Dusty bins of record stores and countless thousands of entries on eBay are littered with brilliant music that has long been forgotten. Today's Song of the Week is one such song. It's by the LA based band, Grains of Sand and the song is the frenetic Going Away Baby.
I first heard this song from Greg Shaw's brilliant late 70's compilation of 60's garage rock, Pebbles. Pebbles Vol. 1 to be exact. It was certainly one of the standouts on an album filled with forgotten gems of testosterone fueled rock-n-roll by kids who were just one good date away from being satisfied. But lucky for us, most of those kids never got satisfaction and thus made music of frustration for you and I to enjoy some 43 years later.
Grains of Sand were a 4-piece combo that signed with the boutique Genesis Records and immediately went to cutting one of the all-time great 60's pop numbers, That's When Happiness Began. It's one of those songs that beautifully matches pop melodies with a certain smugness to appeal to a wide variety of audiences. The Flip-Side is She Needs Me, a reverb drenched pounder of the highest quality. The groups next single is our SoTW: Going Away Baby. Going Away Baby features the frenetic guitar work of the songs composer, Doug Mark. The barre-chord riff is used as a refrain in the song, continuously bringing it back to it's most appealing quality. What sounds like a Farfisa organ to this writer, takes a front and center approach with it's three chord riff and even takes the center stage on the lead as Mark pushes the song along like a Pitt-Bull on caffeine. And like all sexually frustrated teenage singer's of 1966, the singer is sick. Sick of it baby. He can't take you no more. Yeah.
I know it is trite to say, but please, please, please play this song loud. It's the only way to totally appreciate it.
Cheers, I'm Going Away Baby!
