Hooks From the Basement
Garage rock gets remembered for the noise, the slop, the three-chord threat. What doesn’t get said enough: the best of these records also had hooks. Not radio-safe polish. Not session-man craft. Just songs — melodies that got inside your skull and stayed there. These ten went at you with both at once.
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01
Mouse and the Traps — “Good Times”
Mouse and the Traps are mostly remembered for “Maid of Sugar — Maid of Spice,” the record where singer Ronnie “Mouse” Weiss sounds so much like Bob Dylan that it borders on tribute act. “Good Times” is the other side of the coin — a propulsive, melodic garage pop single where the tune is doing the work and nobody’s impersonating anyone. Tyler, Texas, 1966. The hook lands and doesn’t apologize.
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02
The Tongues of Truth — “Let’s Talk About Girls”
The Grodes recorded this under the name the Tongues of Truth — Current Records C-112, Tucson, 1966. The Grodes were one of those desert Southwest bands with a genuine ear for what made British Invasion records work: tight playing, melodic instincts, a hook that sounds like it was beamed in from England but was built in Arizona. The name change didn’t stick. The song did.
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03
The Vejtables — “Mansion of Tears”
B-side to “The Last Thing on My Mind,” November 1965, Autumn Records — the same label that had the Beau Brummels, the same label where a pre-fame Sly Stone worked as a staff producer. The Vejtables were one of the first San Francisco-area bands of the mid-sixties with a woman out front: Jan Fisher sang and played drums. “Mansion of Tears” is the kind of B-side that explains why people still buy 45s instead of just pulling up the A.
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04
The E-Types — “I Can’t Do It”
February 23, 1966. Golden State Recorders, San Francisco. Link Records E-1 — both sides of their only single, recorded in one session. Reissued later on Sundazed because Sundazed knew. “I Can’t Do It” is Bay Area garage at its most economical: the song makes its point and stops. Nothing wasted. Nothing missing. Catalog number E-1 is accurate — they only needed the one.
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05
The Sunrays — “I Live for the Sun”
Murry Wilson managed them. Glen Campbell played guitar on this. Capitol started Tower Records specifically as a home for their music. None of it was enough: Brian Wilson existed, and there was only so much oxygen in California harmony-pop. “I Live for the Sun” is the record they deserved to break with — bright, warm, and precise in a way that some of their more famous contemporaries never quite matched. The window was narrow. The song is still open.
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06
Clefs of Lavender Hill — “Stop! Get A Ticket”
Summer of 1966, WAEB AM 790, Allentown, Pennsylvania. The station played this record and apparently someone said: “If you didn’t know better, you’d say — WHAT A GREAT BEATLES RECORD!” That’s accurate. The Clefs of Lavender Hill did their homework, took the Merseybeat blueprint seriously, and made something that sounds like it could have come from Liverpool without being ashamed of the comparison. On Thames Records. Not a major. Didn’t matter.
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07
The Gants — “I Wonder”
Greenwood, Mississippi, Liberty Records. The Gants were good enough to get picked up by a major, which in 1966 usually meant one good single and a vanishing act. “I Wonder” hit #46 in the US and #28 in Australia — further evidence that Australia had better taste. They also tried to get Liberty to release their version of “Gloria” before the Shadows of Knight made it a hit. The label said no. The Gants were right.
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08
The Mojo Men — “Sit Down I Think I Love You”
This is a Stephen Stills song. He wrote it for Buffalo Springfield; it appeared on their 1966 debut. The Mojo Men — a San Francisco band that relocated from Canada — covered it a year later in a Los Angeles studio, came out with something slightly slicker and more orchestrated than the original, and hit #36 on the Billboard Hot 100. Bigger than the Buffalo Springfield version. The San Francisco band had to go to LA to sound like themselves. The song came out right anyway.
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09
The Shandells, Inc. — “Just Cry”
Woodrich Records, Huntsville, Alabama. The AllMusic review of the Cicadelic comp they eventually appeared on describes their material as featuring a “shimmering fuzztone effect” and calls “Just Cry” “harder, edgier” than their other surviving track. That’s accurate. What doesn’t get said: the hook still lands cleanly through all of it. Some bands let the noise eat the melody. The Shandells, Inc. didn’t.
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10
Butch Engle & The Styx — “I Like Her”
Written by Ron Elliott of the Beau Brummels, which explains everything. Elliott was one of the better melodic writers operating in San Francisco in 1966, and “I Like Her” has the same quality as the best Beau Brummels work — something that sounds effortless but isn’t. Loma was a Warner Bros. subsidiary set up for exactly this kind of mid-sized regional single that didn’t fit anywhere else. It fits here. The song is 115 seconds and doesn’t need a second more.
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