I had a blast last October when '60s Lemoore rockers The Brymers played their reunion show at a packed Hanford Civic Auditorium. The Brymers were among the hundreds of teen garage bands around the country in the mid-'60s who released one or two singles locally, had a big following in and around their region, and then disappeared -- only to be resurrected years later by zealous record collectors looking for great, raw, obscure rock'n'roll.

These days, high-profile garage festivals such as Cavestomp! in New York (which has rounded up ? and the Mysterians, The Remains, The Monks, The Standells, Richard & the Young Lions, The Chocolate Watchband and The Sonics) are populated by music fanatics and affected hipsters from around the world, many of whom were too young to have seen these bands in their day. However, this Brymers show was much more like what I imagined a mid-'60s show would have been -- lots of friends hanging out in a big room, socializing and dancing to good tunes. (Except that most of the people were much grayer and/or balder, teen dances didn't sell beer, and there were way too many Hawaiian shirts instead of the long-lost groovy threads of 1966.) It was a purely local experience, just as it was in '66, and a hell of a lot of fun.

So anyway, I had so much fun with your local garage legends that I thought I'd return the favor and tell y'all about a recent compilation of garage legends from my old part of the world.

Continue reading "From our old garage to yours" »

More from the secret history of rock'n'roll:

There's absolutely no truth to the rumor that Javier Bardem -- deserving of his Oscar nomination for playing one of the most bloodless screen villains in a long while -- was turned down for '60s rockers The Blues Magoos because he wasn't ugly enough.

Actually, there was no rumor -- it's just a cheap excuse to run a great "separated at birth" -- although which one he's separated from is debatable ...

Started the work week with a sad email. Well, it's sad if you know some of the secret history of rock'n'roll and even sadder if you got the chance to see these guys up close. Dave Day (born Dave Havlicek), banjo player for The Monks -- the great lost-and-found rock band -- and arguably the second-best musician to come from Renton, Wash., after Jimi Hendrix, died Thursday morning of heart failure at 60.

So what does this mean and why should you care about a banjo player? Well, if you grew up with punk and other alternative music forms, The Monks -- five mid-'60s American ex-GIs in West Germany, who tore through the same manic club scene The Beatles trod before them -- were the first punk band.

In terms of sound, you could argue that The Sonics, who stormed out of mid-'60s Tacoma/Seattle with their loud, raucous wails, were the first. You could argue it was The Velvet Underground, with their artsiness and disdain for the norm, but you couldn't dance to them. But in terms of attitude and breaking of conventional rules and making it loud and making you want to move? It was The Monks. And Dave -- who took a hit for the team by giving up his Chuck Berry aspirations to shift to playing rhythm banjo -- was the heart of the band, the guy who seemed to have the most fun with it. And so it was in his later years, too, in an unexpected and triumphant final chapter.

(Photo L-R: bassist Eddie Shaw, organist Larry Clark, drummer Roger Johnston, singer/guitarist Gary Burger and banjoist Dave Day.)

Continue reading "The Day of The Monks has passed" »

There's nothing like someone's death to make everyday utterances seem like irony and to make time seem more precious.

Five years ago (story ran 9/22/02), I had the chance to interview Luciano Pavarotti for my last place of employment, the New Haven (Conn.) Register. (He was generous with his time with a total stranger that afternoon; the phone interview ran more than a half-hour.) At the time, he was gearing up to what was his planned retirement: Oct. 12, 2005, his 70th birthday. His explanation for walking away from the stage was simple: "Because it's time. I have many things to do. Many private things to do."

He probably never did get to do most of those things, having spent the last year fighting pancreatic cancer. It was his equivalent of the office or factory worker who whiles away his/her whole life, looking forward to those golden years, then dies right after retirement. Except that Pavarotti never did anything on a small scale. And no, I'm not talking about his weight, either -- the man was large and he lived large, and he leaves a hole that might not be filled, at least for a few generations.

If you want to argue it, he might have been the last of the great rock stars. Enormous talent, with equally huge amounts of excess, personal drama and influence -- he was the entire package.

Continue reading "Pavarotti, last of the great rock stars" »