The Under Appreciated Rock Band for this month is THE CRAWDADDYS; while I know of no connection with Kim Fowley, the anachronistic R&B stylings of this San Diego band sound like something that would be right up his alley.  The Allmusic article on the Crawdaddys leads off with this (by Matt Carlson):  “In a time of trendy discotheques, bombastic arena rock, and sonic punk barbarisms, the Crawdaddys were truly a peculiarity of the late ’70s.” 

Much as past UARB the Poppees was the first band signed by Greg Shaw for his original Bomp! Records label, the Crawdaddys was the first band brought in by Shaw for his new 1960’s revival label Voxx Records.  The name Voxx is an adaptation of the Vox brand of musical instruments, known in the rock world for their electric organs, amplifiers, and (as Wikipedia says) “a series of innovative but commercially unsuccessful electric guitars and bass guitars”.  

The Flamin’ Groovies showed the way when their 1976 album, Shake Some Action (on Sire Records and Aim Records) moved a lot of vinyl by looking backwards to the 1960’s, vindicating Greg Shaw’s decision to step up and launch Bomp! Records by releasing their 1974 single, “You Tore Me Down” b/w “Him or Me”. 

As quoted in the book by Simon Reynolds called Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past:  “Greg Shaw soon decided that words weren’t enough anymore; it was time for action.  He folded the magazine Bomp! and injected all of his energy into Voxx, a Bomp! [Records] subsidiary label dedicated to the new breed of post-[Flamin’] Groovies garage bands.”    

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The Voxx Records retrospective CD, Be a Caveman: The Best of the Voxx Garage Revival (2000) presents one incredible song after another that has led me to buy several full albums by the bands on the CD; besides the Crawdaddys, the CD includes songs by the Vertebrats, DMZ, the Chesterfield Kings, the Pandoras, Gravedigger V, the Miracle Workers, the Fuzztones, Hypstrz, the Surf Trio, the Steppes, Dwarves, and many more.  

In the liner notes for Be a Caveman, Greg Shaw recalls those heady days:  “At the end of the 1970’s, there was no scene for ’60s garage music.  No label released it.  Less than a handful of bands played it.  Then came Voxx Records, and over the course of a decade, everything changed.  Voxx was as much a concept as a record label.  The idea was to present young bands doing pure mid-’60’s roots music, garage, psych, surf, beat, folk-rock, and various hybrids thereof. . . .  The catalyst was a young San Diego combo called the Crawdaddys, who actually came to me via a very good new wave band, the Hitmakers.” 

This ’60’s revival scene stayed below the radar for many years but eventually came to fruition in what I call the Garage Rock Revival of the early 2000’s.  

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The first album by the Crawdaddys, Crawdaddy Express – recorded in monaural; talk about looking back! – came out in 1979 as the initial LP on Voxx Records.  Allmusic gives the album 4½ stars and states in the review by Matt Carlson:  “The Crawdaddys started their recording career properly, releasing a record with nothing but ’60s R&B, British Invasion, and blues standards (in addition to two original compositions).”  Mike Stax, who later founded and edited Ugly Things magazine, was so impressed with the album that he eventually moved to California from London so that he could join the band.  As quoted in the Simon Reynolds book, Stax admitted that the band wasn’t “original in any shape or form”, but that their “total purity was thrilling in its audacity”, and that their debut album was “virtually indistinguishable from the real thing”. 

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Normally I don’t spend a lot of time ruminating on the name of a band, even though origins have always fascinated me.  For most of the UARB’s, the band name comes from a fairly obvious place.  “Crawdaddy” is related to “crawdad”, another name for the crayfish or crawfish that is basically a miniature freshwater lobster.  Where I grew up in North Carolina, they were everywhere in small streams if you moved a few rocks around; but in Louisiana, they grow big enough to be a regional delicacy.  In Gulfport, there is a restaurant and seafood takeout place called Clawdaddy’s. 

But I was surprised when so many “Crawdaddy” entities came up in the initial Google searches for this post.  Make it a search for “Crawdaddys band”, and there is a host of results:  Besides the UARB the Crawdaddys, there is a rock band from Australia called the Crawdaddys, a Cajun/zydeco band from Baltimore called the Crawdaddies, a Canadian band called the Crawdaddy’s, a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band called Crawdaddy Band, a bluesman from Detroit named Crawdaddy – and that was just on the first page of search results.  There are also Crawdaddy’s music clubs all over. 

A rock music magazine called Crawdaddy! was founded by the important music historian Paul Williams in 1966 (and a different man from the songwriter Paul Williams who is also a sometime actor).  About this publication, Wikipedia says:  “Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism.  Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was self-described as ‘the first magazine to take rock and roll seriously’.” 

So where did all of this “Crawdaddy” business come from?  The source is the Crawdaddy Club, which figures prominently in the early history of the Rolling Stones.  

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The best history of the Crawdaddys that I have found is at a blog called “The Ché Underground:  San Diego’s Underground Rock ’n’ Roll Scene of the 1980s”; the post on this band is at http://cheunderground.com/blog/?page_id=1041 .  The story is compellingly told and is well worth reviewing in its entirety, but it goes into considerably more detail than I will write here.  The name of the blog is taken from the Ché Café, which is described in Wikipedia as “a worker co-operative, social center, and live music venue located on the University of California, San Diego campus in La Jolla, California, USA”. 

The blog entry on the Crawdaddys is headlined:  “In a Ché Underground exclusive, Ray Brandes offers the first comprehensive history of San Diego’s original retro-visionaries.”  Ray Brandes was previously a member of the Mystery Machine, which contributed a mind-bogglingly great song called “She’s Not Mine” (written by Carl Rusk) to a Voxx Records garage rock band “competition” called Battle of the Garages, Part 2.  

The Ray Brandes post begins:  “The Crawdaddys have been called one of the most influential bands ever to come out of San Diego.  When one looks at the groups its members have spawned, as well as the recurring popularity of ’60s-style punk and rhythm and blues over the past 30 years, it’s hard to dispute that assertion.  Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of music history, an uncompromising commitment to artistic integrity, and a roster of musicians with unparalleled talents and distinct individual styles, the Crawdaddys single-handedly gave birth to the revival of garage music in the late 1970’s in the United States.” 

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Ron Silva and Steve Potterf grew up as neighbors in Point Loma, California and began listening to records together in the ninth grade.  Silva recalls of those early days:  “After a while Steve started getting into the music I liked – Beatles, early Stones.  I remember sitting in his room playing guitars along to my dad’s Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley 45’s.”   

Ron Silva and Steve Potterf, together with Ron’s brother Russell Silva played rock and roll in the Silva garage all through high school.  Ron Silva began obsessively studying album covers, magazines, vintage photographs, and other sources in order to authentically capture the look of the Sixties, from the hair to the clothes to the shoes; this desire spread to the other bandmembers as well over time. 

As Ron Silva left high school, he advertised for a rock band that he was thinking of forming; after being contacted by vocalist Jeff Scott (who had just left the seminal punk band the Dils) and drummer Josef Marc, he instead became the guitarist in their new band called the Hitmakers.  They quickly became part of the growing DIY music scene in San Diego.  A joint show in 1977 at the Adams Avenue Theatre by the Hitmakers, the Dils and the Zeros was the first big punk rock concert in the city.  Later Steve Potterf joined the Hitmakers as their second guitarist, and Joel Kmak became their new drummer. 

The renown of the Hitmakers grew through the state, and the band decided to relocate to San Francisco.  The day before they left town, the band fired Steve Potterf because they said that they didn’t like his attitude.  About two days later, Ron Silva decided to start his own band that became the Crawdaddys. 

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Ron Silva connected with Mark Zadarnowski – who was just learning to play bass guitar – through a mutual friend and fellow Beatles enthusiast named Tim LaMadrid.  The first gig by the newly formed band the Crawdaddys was at Abbey Road in September 1978, with Ron’s brother Russell Silva – who went by the name “Scuzz” – sitting in on drums.  By their third concert at the Lions’ Club in North Park (see above photo), the line-up was Ron Silva (guitar), Steve Potterf (guitar), Mark Zadarnowski (bass), and Dan McLain (drums); McLain ran a local record store called Monty Rockers. 

Jeff Scott phoned Ron Silva, and they patched things up over Silva’s leaving the Hitmakers.  Scott was about to go to L.A. to play their band’s demo tape for Greg Shaw at Bomp! Records, and he offered to bring him and Steve Potterf along if they could lay down some tracks first.  The Crawdaddys assembled in the Silva garage and recorded two original songs plus Chuck Berry’s “Oh Baby Doll” and Bo Diddley’s “Tiger in Your Tank”. 

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Ron Silva says of the meeting of the Crawdaddys with Greg Shaw:  “In my opinion it would be fairly safe to say that [Steve] Potterf and I blew Shaw’s mind that day.  We walked in, and Potterf had this absolutely devout Brian Jones thing going with the hair, and we both had the complete Downliners Sect ’64 look from head to toe.  It was totally ridiculous and great at the same time.  Shaw said, ‘Go back to San Diego and make an album, preferably for next to nothing, if you don’t mind.’  We didn’t.”  

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Remarkably, the Crawdaddys filmed their performance of another Bo Diddley song in 1978, “Cadillac”; this was a full three years before MTV signed on the air.  The film was made for a college Communications class that Mark Zadarnowski was attending. 

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Tim LaMadrid came on the scene again to help out the band; Ray Brandes calls him “an unsung hero in the history of the Crawdaddys”.  Besides taking all of the band’s photographs, LaMadrid borrowed a four-track, reel-to-reel tape recorder from his school and supervised the recording of the tracks for their first album over a two-day period. 

Ray Brandes describes the band’s approach to the recording sessions:  “Since the Crawdaddys’ legendary obsession with authenticity also applied to the equipment used to play and record the songs on the album, every sound needed to be justified by a musical recording of the era; and this of course meant no instruments manufactured after 1965, and no round-wound bass strings, nylon picks or synthetic drum heads.”  Jack White basically felt the same way. so the White Stripes similarly used vintage equipment in many of their recordings. 

As described above, the resulting debut album, Crawdaddy Express by the Crawdaddys was comprised mostly of covers of R&B classics by Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, and John Lee Hooker; plus a few from other sources, such as the old Hank Snow tune “I’m Movin’ On” and the magnificent Van Morrison song “Mystic Eyes” that opened the first album by Them.  Only a few familiar songs were included on the album, such as “You Can’t Judge a Book” and “Down the Road a Piece”.  Just two original recordings were included on the album, the title song “Crawdaddy Express” and “Got You in My Soul” (both written by Ron Silva and Steve Potterf). 

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While this line-up never recorded another album, the Crawdaddys secured their place in the rock firmament with their next two releases (both on Voxx Records):  the single “There She Goes Again” b/w “Why Don’t You Smile Now” in early 1980, and an EP called 5 x 4 in August 1980.  For my money, “There She Goes Again” is the one Velvet Underground song (written by Lou Reed) that is tailor-made to be covered by other bands.  There is an obscure cover of “There She Goes Again” by the Electrical Banana in 1967 which is mentioned by Wikipedia; this is not the same band as the Electric Banana that was a pseudonym for the Pretty Things over several years.  However, the only other cover version of “There She Goes Again” that I know of is by R.E.M.; and Peter Buck acknowledges that their recording is inspired by the Crawdaddys version.  “There She Goes Again” is included on the Bomp! Records compilation CD Straight Outta Burbank, and that is where I learned about the song.  The “B” side, “Why Don’t You Smile Now” was co-written by Lou Reed and John Cale but pre-dates their involvement with the Velvet Underground; “Why Don’t You Smile Now” was originally released on a 1965 single under the name the All-Night Workers. 

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Regarding the title of the EP 5 x 4 by the Crawdaddys, I was thinking of the 1964 Rolling Stones album 12 x 5 myself, but the Stones had previously released a British-only EP called 5 x 5 in August 1964.  One of the cuts on the Stones EP is a group-penned instrumental called “2120 South Michigan Avenue” – the street address of Chess Records in Chicago – and the Chicano garage rock band Thee Midniters used it as the basis for their popular track “Whittier Boulevard”.  

The Crawdaddys EP includes 4 original songs plus “Pretty Face” by the talented but snake-bit 1960’s British band the Beat Merchants.  One of these songs is a monster R&B original called “I’m Dissatisfied” that I would have to say is my favorite Crawdaddys song. 

Mike Stax, who later joined the Crawdaddys as their bass guitarist, says of their EP:  “5 x 4 is one of the greatest records from the post-’60s era.  I think the original lineup was important, as they were one of the first bands to operate on such a purist level.  Had they been able to maintain a stable lineup, pursued more original material, and continued to release records on the same level as 5 x 4, they would have been much more well-known today than they are.” 

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A German record label called Line Records collected the single and EP by the Crawdaddys and released an album called Still Steamin’, with “There She Goes Again” on Side 1 at 45 rpm and the other 6 songs on Side 2 at 33 rpm.  Line Records also re-released the Crawdaddy Express LP and the “There She Goes Again” single in 1985; later, the label combined all of the Voxx Records material onto a CD in 1989 called Mystic Crawdaddys.  Voxx Records did the same with their CD reissue of Crawdaddy Express in 1994. 

These items are taken from a detailed discography of the Crawdaddys that is presented on the website for the power pop band the Shambles at www.theshambles.net, whose bandmembers include Mark Z, the former bass guitarist for the Crawdaddys.  This discography also lists 10 compilation albums that feature songs by the Crawdaddys. 

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Meanwhile, back in San Diego, drummer Dan McLain was in another band called the Penetrators that was being courted by major record labels; and Steve Potterf also played with the Upbeats, his side project with Paris Trent – this band was thinking of moving to Los Angeles.  Steve Potterf left first in late 1979, and Dan McLain left the Crawdaddys in 1980.  The 16-year-old guitarist Peter Miesner joined up on guitar, while the drummer was, briefly, Joel Kmak, who had previously been in the Hitmakers.  Keith Fisher was added later on keyboards. 

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Mike Stax was born in England and had tried to interest locals in starting a 1960’s style R&B band without success.  Stax wrote Ron Silva in 1980, who invited him to join the band on bass guitar.  Numerous changes in the line-up took place over the next several years – even Mojo Nixon joined up on guitar at one point – and some are remembered by other bandmembers only by their first name.  Once the band tried to soldier on without a guitarist, and another time without a drummer; for a time, the band changed their name to the Howling Men, named for a Twilight Zone episode.  Eventually, the Crawdaddys basically squandered their reputation as one of San Diego’s greatest rock bands.  After just 6½ months in the States, Mike Stax returned home to England. 

Mike Stax’s return to San Diego in May 1982 triggered the exit of the original Crawdaddys bassist Mark Zadarnowski.  This time, Stax came to town with an agenda; Stax is quoted by Ray Brandes:  “I returned with lots of tapes of obscure ’60s beat, R&B and garage stuff; and we began to learn a lot of new covers, stuff like ‘Chicago’ by the Phantom Brothers, ‘She Just Satisfies’ by Jimmy Page [which I had figured inspired the band’s original “I’m Dissatisfied”], the Boots’ version of ‘Jump Back [Baby]’ and the Sorrows’ ‘You Got What I Want’.  The rest of the band was finally open to doing stuff like this, which I’d been advocating all along, rather than being a purist R&B/blues band who only did songs by the original black artists.”  

While these preferences would inform Mike Stax’s sensibilities as the founder of Ugly Things magazine, also in 1982, they created friction within the Crawdaddys.  Keith Fisher for one hated American garage rock music; after finding a very rare 45 by the Texas garage rock band Zakary Thaks, he threw it across the room at Mike Stax on his 21st birthday and ruined it.  Stax quit the band on the spot after that, though he was planning to leave the Crawdaddys in the summer of 1983 anyway. 

After adding Jack Lopez on drums in 1983 (he was previously in the Los Angeles punk rock band the Stains), the Crawdaddys lasted a while longer before packing it in at the end of 1984. 

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As often happens following the break-up of a popular rock band, the Crawdaddys’ remaining songs – frequently, as here, presented as an unreleased album – were packaged into a CD by Voxx Records called Here ’Tis.  The CD was originally released in 1987 and was reissued in 1994.  The brief liner notes by Ron Silva (dated October 1986) end by presenting the CD:  “So why wait until tomorrow!  HERE ’TIS!”  

Of course, more than a few 1960’s fans such as yours truly might have expected yet another Bo Diddley song on this album, not coincidentally entitled “Here ’Tis”; but it is not among the tracks.  I have two versions of the song; one is by the Yardbirds, and another that is even better is by the Betterdays.  The latter version of “Here ’Tis” is included on the Pebbles, Volume 6 LP that introduced me to the raw English R&B sound that inspired the creation of the Crawdaddys in the first place. 

Anyway, it is hard for me to complain about what the Crawdaddys have included on Here ’Tis:  The CD starts off with a blistering rendition of a rockin’ Chuck Berry song, “Thirty Days”, followed by an Allen Toussaint song called “Why Wait Until Tomorrow” that had been recorded by Lee Dorsey – best known for two charming hits, “Ya Ya” and “Working in the Coalmine”.  Also on hand is a criminally obscure Leiber/Stoller song called “That Is Rock and Roll”, the flip side of the Coasters’ hit “Along Came Jones”.  The Coasters, one of my favorite American R&B bands, had emerged in the 1960’s essentially as a showcase band for the best songs by this dynamite songwriting duo. 

Another outstanding song is “Ruler of My Heart”, with the songwriting credited to Naomi Neville (the mother of Allen Toussaint; he often uses her name in his writing credits) and made famous by Irma Thomas.  Then there is the Jimmy Page song mentioned earlier, “She Just Satisfies”. 

If anything, the Crawdaddys work even harder on the performances of their original songs that make up about half of the tracks, like Ron Silva’s “You’re Gonna Need My Love Someday”, “I Just Don’t Understand” and “Start Talkin’”, with the latter song featuring a fierce instrumental break.  

The bandmembers in the Crawdaddys listed on the Here ’Tis CD are Ron Silva, Fred Sanders (actually Keith Fisher, with the name petulantly changed due to his threats to file suit to prevent the release of the CD), Peter Michael Miesner, Jack Lopez, Mike Dixson Stax, Gordon Moss, and Steve Horn.  Also mentioned are Carl Rusk as “production consultant”, Josef Marc as “sort of the producer” on some tracks, and Jeff Scott as “definitely like a father to us”. 

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On May 29, 2011, at a Rhino Records pop-up store in San Diego, the Crawdaddys showed up unexpectedly with a reunion concert that included former members Ron Silva, Peter Miesner, and Keith Fisher.  After noting the surprise at the Crawdaddys being there at all, the L.A. Weekly report on the concert continued:  “Another surprise was how hot and vital the band sounded, even after being dormant for so many years.  You could certainly hear where latter-day ’60s revivalists like the Hives got their ideas, as singer-guitarist Ron Silva snarled his way through a set of Crawdaddys originals and vintage covers of primal rock classics like ‘Oh Baby Doll’, ‘Slow Down’ and ‘Let the Good Times Roll’.  The group were at their best on Rolling Stones-style blues rockers like ‘Bald Headed Woman’, but they also deftly pulled off poppier tunes like the Knickerbockers’ Beatles sound-alike ‘Lies’ and a yearning, affecting version of the Velvet Underground’s bittersweet ‘There She Goes [Again]’.”  

In September 2011, the Crawdaddys played at the Casbah in Middletown as part of a two-day “Ché Underground Festival” at the club that was headlined by past UARB the Unknowns, described by the local newspaper U-T San Diego as “a leading San Diego band in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s”. 

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Members of the Crawdaddys went on to populate many other California bands; I have already mentioned several of them.  The future UARB (probably by year’s end) and another like-minded San Diego band called the Tell-Tale Hearts (named after a famous Edgar Allan Poe story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”) has numerous connections with the band.  Former Crawdaddys bass guitarist Mike Stax was a founding member, as were Mystery Machine alumni Bill Calhoun and Ray Brandes (I praised and heavily borrowed from Brandes’s fine biography of the Crawdaddys in preparing this post).  Another past Crawdaddy, Peter Miesner contributed guitar on two tracks on the Tell-Tale Hearts CD that I have, High Tide (Big Noses & Pizza Faces), with the name adapted from that of the first Rolling Stones retrospective album, Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) (1966). 

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Dan McLain was probably the most active and most prominent musician among the former bandmembers in the Crawdaddys; his untimely death in November 1995 at the age of 40 was written up in Billboard magazine.  After drumming for the Crawdaddys and the Penetrators, McLain took the name Country Dick Montana and first formed a band called Country Dick & the Snuggle Bunnies.  The bandmembers included Richard Banke who is also known as Skid Roper, a long-time collaborator (mostly as an instrumentalist) with Mojo Nixon, who is a former member of the Crawdaddys. 

With his fractured vision and his frantic singing and playing style, Mojo Nixon perhaps best personifies what is meant by “psychobilly”; he is a native of Chapel Hill (real name:  Neill Kirby McMillan, Jr.).  Steve Huey provides a cogent synopsis of his mystique in his biography for Allmusic:  “One of the most out-sized personalities on college radio in the ’80s, Mojo Nixon won a fervent cult following with his motor-mouthed redneck persona and a gonzo brand of satire with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.  Nixon had a particular knack for celebrity-themed novelty hits (‘Elvis Is Everywhere’, ‘Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child’, ‘Don Henley Must Die’), but he was prone to gleefully crass rants on a variety of social ills (‘I Hate Banks’, ‘Destroy All Lawyers’, ‘I Ain’t Gonna Piss In No Jar’), while celebrating lowbrow, blue-collar America in all its trashy, beer-soaked glory.  All of it was performed in maximum overdrive on a bed of rockabilly, blues, and R&B.” 

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The Beat Farmers grew out of Country Dick & the Snuggle Bunnies and was formed in August 1983.  They became one of the leading bands in what became known as “cowpunk” or country punk, a blend of punk rock with country and folk music.  Bandmembers were Country Dick Montana (drums, guitar, vocals), Jerry Raney (guitar, vocals), Rolle Dexter Love (bass), and Buddy Blue (guitar, vocals, drums).  Joey Harris (guitar, vocals) replaced Blue in the band in 1986; he had previously been in Country Dick & the Snuggle Bunnies. 

The Beat Farmers were signed by Rhino Records – mostly known as a reissue label – which released their debut album, Tales of the New West in January 1985; they were then signed by Curb Records.  The album includes a cover of “There She Goes Again”, which had been previously recorded by the Crawdaddys.  Their 1987 album Pursuit of Happiness included “Make it Last” that initially had a lot of play on country music stations; though that didn’t, er, last once DJ’s decided that the rest of the album was too rock and roll. 

Besides their own albums and popular concert appearances throughout Southern California, the Beat Farmers collaborated with numerous musicians; Allmusic lists Mojo Nixon, John Doe of X, Rosie Flores, the Bangles, Los Lobos, Katy Moffatt, blues singer/pianist Candye Kane, and guitarist Dave Alvin, formerly of the Blasters.  For his part, Country Dick Montana had several side projects over this period, including the Incredible Hayseeds, Country Dick’s Petting Zoo, Country Dick’s Garage, and the Pleasure Barons.  

After enduring problems over several years with Curb Records, the Beat Farmers began touring to support their 1993 album for Sector 2 Records, Viking Lullabies.  After Country Dick Montana’s massive heart attack on stage in 1995 during a concert in Whistler, B.C., the remaining bandmembers called it quits a week later. 

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