THE PASTELS
After Vol. 8 came silence; needless to say, it's surprising to see a new Back From the Grave compilation nearly 20 years later. Even better, Crypt have shared two new installments at once (released separately on LP and packaged together as a single CD), more music for the self-anointed rebel and the kid who likes a dirty joke.
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| THE WARLOCKS |
Inspired by volume 1 of Pebbles, Marc Warren and chums began to issue the Back From The Grave series, compiling utterly obscure garage-rock tracks on eight records between 1983 and 1992. Eighteen years later, the next (final?) two volumes break surface with garish cartoon covers and a welter of songs that only the garage-punk illuminati have heard of. The excellent sleeve notes even include a letter from a band who never got to record a song, though their picture shows they had perfected the look!
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| THE HIGH SPIRITS |
These are bands, largely inspired by the British Invasion (so you hear shades of the Stones, Yardbirds, Kinks and Animals all over), who made a noise in their state, their town, their high school, and then disappeared. Sometimes it was owing to the draft (there's a sad tale of one garage-rock Viet vet) and sometimes through band breakdown (there are only two copies of The Warlocks’ crazy mad ‘Beware’ in existence because the guitarist didn’t like being left off the recording and drove over the boxes of 45s in his truck)! There's a band who drove to gigs in a hearse, one who employed their own band hairdresser, another who were just four 16 year olds (The Starfyres from Lansford, Pennsylvania) but they all knew how to fuzz it up and scream it down.
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| THE WHY NOTS |
On this 30-song totem of lost almost-hits, you'll find an organ-heavy melody obscured by a Missouri teenager shouting "You're gonna die!" (the Warlocks' "Beware"), while "When I Feel Better" is a potent reminder that a song with lots of tambourine is still capable of being a complete jam. On "69", the frontman of the Four shrieks a few times inside Sam Phillips' Memphis studio before singing about his favorite sexual position and giggling with his bandmates as the song ends. These sets are time capsules, with liner notes filled with old photos and newspaper clippings, but even in 2015, Back From the Grave has something to teach us.
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| JOHN ENGLISH III AND THE HEATHENS |
Back from the Grave, Volumes 9 and 10 (CD), is numerically, though not chronologically, the fifth installment in the series of Back from the Grave of garage rock compilations released on compact disk in 2015 which, unlike the previous set of CD releases issued between 1996 and 2000, which it will be replacing, attempts to faithfully replicate the contents of the Back from the Grave LPs, which will bring the series for the first time into multi-medium coherence.
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| THE DONSIRES |
Like all of the entries in the series it was assembled by Tim Warren of Crypt Records. The CD is enclosed in a Digipack which, features a wraparound of the same cartoon by Olaf Jens that appears on the Volume 9 LP. In the foldout of one of two the booklets enclosed is another satirical cartoon by Olaf Jens taken from the front cover of the Volume 10 LP.
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| THE HARD TIMES |
The two booklets contain well-researched liner notes written by Chris Bishop of Garage Hangover.com which convey basic information about each song and group, such as origin, recording date, and biographical sketches, as well as photographs of the bands. Each booklet's information corresponds to the tracks on one of the LPs, the first for Volume 9 and the second for Volume 10. The track list to the Volumes 9 and 10 CD is identical to the corresponding LPs.
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| THE GENTLEMEN |
The album (Vol. 9)begins with the driving protopunk of "Circuit Breaker," by the Pastels, from Pasco, Washington. The High Spirits from Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, follow with a version of the Zombies' "It's Alright With Me," which at midpoint shifts from a slow tempo accelerating in cadence, then rising to an organ-drenched climax consummated by a bee-sting guitar solo accompanied by cathartic screams.
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| THE EMERALDS |
The Emeralds from Greenwood, Indiana are featured on the gritty blues-based "Like Father Like Son," which recounts a woeful tale partially based on A Tale of Two Cities, by Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, in which the character Jerry Cruncher is a porter by day and a grave robber at night, whose lyrics snidely remark: "...my son goes to the church where they wear the black capes where you're taught not to have your fun..."
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| THE STARFYRES |
Also included is the 1965 demo acetate version of "It's a Cry'n Shame" by The Gentlemen, from Dallas, Texas.Knoll Allen And The Noble Savages are heard on the highly primitive sexually-charged "Animal." "No Room For Your Love," by the Starfyres, closes out the Volume 9.
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| THE ORPHANS |
Volume 10 starts with The Patels, a band formed in 1954 by DiFosco "Dee" Erwin. The Orphans' story deserves its own biopic: The Iowa teens got kicked out of high school for having long hair, ripped up a record contract (again, because they were told by an authority figure to cut their hair), and were robbed by their terrible manager.
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| NOBODY'S CHILDREN |
Nobody's Children, a band of Las Vegas teens, wrote "Mother's Tin Moustache" after smoking weed for the first time, and the lyrics are pure '60s stoner humor. In a fantastically frantic old-coot voice, they shout "Keep that turtle out of my cabbage patch" and "That sure is a funny picture of your mother and me". Nobody’s Children must have been some of the craziest people in Las Vegas judging by their largely instrumental ‘Mother’s Tin Moustache’, complete with jungle drums and chanting, while The Color’s ‘Young Miss Larsen’ was discovered on acetate but no-one knows where this band or tune (a second cousin of the Standells’ ‘Dirty Water’, with an awesome riff) come from.
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| JAMES BOND AND THE AGENTS |
On Volume 10, ‘Wild Angel’ by Oklahoma’s James Bond & The Agents throbs with power like an American muscle car, while The Orphans from Iowa offer two tracks, the weirdly compressed R&B ‘Without You’, that sounds like a sleazier Pretty Things, and the brutal fuzzed up cover of Donovan’s ‘Hey Gyp’. The Hotbeats (Rhode Island) offer the typical teenage lament – “don’t try to tie me down’ – on their ‘Listen’.
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| THE FOUR MORE |
These songs are too great to lurk in obscurity and you have to give credit to the team who tracked down these songs and produced the best possible copies (not easy given the state of some of the original recordings). There is a huge number of 60s compilations series but this one is indispensable.
There are 30 songs over the two albums, including demos and studio acetates, some from unknown bands; the nicely polished ‘When I Feel Better’ on vol 9, recorded in Los Angeles, doesn’t deserve an unmarked grave. The sleeve notes do a better job of describing the records than I could but stand outs on Volume 9 include The Shackles’ Texan uberfuzz ‘Whizz #7’, Knoll Allen and the Noble Savages’ ‘Animal’ (the perfect description for a steamy broth of overflowing teenage hormones), the feral howling on The Raevins’ monstrous ‘The Edge of Time’ and ‘It’s a Cry’n Shame’ by Dallas’s The Gentlemen, an energy-packed, fuzz-beshrouded, insanely catchy garage colossus.
Various – Back From The Grave Volume 9 & 10
Label: Crypt Records – CRYPT 114
Series: Back From The Grave – Volume 9 & 10
Format: CD, Compilation
Country: Germany
Released: 2014
Genre: Rock
Style: Garage Rock
TRAXS
01. The Pastels – Circuit Breaker
02. The High Spirits – It's Alright With Me
03. The Warlocks – Beware
04. The Emeralds – Like Father Like Son
05. The Why-Nots – Tamborine
06. The Turncoats – Something Better
07. The Classics – I'm Hurtin'
08. The Raevins – The Edge Of Time
09. Lord Charles & The Prophets – Don't Ask Me No Questions
10. The Gentlemen – It's A Cry'n Shame
11. The Shakles – Whizz #7
12. Unknown Artist – When I Feel Better
13. Knoll Allen And The Noble Savages – Animal
14. The Donshires – Sad And Blue
15. The Starfyres – No Room For Your Love
16. James Bond & The Agents – Wild Angel
17. John English III And The Heathens – I Need You Near
18. The Four – 69
19. The Expressions – Return To Innocence
20. The Orphans – Without You
21. The Sires – Don't Look Now
22. It's Them (Tthhemm) – Baby (I Still Want Your Lovin')
23. The Orphans – Hey Gyp
24. Nobodys Children – Mother's Tin Moustache
25. South' Soul – Lost
26. The Hotbeats – Listen
27. The Hard Times – Mr. Rolling Stone
28. The Four More – Problem Child
29. The Color – Young Miss Larsen
30. GMC And The Arcelles – The Witch
These 30 cuts also appeared on 2 LPs: Back From The Grave vol. 9 and vol. 10 (Crypt 114 & 115)
MP3 @ 320 Size: 181 MB
Flac Size: 314 MB
