog. I contacted Chas about some videos I found by a group called The What's New, I couldn't find much info on them, and what I did find turned out to be incorrect. But, of course, Chas has the scoop on them. Check out his post (with videos uploaded by Bedazzled.tv) coming up in a few minutes.

"Au Bus Palladium" - Documentary Footage of Paris Club - 1960's - Les 5 Gentlemen?

Is that Les 5 Gentlemen? All the shots of them and the audience are very similar to their Scopitone of "Cara-Lin". It's definitely the same club.

Reg Presley of the Troggs Announces He Has Cancer

Reg Presley, lead singer of the British ’60s hitmakers the Troggs, has announced a retirement from music due to his being diagnosed with cancer.

In a statement issued on the Troggs’ official website, Reg said “As you all know I was taken ill whilst doing a gig in Germany in December. During my stay in hospital tests showed that in fact I have lung cancer. I am receiving chemotherapy treatment and at the moment not feeling too bad.” He has previously suffered two strokes; one in 2010 and another just last year. via britrockaholic.tumblr.com

"Mod" LA Fashion Show with Garage Band "The Bees" of "Voices Green and Purple" Fame (or are they the OTHER Bees from L.A?)

The Bees of "Voices Green and Purple" (or are they the OTHER Bees from L.A., the ones on Mirwood who did "Leave Me Be/She's An Artist" ?) fame play "Satisfaction" and more at a Department Store Fashion Show in LA. Date Unknown. (Pebbles Volume 3) Thanks to Astro & Jean Pop Deux for ideas on who these Bees were.

The original "Punk-rock"... (a short tentative essay by Astro le mocker) :

Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" piece notwithstanding, funny how Punk came to be so associated with British Rock culture in the mainstream... as, originally it comes from US slang describing a small time crook, a downtown hoodlum or a juvenile delinquent and was first widely heard in Hollywood Gangster movies of the 1930s usually involving the acts of Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney... and especially "The Dead End Kids" series, the street-wise granddaddies of punk!

 

Then, a group of Rolling Stone magazine rock critic dissidents (Lester Bangs, Greg Shaw, Lenny Kaye...) came to coin the term "Punk-rock" to generally describe the music of post British-Invasion/ pre-Hippie garage-bands in the States : the first time the term was ever used to describe that music was when critic Dave Marsh (who used to write for 16 Magazine in the Sixties!) wrote about ? and the Mysterians (96 Tears) still playing two or three chord stuff while most of their contemporaries had graduated to Heavy or Progressive... in the 1971 may edition of Creem ("America's Only Rock'n'Roll Magazine"); he writes about them being one of the major exponents of "punk rock".

 

While there were talks about "bands playing in their garage" here and there on sixties magazines (as early as Surf instrumental music!), one had to wait for 1972 and the fanzine "Flash" to classify ten sixties albums as being Punk Top Ten... That same year, Lenny Kaye used the term in the liner notes to the cult compilation : Nuggets, in reference to sixties garage-rock bands like The Standells, The Sonics or The Seeds. Greg Shaw's Bomp! fanzine (... yeah! Actually "Punk-rock" was born and bred in Fanzines!) uses the term randomly all during the Seventies, applying  it to sixties Psychedelic-rock bands too. In may 1973, Billy Altman finally launched Punk Magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's where the confusion starts : "Punk" was totally an underground thing, like a code word for true Rock'n'roll fans in the know, that were fed-up with pompous Stadium Rock operas and what the mainstream Rock stations were serving them as "Classic Rock"... they had to search for their records in thrift stores and record bins out of the way, and loved their music obscure but retro. And then it came to mean a little arty scene out of New York specialised in situationnist Rock happenings (Television, Richard Hell, Patti Smith, Dictators... ultimately the Ramones who are the true inventors of the Punk-rock sound as we now know; since the first British Punk bands in the aftermath of Glam, like the Damned, the Sex Pistols or the Clash were all fans of Nuggets and copying the Ramones' playing! Richard Hell actually created the Punk look with spiked hairdo and ripped clothes...), an intellectual movement that catered around CBGB's in Lower Manhattan from 1974 onwards.

 

Malcolm Mc Laren, who was a Factory admirer trying to emulate his idol Andy Warhol by doing with the Sex Pistols what Andy had done with the Velvet Underground ten years before, brought the whole "Punk" art concept back to London where it really hit the fan, developping into a full blown Youth movement and Social phenomenon, fuelled no doubt by the economy crisis situation going on at the time in Thatcher's England.

And since it was all started by rock critic dissidents raving about it in fanzines, the general media came to mix it all up, calling "Punk" the music played by these new bands (while it actually and originally meant what music these bands were favoring and listening to rather than playing : original Garage-rock of forgotten US sixties' bands!)... Real Kids bassist Jeff Jensen (a cult Boston band equivalent to New York's Ramones...) remembers that at a gig in 1974 : « A music critic for one of the free entertainment magazines at the time saw us and gave us an excellent review, calling us a « punk group »... We all more or less looked at each other saying : « Punk? ...What is that? ».

The only historic bands that truly made the junction between 77's Punk and '66 Garage were Detroit's MC5 and especially the Stooges :

 

... No wonder when the late Greg Shaw (R.I.P.) started the cult "Pebbles" compilation series in Nugget's wake in 1979, by then he had to add the caption : "Original Sixties Punk Classics" or "Original Artyfacts From The First Punk Era", as if to set the record straight and going back full circle as the true music purist he always was; Bless his Soul!

 

 

Dead Sea Fruit - "Seeds of Discontent" (Le Petit Dimanche Illustré 11.26.6?)

 

Dead Sea Fruit - "Combining the deadpan wit of the Bonzo Dog Band and the social-conscious lyricism of the Kinks, Dead Sea Fruit helped to bring the British Invasion of the 1960s to France. Formed in 1966, the group spent three years based in Paris thrilling French audiences with their hook-laden songs. Although all but two members relocated to Dakar, Senegal, electric bassist/guitarist/vocalist Arthur Marsh, who had replaced founding member Christopher Hall in early 1967, returned to England after three months when club owners demanded that they stick to cover tunes. Dead Sea Fruit reached their apex in 1967, when their tongue-in-jowl single, "Lulu, Put Another Record On," reached the top position on the British music charts. Their self-titled album was released the same year." (AMG)

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The Starfires : "Linda" b/w "I Never Loved Her" (G.I)

I remember when my brother Olivier and I came to assist the mastering of the Lyres' Live album Tim Warren (Back From the Grave) was putting out on Crypt records, in the Boston suburbs, sometime during our holiday in the States of summer '87; Erik Lindgren was on the control board in his Arf Arf Records' Home-studio and Jeff "Monoman" Conolly was in the room watching the whole process... During a break, Jeff went thru Tim's rare 45 records case he had brought along, and dug up his original copy of the Starfires' "I Never Loved Her" and promptly ran out of the house with it : a $1000+ record! What a lunatic... a memorable afternoon :)
Now, I'm happy to have just a bootleg repro of this :

 

Forget the corny white boots from the alternate vid'... for some this is a religion!

Them - "Gloria" - Ultra Rare French TV Clip - 1966

Seems like there is just an unending stream of great 60's clips from French TV surfacing lately. Here's another one I was unaware of till a few minutes ago.

Les 5 Gentlemen - "Qu'As-Tu Katioucha" (A Tous Vents 1.22.67)

Les 5 Gentlemen perform "Qu'As-Tu Katioucha" on a show called "A Tous Vents"(1.22.67). It can be found on The Bedazzled Video Hour (and a half) 2011 - "French Pop Rarities 1966-1967". See it live at the WFMU Record Fair - Saturday, October 29

Derek's Weekly 45's: Psych Psampler #1

I have a whole smattering of Psych & Garage  45's digitized that never seem to make it onto my daily site (dereksdaily45.blogspot.com) so thanks to the magic of Bedazzled!, I'll share a few micrograms of them here from time to time.

First up, we have The Brass Toad, from (possibly) a town called Orange, TX with "In The Back Of My Mind" (1969). The group certainly has the type of late period psych sound as heard from fellow Texans The Bubble Puppy, and this record has a very druggy vibe that would fit in well on the soundtrack of a period low budget film, perfect for an acid freakout scene or playing in the background of a wild go-go party. 

In The Back Of My Mind

 

Cooling things off a bit but no less trippy is "Lady Margaret" from Capes Of Good Hope (1966), a band out of Chicago. The Capes laid out a fabulous song here, full of interesting lyrics, stellar harmonies, and bogus tabla drums. This group released a mere two 45's, but their talent is obvious and they seemingly could have done far more. Truly excellent stuff that will stick in your head all day and perhaps even cause some flashbacks.

Lady Margaret

The Seeds Pay a Visit : (recounting the actual first time for Sky Saxon and his reformed Seeds in Paris!)

(reedited and corrected from a 2004-01-06 article in "the Lance Monthly on the net") by Astro le Mocker

On June 24, 2003, the Seeds came to Paris. Well, not exactly. We had one fourth of the original band; even Jan Savage, the original guitarist, had to quit after his shows in Spain 'cause he couldn't take it any more, getting drunk all night like he was still 20 and being homesick and all. It was quite an event, considering the fact that it was their first time on our shores some 37 years after they first hit the charts with "Pushin' too hard."

Advertised only a couple weeks before the show, the venue was jam-packed to the rafters, a solid sell-out! Incredible! Hungry fans had been waiting for all these years to catch a glimpse of their favorite garage band. For some it was a dream come true, for others, like me, we wouldn't even have dreamed of such an event in Paris! And so, they came with their sons and grandsons; it was an all-age-encompassing public like the Rolling Stones on a smaller scale, I tell you!

For once, ex-punks, new hippies, garage maniacs, psych-heads, skinheads, groopies, greasers, mods, popsters, executives, rock critics, and mainstream rockers were all united under the banner of the Seeds. It seemed as if they were everybody's favorite Garage-band. Sky was as skinny as a matchstick (the acid drugs, no doubt, keeps you in shape) with his long, straight, straggly hair and a guru beard. He wore a wild tiger, psychedelic-green shirt underneath a grey-striped, prohibition jacket, and silver sparkling, Teddy Boy creepers to boot under black silk pants! He jumped and jerked all over the place like a mad dysfunctional puppet when not sitting cross-legged waiting for the backing band to put the public into a monomaniac trance with an insistent beat. The only problem was that, Sky had lost plenty of his screeching, whining-nasal voice that made the Seeds' records so special.

Stupefaction Ephemera: The Senders at Great Gildersleeves

The Senders, Great Gildersleeves, from the January 2, 1978, issue of the Village Voice. Courtesy of Its All The Streets You Crossed Not So Long Ago.

Originally published at Stupefaction.

Electric Prunes - I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) Live! (French TV 1967)

The Moanin' Glories - "She Took The Rain"/"That Girl" (Local Florida TV - 1968)