Susan Christie.....(Philadelphia 1966-69)

Tapewrecks dives to the psychedelic abyss for these treasures by Philadelphia's Susan Christie. She had a hit in 1966 with I Love Onions, then recorded a series a single destined for a a 1970 LP that never came to be, except for a total of 3 test pressings. Mix together some Kendra Smith with string arrangements worthy of an Ennio Morricone score. Add some Patti Smith free verse, a few Petula Clark-ey pop songs, and some of Grace Slick's pills, and you might have Paint A Lady, the album finally released by Finders Keepers in 2006.

Rainy Day
When Love Comes
Yesterday, Where's My Mind
I Love Onions

Hotlegs.... .....Neanderthal Man...

This is a funny scratchy single I picked up at a thrift store last year just for the title. Turns out the song was an accidental hit record in 1970 when I was just learning to walk upright and use tools.

Neanderthal Man

 
Story goes, they were just messing around with layering drums on a new 4-track machine and started on this ditty. They intended for the vocals to be super low, to accentuate the drums. And at the end of the recorder solo, they hit a piece of sheet metal with a hammer, which blew the cutter head while the record was being mastered.

Apparently, when you add Italians, you get this:

The Swamp Rats......... ...............Blasting the Garage Canon

¡¡¡When I posted the Crude PA comps and read that The Creations' 1965 cover of Love is Tuff was by Pittsburgh's Fantastic Dee-Jays who changed their name to The Swamp Rats in 1966, it didn't occur to me that that sedate tune would be by THE Swamp Rats who did the absolutely psycho version of The Sonics' Psycho featured on the first Back from the Grave compilation that inspired my love of obscure garage bands back around 1984!!!

[breathe]

Yep, that's them. And that's not all. They managed to do violence to a whole set of the best rock and roll tunes out there, most of them familiar covers but with a few obscurities I remember from the garage revival of the 80's.

Love Is Tuff is one of their few originals by the early bassless trio, The Fantastic Dee-Jays. Fight Fire is by The Golliwogs before they went and changed their name to Creedence Clearwater Revival (what were they thinking?).

The Swamp Rats added a bassist and a heavy dose of nastiness to The Sparkles' No Friend of Mine. The Kinks' 'Till the End of the Day has a particularly mean sound too, like it was played with bass chords or a seriously down-tuned guitar. And She's Got Everything, which may prove mathematically to be the best pop song ever (more about that later), sounds like it was sung with gobstopper in mouth. Hey Joe is just hilariously frantic and had me dancing around the kitchen. The beautiful original I'm Going Home is followed up by what may be their most protopunk song of all, another original worthy of Stooges worship, Hey Freak. Last of all is a song I usually can't stand because it's been so overdone. But this might be the best massacre of Louie Louie ever. That screeeammm after the guitar solo shreds my ears, and warms my heart.

By 1967 they were history, but not before setting a standard for the likes of The Chesterfield Kings, The Fuzztones, and their hometown fellows The Cynics in the 80's when these songs all came back faster and fuzzier.

The Swamp Rats 2003 reissue 

on Get Hip Records

The Jags.....Lost and Found Record .....(Philadelphia 1978-79)

As a Lancaster teen, one of the pretty-local bands that I really liked was Philadelphia's The Impossible Years.  I was too young to see them at the Back Room, but they had a few tracks loaded on NAB Cartridges at WIXQ (those shitty sounding one-song 8-track tape type things that radio stations used for their jingles) so they got a good bit of college-radio airplay well into the mid-80s.

Tapewrecks roving reporter, Rustle Noonetwisting, (who was one of the college DJs playing the IYs back then) discovered a batch of YouTube videos titled "The Jags (1978-79)" by Impossible Years' singer/gutarist Todd Shuster.  Says Rustle, "...This guy was hitting 'em out of the park from day one. I didn't even know the Jags had any recordings prior to becoming the IYs until yesterday...."

Neither did I. But that's probably because they didn't, aside from live tapes.  Todd recreated these lost tracks in his home studio in 2010 and 2011. But dang they sound good!  Great melodies and smart lyrics that became the hallmarks of The Impossible Years, but true to the stripped-down sound of The Jags and other pop/punk bands of the time. Had The Jags made it into the studio in the late-70s we would have had an indisputable classic record, but these tracks are such a fresh blast I can hardly complain.

A lost record found:

Adults Only  
3-Minute World  
Denise 
Don't Tell Me  
Has Been
Look 'Em In the Eye
Legal Matter  
I Agree  


And while I was still listening to Abba on my parents' hi-fi about an hour west, says Todd:

We started playing in March of 1978 as The Jags. It was the classic story of hearing the New York and English bands of 1977 and being inspired to play music again. We played local clubs opening for a lot of the bands that passed through Philadelphia....

The Jags, sadly, didn't play much outside Philly. At the time, there weren't many people or clubs that would even be associated with this kind of music. We did play a very odd show with the Plasmatics at Irving Plaza in NY, Xmas week of 78. ...Our set went well, right up until the end when Charly, our bass player, told the audience that "soon they would see Wendy and her wonderful tits." Their manager, who was a pretty scary fellow, looked like he was going to have us killed and told us to get out of town fast.

We also played a show at the 9:30 Club in DC with our friends The Shades, a band we played with at our first gig (July 4th, 1978 at Artemis, 20th and Sansom).  The Shades became good friends who also shared an incredible bill with The Jags at the Hot Club with The Cramps, another band we played with a few times and with whom we were very friendly. A truly great band! All three bands were really great that night.   

We were slated to open for Sid Vicious at Artemis. The week before was when the story broke about Sid killing Nancy.  We were told that the show was still on, but the story became so hot that the club owner received death and bomb threats. Unfortunately, it was the gig we never got to play. We did get to play with X, the Mumps, and the Outcasts, which featured Jerry Nolan and Arthur Kane [ex-New York Dolls]. 

...A year later, when we heard a single by an English band also called The Jags, we decided on the name The Impossible Years.

I have fond memories of the very early days, when the bands from both NY and the UK seemed inspiring and exciting.  That's what drove me to make proper recordings of songs that are still very special to me. 

Thanks to Todd Shuster for the audio tracks and for dredging his memories.  Still images from Todd's Jags videos.  If anyone has photos, flyers, or any other artifacts of The Jags, we'd like to add them here!
More about The Impossible Years at the ModPopPunk Archives.

.....................More wreckage from The Impossible Years and Todd Shuster!

Vegetable Man ....... Syd Barrett

I'm starting a new post category: "I can't believe I never heard this before."  So just bear with me if you have.  I won't spend a lot of time on critical analysis.

I've loved Syd Barrett for a long time and somehow never heard his version of Vegetable Man until today. I guess it's never been officially released.  I first got the song on the Jesus and Mary Chain single years ago.  And I just now heard the Soft Boys' version.  So I finally dug up Syd's Vegetable Man and found some other wonderful tapewreckage from the sessions he was recording for Pink Floyd's second album.  He'd be coming pretty unhinged and getting booted from the band right around this time. 

Some lovely eaten and warped tape here for your listening pleasure:

Vegetable Man
What a Shame Mary Jane
Swan Lee

From the Vegetable Man Where Are You? bootleg.
Salvage your wreckage here.

LiLiPUT - Die Matrosen and Eisiger Wind (1980 and 81 singles)

LiLiPUT hit me with quirky surprises in just about every song...way after they were long gone.

 Die Matrosen

 Eisiger Wind