Bohemian Vendetta

 

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And there was another song that still stood out on Ear-Piercing Punk., though it was almost tame by comparison to a lot of these other great songs:  “Enough” by a band called BOHEMIAN VENDETTA.

 

Boheman Vendetta came from Long Island, NY.  The band leader of what was originally called the Bohemians was Arthur Muglia (also known as Brian Cooke), who sang lead vocals and played organ.  His cousin Victor Muglia was the bass player; the other bandmembers were Randy Pollock (rhythm guitar), Richie Sorrentino (drums), and Richard Martinez (lead guitar).  This line-up recorded two demo acetate singles, “Irresistible” b/w “Petrified, Like Stoned” (later called “Like Stoned”) and “I Don’t Go that Way” b/w “All Kinds of Lows and All Kinds of Highs”.

 

After neither disc went anywhere, the lead guitarist and drummer quit to be replaced by Nick Manzi and Chuck Monica, respectively.  The newly-rechristened Bohemian Vendetta recorded three more songs:  “Enough” plus “Half the Time” and “How Does it Feel”.  United Artists Records picked up the first two songs and released them as a single in the spring of 1967.  “Enough” got some local radio play and even had a spot on Dick Clark’s “Rate-a-Record” on American Bandstand.  This was, er, enough to get the band some better gigs; they opened for Vanilla Fudge and also another Long Island band the Vagrants.  (The Vagrants had a regional hit song with Otis Redding’s “Respect” before Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect” propelled them from the charts; bandmembers included Leslie West, later a member of the hard rock band Mountain).

 

The band recorded demos of several more songs and came to the attention of Bob Shad’s Mainstream Records.  His company was famous for releasing albums by unknown bands for the nascent “underground” FM radio market and is known for their pedestrian production values and minimal promotion efforts.  Mainstream Records does have some prominent albums to its credit, however, including the first album by Big Brother and the Holding Company (not long after Janis Joplin joined up) and the first three albums by the Amboy Dukes, Ted Nugent’s early band (including their big hit “Journey to the Center of the Mind”).

 

The Amboy Dukes’ raw treatment of Big Joe Williams’ “Baby, Please Don’t Go” from their first album was included on the original Nuggets compilation album and already features Ted Nugent’s signature guitar licks.  Additionally, and incredibly, “Baby, Please Don’t Go” was originally the “A” side of the early single by Van Morrison’s band Them that includes the immortal “Gloria” on the flip.  In his book Rock and Roll: The Best 100 Singles, rock historian Paul Williams has said of this record (as quoted in Wikipedia):  “Into the heart of the beast . . . here is something so good, so pure, that if no other hint of it but this record existed, there would still be such a thing as rock and roll. . . .  Van Morrison’s voice a fierce beacon in the darkness, the lighthouse at the end of the world.  Resulting in one of the most perfect rock anthems known to humankind.”

 

Bohemian Vendetta had already recorded demos of most of the songs on the album for Mainstream Records, but Bob Shad insisted that they re-record them in early 1968; and the results did not capture the feel of the demos, which were more representative of how the band actually sounded.  Nearly all of their material was written by the band, but Shad wanted them to record the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”.  Their last recording efforts were helping out on an album called Introspection by another Long Island garage rock artist, Faine Jade.  The Mainstream album, Enough finally came out in the fall of 1968; but Mainstream did nothing to promote the album or its lone single, “Riddles and Fairytales” b/w “I Wanna Touch Your Heart”, so the band broke up in late 1968.

 

If I find a garage rock song on one of the many compilation albums in my collection that I truly love, I will often try to track down a retrospective album by the band to see what else they have recorded.  In this case, I found a 22-track CD on Distortions Records called Enough.  Unlike many such albums, which are basically a collection of miscellaneous, unconnected songs, the Bohemian Vendetta CD really sounds like an album.  Highlights include the early single “Like Stoned” (which has the feel of a Dutch “Nederpop” song with its offbeat tune and unusual vocal style), their last single “Riddles and Fairytales” (both the album version and the 45 version are included), "Charity Killjoy" (which was bumped from the Mainstream album in favor of “Satisfaction”), the willfully eccentric “Paradox City”, and of course “Enough”, a plaintive plea from a guy who is fed up with his girlfriend. 

 

(April 2011)

 

  

 

 

Bohemian Vendetta – a great name for a band – is one of those few 1960’s garage rock bands who released an album.  Theirs came out on the exploitive record label Mainstream Records; and reportedly, the band was forced to re-record their music in what turned out to be inferior arrangements for that album.  

 

The best-known song by Bohemian Vendetta, “Enough” shows up on numerous garage-rock and psychedelic-rock compilation albums, including Ear-Piercing Punk (both the LP and the CD) and the original Pebbles, Volume 1 CD.  There are several YouTube entries for this song, including this one:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1dIGlVZGI4 ; all are basically audio only, but one of them (not this one) shows a completely unrelated movie clip in the background (also apparently from the 1960’s).

 

One of my recent acquisitions is a Voxx Records compilation CD put together by Greg Shaw of crazed psychedelic material called Beyond the Calico Wall.  That album includes another Bohemian Vendetta song, a brain-twister called “Paradox City”; it is also available on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNiJ6HnMptI .  Perhaps their best song of all, the more conventional “Riddles and Fairytales” can be heard at:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=gllqc0-4BYc .  Additional songs can also be heard on YouTube if these are to your liking.

 

(April 2013)