Once I determined that I was going to take a stab at saving my poor record collection from the mud and water and yuck of Hurricane Katrina, I did a few experiments and quickly discovered that saving the covers would be impossible. I worked for close to an hour cleaning up one fairly stout cover (particularly for a European release) that did not look to be in too bad a shape, but I couldn’t get all of the dirt off, and there was no way I could get an album in it once it dried. I still decided to frame it, and it is on my wall today: Lazy Ways, the second and last album by a British band called the Marine Girls, from the early 1980’s. I don’t have another album in my collection quite like it: three talented women singing their own songs, mostly together, whose voices don’t quite mesh, backed by acoustical guitars that seem to be just slightly out of synch – but the album is absolutely captivating. One of the Girls, Tracey Thorn became the female half of one of my very favorite bands, Everything but the Girl; the male half, Ben Watt was the photographer for the album cover. The other album cover that I more or less cleaned up for framing was practically the first record that I picked up out of our front yard from the debris: The artist for this one was Katrina and the Waves (I kid you not); it was the cover from a 12” single, not for their big hit “Walking on Sunshine” but for the follow-up “Do You Want Crying” – and yes, there was quite a bit.
It was apparent that if I let the albums dry out, the wet cardboard and plastic would form something that would be a lot like cement; so with some not-free help, we managed to pull the disks free from their covers, place them in and between small garbage bags, and stack them in liquor store boxes for temporary storing. I then assembled some tools: a plastic dish rack with drainboard that, it turned out, would hold 19 albums without touching; some cheap dish detergent for getting the worst of the dirt off; a record cleaning kit for the final clean-up; and lots and lots and lots of gumption.
The very first album listed on what I called “Rack 1” was . . . Or the Beginning (probably my only album whose name starts with ellipses) by a band called THE NOT QUITE. An entertaining though (as usual) overly long recitation of their history can be found buried on a website run by one Dark Lord Rob, the founder, vocalist and bass player for the band, who also presents his other musical and theatrical endeavors; “coming soon” advertisements for his company American Entropy Productions like The Miskatonic Acid Test, Elvis in Wonderland, Here Be Witches, and American Nietzsche Man; and many other goodies.
The Not Quite were one of the early psychedelic revival bands of the early 1980’s and got some good press, with one outlet calling them a “major band”. Originally they were called the Starship Troopers (named after a famous and controversial novel, Starship Troopers by science fiction legend Robert Heinlein that was later made into a really entertaining movie, Starship Troopers), and the story of how they got their name is a lot like the one for Big Brother and the Holding Company (where Janis Joplin had her first big stint): Someone was reading out a long list of band names as suggestions, and the last two names on the list were “Big Brother” and “the Holding Company”. In this case, the bandmembers were trying out names on each other, and everyone would chuckle and say, “No, not quite”; after awhile, the response became the chosen name.
The album, the band’s last was released in 1990 as an LP only on Voxx Records, a label operated by the late Greg Shaw of Bomp! Records to showcase 1960’s revival bands. (Bomp was slow to get into CD production, and they have kept much of their vinyl catalogue in print for decades). The music has a dark, moody sound with lots of ominous organ, and Dark Lord Rob has suitably gloomy vocals that are mostly sung in the lower register. The songs are often complex and also dark; the title track has three or four identifiable parts with a chorus that asks, “is this the end” several times before screaming out “or the beginning”.
I am up to Rack 28 now, just a few months shy of the fifth anniversary of Katrina (and with the Gulf full again – not with a blockbuster storm, but with barrels and barrels of leaking oil that are heading our way as I write); and for those of you with a calculator, that totals well over 500 cleaned up albums that I am now able to play again and enjoy. I have them sitting in plain covers that I get from Bags Unlimited, with full-color covers (including the back covers on occasion) that I have downloaded from the Internet; after printing them out, I tape them onto the blank covers. I also have information on the album down the spine just like they had originally.
* * *
The
Honor Roll of the
Under Appreciated Rock Bands and Artists follows, in date order, including a link to the original
Facebook posts and the theme of the article.
Dec 2009 – BEAST; Lot to Learn Mar 2010 – BANG; Record Collecting I May 2010 – THE NOT QUITE; Katrina Clean-Up
Jul 2010 – THE EYES; Los Angeles Punk Rock Mar 2011 – INDEX; Psychedelic Rock (1960’s) Nov 2013 – CHIMERA; Women in Rock II Jan 2014 – BOYSKOUT; (Lesbian) Women in Rock IV Apr 2014 – HOMER; Creating New Bands out of Old Ones Jul 2014 – MIKKI; Rock and Religion I (Early CCM Music) Sep 2014 – NICK FREUND; Rock and Religion III (The Beatles) Mar 2015 – PHIL GAMMAGE; Songwriting II (Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan) Dec 2016 – THE IGUANAS; Iggy and the Stooges; Proto-Punk Rock Jun 2017 – THE LOONS; Punk Revival and Other New Bands Dec 2017 – SS-20; The Iguana Chronicles
