Mid-Atlantic Spotlight: The Swamp Rats - Louie, Louie/Hey Joe

Mid-Atlantic Battle of the Garage Bands takes us to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here we find the first release by garage legends, The Swamp Rats. On this first 1966 release, on St. Clair Records, the band was a trio of Dick Newton, Dave Cannon, and Don Schriener. After this first single Bob Hocko would join the band as singer, but here Dick does the heavy lifting.

Obviously both songs are covers of standards of their day. But what covers they are! Louie, Louie is clearly picked up from the version recorded by The Sonics of Tacoma, Washington. It takes The Sonics already rocket-fueled approach and adds a little more kick. Dick Newton strains to keep his voice from cracking and gives us a first class teenage rock-n-roll scream going into the guitar solo.

The Flip-Side of Hey Joe is nearly as insane as the A-Side. Again, Dick Newtown and the band feel like a train that is about to come off the tracks on a curvy descent.

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

The Swamp Rats - Hey Joe!

More Hey Joe today. This time from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where the meanest, nastiest, dirtiest, loudest garage band to ever walk the Earth released their take on Hey Joe in 1966 on the local label, St. Clair Records.

By the way, the Flip-Side of this single was featured in our Louie Louie love fest back in 2012. Check it out here.

Song of the Week: The Swamp Rats - Louie Louie

 

Moving from The Sonics' last single, released in '65, we'll conclude our Louie Louie love fest with the first single by The Swamp Rats, out of Pittsburgh, PA, doing Louie Louie. It's this '66 release on the St. Clair label that reveals some of the most distinctly 'punk' inclinations yet set to wax. Instruments played and recorded at extreme volumes, a dissonant lead, cavalier vocals, a palpable indifference to product and, above all, aggression.  So, a lesser known tune, with its trademark melody and rhythm lifted directly from a cuban song, gets introduced to a Pacific Northwest audience and interpreted with a fresh rock-and-roll sensibility then turned into a massive popular hit, and yet again into an anti-pop monster, ultimately finds its way to a loose-knit changeable group of kids in Pennsylvania ready to take it a step further.  It's the core trajectory of State-side rock-n-roll in a nutshell.  

One can guess whether The Swamp Rats heard the Richard Berry or The Wailers version, but its certain they heard The Kingsmen's and The Sonics' Louie Louie. By 1966 The Kingsmen's Louie Louie had entered the national popular consciousness, and rightly so.  And we know The Swamp Rats were listening to The Sonics by the fact that they soon thereafter covered, in blistering fashion, the Sonics' rocker Psycho, and that they chose to cover the Sonics' version of Louie Louie with its unusual major key structure, this time in the key of B.

Sit back and enjoy!  And be sure to listen as the song trails out.