The Woods ............... (NYC 1985-87)

Linda Smith was in a real band in NYC before she retreated back to her Baltimore home with her 4-track recorder to make some of the most spare and pretty pop songs ever to grace a mail order cassette tape. The Woods have barely seen the light of day since they made music, but these tracks stand out for their time in both lyrics and sound.

Brian Bendlin and bandmates have recently dug up recordings and photos and are posting them here along with a little history:

The Woods was a postpunk pop/rock band in NYC in the 1980s. The founding members were Brian Bendlin (drums, guitar, vocals), Peggy Bitzer (bass, guitar, drums), Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer (guitar, vocals, cello), and Linda Smith (guitar, vocals); at other times the band also included Susan Brewster (guitar, vocals) and Antonio Tatum (bass).

In 1985 The Woods released a single on Mark Dumais' Justine Records, Miracles Tonight /Love Me Again This Summer (produced by Bill Carey), which enjoyed a fair amount of airplay on indie radio stations and jukeboxes in the NYC area. They were perhaps best known for their intricate harmonies and the fact that the instrumentation included cello, both of which were unusual in the indie music scene at that time.  

The band played a number of shows at a variety of NYC area venues, including CBGB's, the Pyramid, and Maxwell's, and played live (with interviews) on WFMU and WYBC (Yale University radio).

At the time the Woods parted ways (in late 1987) they were recording an album; it was never released....

Hairy Condescension
Far Away
Never Before
So Long Before Now
Two By Two
Any Second

The Woods went on to various other artistic pursuits: the home recordings of Linda Smith, the paintings of L. M. Smith, Girls Ranch, Trouble Picnic, Two Houses, TV Goodbyes, Y'all, and rock musical "Lizzie," based on the story of Lizzie Borden.

Thanks to Brian Bendlin and the contributors to the Woods Facebook page and to Linda Smith for sending the songs.

Previous post about Linda Smith on Tapewrecks....

The Bird World War... ................. .....50 Years of Surfin' Bird (1963-2013)

What's the Word?

The Bird is the word. But does it surf?

Prelude to war:

The Rivingtons' Papa Oom Mow Mow was a 1962 novelty tune that took up the funny-sounding Anglicized nickname of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, the "Mau Mau". These anti-colonial fighters helped win Kenyan independence at around the same time Surfin' Bird was released a year later, their name having found its way into a New York mafia gang and US exotica culture in the late 50s. It was turned into novelty tunes by Screamin' Jay Hawkins and others. A possible Mau Mau/Ooga Booga Tarzan connection? I don't have much evidence to back this up, and maybe it's another cockamamy Tapewrecks theory. Factcheck me. But did this war of national liberation spark a global 50-year war we never heard of?

1963 USA at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and corresponding violent backlash: Red Prysock's What's the Word? Thunderbird! (1957) and maybe a little of the drink itself provided the inspiration for the Rivingtons follow up The Bird's the Word. The Trashmen start screwing around with both Rivingtons tracks at band practice, and Surfin' Bird is born. The song quickly hits #4 on the national charts, the Trashmen claim all credit, as was common practice in those days, and the original authors promptly sue, sparking a bilateral three-year milking war...

The Trashmen - Bird Bath
The Rivingtons - Shaky Bird (Part 1)
The Trashmen - Bird Dance Beat (1964)
The Rivingtons - Mama-Oom-Mow-Mow
The Trashmen - Bird '65 (1965)

...followed by World War B:

The Beach Boys - Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow (US 1965)
Wade Curtiss & the Rhythm Rockers - Puddy Cat (Mama-Meow-Mow) (US c1965)
The Freshmen - Papa Oom Mow Mow (Ireland)
The Hep Stars - Surfin' Bird (Sweden 1968 - PreABBA Benny!)
Les Celibataires - Papa Oom Mow Mow (France)
Ernos - Papa Oom Mow Mow (Finland 1970)
Gary Glitter - Papa Oom Mow Mow (UK 1975)

Back in the USA:

King Uszniewicz & his Uszniewicztones (US 197?)
The Ramones - Surfin' Bird (1977)

The Persuasions - Papa Oom Mow Mow (1977)
The Cramps - Surfin' Bird (1977)

Postwar skirmishes:

Pee Wee Herman - Surfin' Bird (1987)
The Dwarves - Motherfucker (1990)
Supersnazz - Papa Oom Mow Mow (1993)
Sodom - Surfin' Bird (2001)

And then there's this:

Peter Griffin - Surfin' Bird (2008)

The Train to Disaster............... .......Bona Fide Mid-Atlantic Oddity

From the jacket:

Hi Folks! There's a new sound rising up angry in the sky. There's new voices crying they're not afraid to try! These bands won't shut up and won't be ignored. They believe in music--but not the type that James Watt likes. The music is loud, harsh, and maybe even crude. But it's real! here are 13 mirrors of reality--worlds that most people would rather not acknowledge. The world is not all jelly beans, Ivory soap, and two car garages. Neither is this record!

This is one of those weird records that comes out of some guy's mid-state living room with the back stock sitting next to the TV set in boxes ready to mail out to the rest of the fanzine-reading world. Rick Noll tells the story best on the Bona Fide Records blog:

Hey, does anybody remember the early 80s?? I sure do. Fresh from my success as a bargain bin diver which got me into selling old vinyl, I soon turned to local PA garage bands, and influenced by Nuggets, Pebbles, and my pal Billy Synth's Psychedelic Unknown comps, I got the brainy idea to start a little label that would send some light on deserving local bands. Bona Fide Records was born and in 1982 our first LP, a 60s comp, The Return of the Young Pennsylvanians was released. Although mostly unknown at the time, now bands like the Centurys, Loose Enz, Shaynes and the Flowerz are known to garage collectors around the world. Even though I was a heavy collector, the modern scene also intrigued me and I was a fan of the many punk, new wave, garage and experimental bands of the time. Especially I was impressed by the Harrisburg scene in which Billy Synth and the Turnups deservedly reigned as kings--though they weren't always treated as such. Billy and his pals the Turnups released their own swell records on the band's Cracked Records and I was hooked!

I was also impressed by the growing DC scene and in particular the sonic mayhem of the Slickee Boys with their psychedelic outfits and their frantic adrenaline filled live shows. So I got another brainy idea! Why not put out a comp of current bands who could actually benefit from such a release? So "The Train to Disaster" was hatched and naturally I asked my pals Billy and Kim Kane of the Slickees for help....

Normally, I'd just post my favorites, and I surely like some more than others here, but what I really love about Train to Disaster is the disjointedness: mostly 80s, one 70s, one from Austria, mostly guitars, some synthesizer, a few drum machines, amateur psych, but not all retro -- that you can only get from the whole record. So here it is!

The Lone Ketamine Millipede - Frogs in "Our" Town (Harrisburg, PA)
Billy Synth & the Turnups - The Mask (Harrisburg, PA)
Ben Wah - Gnats Ahoy! (York, PA)
mystery track
The Beatnik Flies - Fantastic Light Show (Bethesda, MD)
The Slickee Boys - Nagasaki Neuter (Bethesda, MD)
The Velvet Monkeys - World Of (Washington, DC)

The Dootz - I'm the Dootz (Hyattsville, MD)
The Left - You're So (Hagerstown, MD)
George Brigman & Split - My Cherie (Baltimore, MD)
Yard Trauma - The Little Girl Who Left (Tucson, AZ)
Ronnie Urini & the Last Poets - Alice in Wunderland (Austria)
The Mad Violets - Acceleration (New York, NY)
Donovan's Brain - Derailment (York, PA)

More:
Bona Fide Records
Billy Synth
The Slickee Boys
The Velvet Monkeys
The Dootz
Return of the Young Pennsylvanians 
James Watt
The Deadly Spawn

That's the Bag I'm In...... ...............Back from the Mass Grave

Out on assignment, our own pith helmeted Rustle Noonetwisting dug up the following on one of my favorite songs.  The Fabs' That's the Bag I'm In first grazed my ears in 1984 with its rerelease on Volume I of the Back from the Grave compilations, and it's one of the key songs that sparked our interest in 60s garage punk. As Dr. Noonetwisting discovered, in surrounding strata there were a few more treasures in that grave!

Mr. Tomsun,
Here is my report:

Greenwich Village songwriter and folksinger Fred Neil wrote "That's the Bag I'm In" early in the 1960s but apparently didn't release his own version until his second album in 1966. But, I just discovered today that another Greenwich Village folksinger Casey Anderson was apparently the first to put it to record in 1962.

Fred Neil 1966.

Billy Lee Riley 1966

Richie Havens 1966

Our pals The Fabs 1967 with National Safety Council video (I wanna shake rortydog's hand for thinking of this).

HP Lovecraft 1967 - Moving into the heavy psychedelic Jeff Airplane direction.

Kin Vassy 1969 - Moving a bit too close to Blood Sweat and Tears territory for comfort. He also played in Kenny Rogers and the First Edition!

Buzzy Linhart  1969 - The video feedback here reminds me of playing around with a Pixelvision camera , but we never ended up in the Season of the Witch. Buzzy Linhart 1971 - Now we're getting heavy, man. 

Thankfully the covers seem to have stopped after this because I don't think I could handle a Uriah Heep cover of this song.

Uriah Heep did not cover "That's the Bag I'm In."

The Fuzztones 1984 reenactment of The Fabs' take, with big hair and chicken bones.

July 2012 Addendum: Ty Segall does his version in the Fabs vein, but maxed-out on FUZZ and SCREAMING.