A few remakes, and many original obscurities

Sixty garage rock tracks from the ‘60s at a bargain price is not as great a bargain if (a) several of the titles aren’t garage rock tunes, (b) the songs aren’t all rooted in the sixties, and most unforgiveably, (c) some of the tracks are mediocre re-recordings. As with many such collections, they make an honest effort to recreate the original instrumental and vocal arrangements; and it’s possible that original artists are involved, but some of the remakes (such as Blues Image’s “Ride Captain Ride”) simply sound anemic. Remakes never capture the once-in-a-lifetime excitement that made the hit a hit. The combination of people, place and times can’t be repeated decades later. Worst of all, mixing remakes and original hits blurs the historical record, leaving those who didn’t log extensive hour in front of their AM radios to ponder what’s real, and wonder why these tracks were hits in the first place.

The split between remakes and originals here falls roughly between those that were hits, and those that were true garage rock nuggets. The hits are almost all remakes (or in the case of “I’m a Man” and “Baby Please Don’t Go,” live takes), while the obscurities are almost all originals. The track listing doesn’t completely reflect this, as the Shadows of Knight’s “Gloria” isn’t flagged as a remake, but it’s clearly not the original hit single. Conversely, “Wild Thing” is marked, but sounds like the original, and while “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine” may be an original Sky Saxon track, it’s not the familiar Seeds recording. That said, the majority of the tracks here are original garage rock nuggets, complete with surface noise in a few cases. There’s enough original material to make this a good buy, and once you’ve replaced or deleted the eight obvious remakes (and fixed some of the typos – track 58 is by the Grodes), you’ll be left with a solid compilation of Pebbles-styled garage and psychedelic rockers. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]