Tuesday, March 25, 2025

VA - Who Needs Tomorrow : American 60's Garage Bands (2007) @ 320


Review by Mark Deming

After the release of the four-disc Nuggets box set in 1998, one might imagine that everything worthwhile in the garage rock archives had been dug up and presented for public consumption by now, but rabid collectors are still finding choice rarities and reissuing them on CD, and this compilation (assembled by Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond) features 20 hard-to-find American garage rock tunes from the mid-'60s. No one familiar with Saloman and his body of work should be surprised that many of these 20 tunes lean towards the psychedelic end of the garage spectrum, such as the mind-expansion rewrite of "Route 66," "Cloud 76" by Peck's Bad Boys; the relatively mellow inner-space vision of the Liberty Bell's "Recognition"; some trippy folk-rock from the Yankee Dollar on "City Sidewalks," and "Money Man," which suggests Countdown 5 had spent a lot of time listening to the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" before recording the tune. But fans looking for more straight-ahead garage stuff will get their fill as well, thanks to cuts like "La Do Da Da" by the Blue Things, "You Better Watch out for That Girl" by the Moanin' Glories, "If You're Ready" by the Will-O-Bees, and a frantic cover of Otis Redding's "Shake" from the British Walkers. And just for fun, you and your friends can vote on who displays a worse attitude -- Simon T. Stokes on "Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction" or Kin Vassy on "That's the Bag I'm In." Complete with short bios on the artists and good sound (though many of these tracks were apparently sourced from vinyl discs), Who Needs Tomorrow? offers more fuzzy delights for garage obsessives still looking for that great lost single.

 01. Randy Johnson - Fly Superman Fly 
 02. The Love Society - Tobacco Road 
 03. Simon Stokes - Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction 
 04. Kinetic Energy - Margaret Ann 
 05. The Liberty Bell - Recognition 
 06. Peck's Bad Boys - Cloud 76 
 07. The Silver Byke - Who Needs Tomorrow 
 08. The Great Train Robbery - Wasted 
 09. The Will-O-Bees - If You're Ready 
 10. The Yankee Dollar - City Sidewalks 
 11. The Lords Of T.O.N.K - Miniver Cheevy 
 12. Merrell Fankhauser & H.M.S. Bounty - I'm Flying Home 
 13. The 13th Precinct - You Gotta Be Mine 
 14. The Countdown 5 - Money Man 
 15. The British Walkers - Shake 
 16. The Moanin' Glories - You Better Watch Out For That Girl 
 17. Cast Of Thousands - Girl Do What You're Gonna Do 
 18. Kin Vassy - That's The Bag I'm In 
 19. The Good Feelins - I'm Captured 
 20. The Blue Things - La Do Da Da 




 

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