Southern California Spotlight: The Magic Mushroom - I'm Gone/Cry Baby

We jsut keep spinning more records for our SoCal region of the Battle of the Garage Bands. 

Last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?) we spun San Diego's The Lyrics performing the Chris Gaylord penned ravers from the Summer of '65, So What!! and They Can't Hurt Me. Shortly after recording those two legendary numbers, Chris Gaylord and lead guitarist Mike Allen were fired from The Lyrics. The two wandering minstrels joined with John Buell and Gary Williams to become one anew as The Magic Mushroom. The Magic Mushroom (not to be confused with the Philadelphia band of similar name) recorded only one solitary, single and released that blistering 45 in the Summer of '66 on Warner Bros. records. I believe it was released on a smaller local label, Coastline, under the name The Sons.

The A-Side of this Magic Mushroom rocker is the John Buell composed I'm Gone. Gaylord's Harmonica is front and center in this snotty number about a girl who runs around and fails to realize that she's got a good man right in front of her. But damn, she's going to miss him when he's gone! This song appeared on the legendary What A Way To Die comp. Yep, it's that good.

The Flip-Side is the Gary Williams composed Cry Baby. This number is nearly as good as the A-Side. I would go so far as to say that this had hit potential. Jangling open chords and lush harmonies augment a beautifully restrained lead guitar. 

The band traveled to New York to strike it big, recorded some numbers of Gaylord's at Les Paul's house in New Jersey, but nothing ever came of them. This is it. Can't even find a picture of the band. So enjoy what they left us. We're not even convinced that Gaylord and Allen appear on this recording. See the comment section below. 

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

Southern California Spotlight: The Lyrics - So What!!/They Can't Hurt Me

Day 2 of the Battle of the Garage Bands for the SoCal region takes us to San Diego, California.

From November of 1965, we present to you The Lyrics. What we have here is the greatest record to ever -- EVER -- come out of that fine, sunny city of San Diego. Both sides of this Era Records single are filled with teen angst, anger and bravado.

The composer of both numbers is Chris Gaylord, the singer and harmonica player. Chris apparently dated a girl who lived in swanky-ass Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego's north county. As you can hear from the lyrics to The Lyrics' songs, she had tons of nice things (yep, an electric typewriter!) for which she was particularly proud. Then the girl turned on poor Chris. (Abstractly speaking, this is always a key thing for any good 1960s garage band song. If the singer hasn't been dumped by a no-good, scheming girl, then we just don't get great songs.) Lucky for us, Chris took his anger out on the girl in a constructive, creative and generally healthy fashion - he wrote two songs about her and published them for the whole world to hear. 

Our A-Side, So What!!, tells the tale of Chris being toured around this little Jezebel's house.

Well, now everything you got is in excess
And it goes without saying, it's got to be the best
From your swimming pool, to your daddy's racing car
To that senseless, useless bomb shelter in your back yard
Well, I guess there ain't too much you haven't got
But all I can say to you about that is So What!!

This is actually the second release of So What! as the number was released months before as the flip-side to Why'd He Go?, written by band leader Craig Carll, on the local, Feather Records label.

The Flip-Side of this Era Records release is the fabulous They Can't Hurt Me. For some bizarre reason, the girl that Chris had been going with started to think that maybe this was not the guy for her. Maybe it was his condescending, judgmental words that he regularly spewed out at her. Apparently she starts talking trash on our poor broken down, stomped upon protagonist. What's an angry young guy to do? Well, he writes a song saying that her venomous words can't hurt him. 

Chris got booted from the band shortly after this record came out and he moved on to other great things.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

The Strangers - Caterpillar Crawl and Rockin' Rebel

Caterpillar Crawl

Rockin' Rebel

The instrumental group, The Strangers, hailed from sunny San Diego, California and were fronted by guitarist, Joel Scott Hill. In the winter of 1959 the band recorded two edgy numbers for fledgling Titan Records. Hill's guitar work is guttural and sharp edged and not too dissimilar from what Link Wray was recording in a chicken shack out in Washington DC about the same time. 

Caterpillar Crawl was given the A-Side nod. A slow, brooding number, Hill's guitar work oozes with a hard edged tone running through a copious amount of reverb. A few years later, Los Angeles group, The Rumblers, would reimagine this song as Boss and release it on Downey Records. (Both Downey and Titan Records were distributed by Dot Records). We wrote about the Flip-Side of that Rumblers 1962 single here. 

The Flip-Side of The Strangers single was the even more Link Wray-like original composition, Rockin' Rebel. A fine upbeat number with some rockabilly guitar riffs lifted straight from the Scotty Moore playbook.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

Song of the Week: The Lyrics - Mr. Man/Wait

We're back on this Friday with a very quick post (busy day today at Flip-Side's Rocky Mountain HQ).

We return to San Diego's The Lyrics. We posted about them two days ago. But this is a fundamentally different band than the one we spun two days ago. The lead singer and lead guitarist that was on that kick-ass record had left the band in '65. By the time this, the band's swan song, was released in September of '67, Craig Carll had taken over the helm of The Lyrics. Craig Carll wrote both sides here and sings both Mr. Man and the superior Flip-Side, Wait. The very good blog, Flower Bomb Songs, has the best info on this Lyrics. I won't plagiarize or regurgitate their work, but instead point you to more info here.

Many pics on that site from bassist Dan Garcia. One important photo shows them recording Wait. Please note that the room is filled with middle-aged session musicians! All photos here, courtesy of Dan Garcia's My Space page.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!