Day 2 of our Nor Cal Battle of the Garage Bands. 1966 is the single greatest year for rock-n-roll ever. 1956 was good too, but no 1966. 1977 was also a critical year, but falls far short of what went down across the globe in 1966.
Let's back up a bit. A few short years prior to '66, rock-n-roll in America was desperately treading water. The record stores had been flooded with a tsunami of over-polished crooners with faux pompadours and plaid dinner jackets who were being sold to America's precious daughters as a safe alternative to true originals like
Chuck Berry.
Elvis was no longer a ground breaking, dangerous rocker, he was a well quaffed sell-out actor.
Gene Vincent himself had sunk to crooning and
Buddy Holly and
Eddie Cochran were the earliest victims of rock-n-roll's toll. True, faint flickers of life could occasionally be glimpsed on the horizon. In Los Angeles
Dick Dale was not very quietly creating an entirely new genre of rock-n-roll starting in '61. But it hadn't reverberated yet. In Texas, for a few brief years, starting in '62,
Bobby Fuller tried to keep the
Holly spirit alive. And in 1963 in Portland, Oregon, the
Kingsmen recorded the single most important rock-n-roll record ever,
Louie, Louie. But the record was immediately banned across the country and the Hoover-led FBI launched an investigation of obscenity and effectively put out the flame before it could spread too far...in this country. Then
The Beatles appeared on the
Ed Sullivan Show and the tsunami of schlock was itself washed out by the British Invasion, which, thankfully, restored rock-n-roll to its birthplace. Those who couldn't make the football team (and some who could) went to Sears Roebuck and bought themselves a new
Silvertone Guitar and declared war on the neighborhood barber. The frustrated radio station engineer implemented dreams of becoming the next
George Martin and started moonlighting as a record producer. Club owners and a host of other entrepreneurs eager to make a dollar on the biggest craze since the hula-hoop formed what would pass as local "record labels". Of course, none of these people knew what they were doing so the revolution was delayed a few months. In the meantime, flying in the slipstream of the
Beatles, more aggressive Brit bands -- bands hugely influenced by
Louie, Louie -- like the
Yardbirds, the
Rolling Stones,
The Who and the
Kinks found an audience in the US. And then, very early in '66, the perfect storm hit. That band in San Jose had put in enough practices in dad's garage that they were now winning the battle of the bands contest. Grandma quietly slipped Dave $150 to cut a record and follow his passion. The owner of Rock-n-Rollerskate, the bestest teen night spot in all of San Jose, was ready to put some bucks down to record that band and maybe make some more money at the concession stand by selling a local record. And Ed, the frustrated audio engineer, had his recording studio all set up in the back of the local appliance store,
It's A Wash. The time was now. No editors. No suits. No record company men to say who could and could not record. This was the moment. And all across the world -- in
America,
Australia,
Holland,
Sweden and countless other places -- like a brood of cicadas, the now long haired rockers crawled out of the garages adorned in chelsea boots, three button jackets, paisley vests and dark wrap around sun glasses to make their first record.
Within a year the record company executives would reassert their control and descend on towns like San Jose, California, Amsterdam, Sidney, and Stockholm and swoop up the bands deemed valuable and crush the bands that showed no utility. But in that one brief moment of 1966 -- wedged between the chaos of innocence and the unassailable rule of record companies -- millions of bands recorded their song. Some awful. Some brilliant.
Today's song is one of those brilliant songs from '66. It's by the stunningly obscure San Jose, California quintet,
The Mourning Reign. The song, with a clear play to the
Rolling Stones, is called
Satisfaction Guaranteed. A snarly guitar riff is spurted out with an unrelenting attack. The singer, some bloke named
Beau (Bo) Maggie, does his best
Mick Jagger swagger: "As you wander around, you find your imagination standing upside down in the
mouth of mass hallucination. You are dissatisfied with the other guys you tried. Now don't you think it's time for a change, because, you know, Satisfaction Guaranteed!" Cue the double guitar lead that no respectable music exec. would have allowed. "Listen boys, you can't be playing over each other like that. It's just noise. Nobody will buy this record if you do that." Thank goodness their was no record exec. at the mighty Link Records in San Jose.
The flip side is the Beau Maggi composed
Our Fate. We get a great Rickenbacker rhythm guitar part from more Steve Canali before Johnnie Bell jumps in with the relentless scorching guitar. Craig Maggi on drums and Charlie Gardin on bass lay down a substantial bedrock for the song.
