Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 50

Record label: Etiquette

Produced: Buck Orsnby and Kent Morrill

Recorded: 1965

Released: March 1965

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Gerry Roslie (v, p, o); Andy Parypa (b); Larry Parypa (g); Rob Lind (s); Bob Bennett (d); Kearney Barton (e)

Track listing: The Witch (S/US); Do You Love Me; Roll Over Beethoven; Boss Hoss; Dirty Robber; Have Love Will Travel; Psycho (S/US); Money; Walkin’ The Dog; Night Time Is The Right Time; Strychnine; Good Golly Miss Molly

Running time: 29.20

Current CD: Ace CDHP022

Further listening: Second album and more of the same, The Sonics Boom (1966)

Further reading: www.history-of-rock.com/sonics.htm; surf.to/sonics

Download: Not currently legally available

The secret behind the most visceral garage punk group of the ’60s? ‘We wanted people to gasp, we wanted people to go “oh my gawd!” And so that’s how we approached it,’ reveals drummer Bob Bennett. ‘We wanted to blow people off their feet, not just with loudness, but with tightness, with music that made you want to dance.’ Hence their debut single The Witch. Originally intended as a simple dance number to rival The Twist and The Mashed Potato, the song gradually mutated into a raw, screaming horror show. On hearing the masters, the band were devastated. ‘All I did was pound my drums and I guess it just sounded like bashing when it was recorded,’ said Bob, ‘I remember the engineers arguing. One guy says, “That doesn’t even sound like drums,” and the other guy goes, “Well what am I gonna do – look at this guy?”’

The Witch became the biggest-selling single in America’s Northwest and their record label Etiquette naturally demanded an album. The only problem was songwriter and singer Gerry Roslie’s sloth. ‘I had to prod him,’ recalled Buck Ormsby, Etiquette’s A&R man who had discovered the group, ‘The Sonics weren’t great musicians, but they had this magic thing.’

They eventually got it together at Audio Recording in Seattle. Twelve cuts were recorded live onto 2-track tape. Six songs were covers, including a frenetic take on the Contours’ Do You Love Me and their ferocious reading of Little Richard’s Good Golly Miss Molly. Originals included Psycho, a deranged maelstrom propelled along by pounding drums, the fearsome Strychnine, which extols the virtues of guzzling poison and features Rob Lind’s raucous, wailing sax, and their supercharged ode to a Ford Mustang, Boss Hoss.

What made The Sonics special was Gerry Roslie’s fiendish, manic vocals, which some likened to Little Richard. ‘I always felt that somebody would have to come in and give him a blood transfusion,’ engineer Kearney Barton said, ‘I thought he was gonna tear his throat out – screaming from start to finish – amazing!’

Though influencing just about every band that came out of the North-west The Sonics were unable, despite their best efforts, to break out nationally. Instead, at the end of the ’60s, they broke up.