About 11 or 12 years ago I went up to Albany to see the Lyres play in Bogie’s. Back in the 80s a garagey Swedish band called the Nomads had had something of a hit with a Lyres song, ‘She Pays The Rent.’ I don’t remember the details, but apparently the frontman for the Lyres, Jeff ‘Monoman’ Connolly, had not been properly compensated for some reason. He lost out on a pretty good chunk of change & was rightfully bummed about it. He’s kind of an eccentric chap, & when I’d met him once in Boston previously, he introduced himself to me, ‘I’m a twerp.’ This night in Albany I was pretty darned drunk & it was a night I did something I’ve not done before or since: I had taken a Quaalude. After the show I went up to Monoman & said ‘I know you—you’re a twerp!’ He was pretty cool about it & acknowledged that I was correct. Then I said, ‘hey, aren’t you in the Nomads?’ I’ve always been grateful he didn’t attack me…but he’d had enough & steamed off.

Ah, sorry for the chuckly anecdote. I’ve seen the Lyres several times since but always kept my distance. Monoman’s a nut—I mean, take a look at this guy--but the Lyres can really cook. Anyone’s going to have a tough time being limited to two songs, but they did have the decency to do the first song off their first album, ‘Don’t Give It Up Now.’

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After the Lyres, among the many bands over the next hour were the Chocolate Watchband & the Cynics. The CW’s ‘greatest hits’ made its way into my collection some months back, & it’s really good, in a Sonics/Shadows Of Knight kind of way. Though their set wasn’t spectacular, I did try to get a pic. At the time I was far, far from the stage. I tried to get a shot of the stage, with the NYC skyline in the background, but it just didn’t come out all that well. It was a nice, er, tableau, as someone might say. But my pic is inferior, sorry. The Cynics are a band I used to have an album by, ‘Blue Train Station,’ from 1986, I believe. One GREAT song, the title track, the rest mostly mediocre, and I was never inspired to seek out any more by the band. Their set was certainly competent, but nothing special.

The Electric Prunes went on around, I guess, 3:30 or so. They got a huge ovation. To be perfectly honest, ‘I Had To Much To Dream Last Night’ was never one of my favorites. But it being more psychedelic than most garage rock, it was a welcome change of pace after 5 hours of a lot of stuff that kinda all sounds the same after awhile.

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After the Prunes there was the Creation, & the Fuzztones. Some time ago Brad H put together a comp consisting of early psychedelic British rock, & placed an amazing tune on there by the Creation—‘Making Time.’ Which they did, happily enough. Not long after them was the Fuzztones, the first time I got the chance to see Rudi Protrudi & Deb O’Nair in action…and probably the last. Back in 1986 I had one of their albums, and it was pretty good…or at least the Sonics covers were. They gained some notoriety due to their look (they used Vox gear, and though I saw a few Teardrops used over the course of the day, the Phantom used by one of the guitar players was the only one I managed to spy…there may have been more, but it was the only one I saw), and around that time they also made an EP (live, I think) backing up Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. I have a video of them doing ‘I Put A Spell On You’ with him from that period, which I think wasn’t long before he died. Hey, they did some good stuff, they just didn’t write any of it. Around 1988 they moved to L.A. & turned out a record or two that really sucked, & I never heard of them doing anything worth mentioning after that. And unfortunately their set sounded more like the dung from that period than anything that sounded like the Sonics. I got a pretty good pic of them, but a sucky band with a great look is not one I’m going to promote here with a pic.

The C-Kings are a band from Rochester, NY, that managed some regional success back in the 80s, probably on the same level as the Cynics (who were from Pittsburgh), I think. I like them much better & always did. I have an album of theirs from 1984 or 1985, called ‘Stop!,’ that is among the best I’ve ever heard in the genre. Whoever introduced them—it might’ve been Little Steven—did point out that they were one of the first, and one of the best bands, to emerge from the 1980s garage-rock movement, which was a retro anomaly in the time of synths & hair metal in the years after punk & disco died. Can’t say their set was great, but it was cool to see them.

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Naturally, it was necessary for someone to explain to us who Pete Best was, and also to point out that what the Beatles were like when they were in Hamburg was a very early example of a major influence on this whole garage-rock movement. I don’t know why, in later middle age, Pete Best has decided to put together what amounts to a bar band, but what the hey, if he can make some money off his past, why not. Although it wouldn’t have been in keeping with the spirit of the day, I have a feeling there would’ve been a drum solo if it was something that figured in what this band does. They did cover ‘Twist & Shout.’ There just didn’t seem to be much that highlighted PB or his drumming, but I have to suppose that’s by design. The band was credible, and the timekeeping was fine. Now, on the double live album that came out in 1977 of the Beatles live in Hamburg, that was recorded after Ringo had joined, so there isn’t much evidence of PB’s supposedly inferior playing on record with the Beatles. I haven’t heard most of the Decca Records audition tapes. I do like the ‘Cry For A Shadow’ instrumental that’s popped up on, among other places, the first volume of the Anthology, and the drumming sounds just fine on that. But if he were good enough at the time I don’t suppose they would’ve gone to the trouble of firing him, though of course this is all ancient history. From my vantage point I was unable to get a direct pic of him, but I did manage to snap one when they had a closeup of him on the giant screen (which was obstructed, from where I was, by what looked like a rig). Fun for what it was, a footnote of sorts in the annals of rock history, if a bit strange.

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