My interest in Wikipedia was piqued by several stunts fomented by Stephen Colbert on his show The Colbert Report. In one famous incident, "The Wørd" on July 31, 2006 was "Wikiality"; Colbert explained that on Wikipedia, "any user can change any entry, and if enough users agree with them, it becomes true." He then encouraged his viewers to modify the Wikipedia entry on "elephants" to state: "Elephant population in Africa has tripled over the past six months". The changes mounted by the "Colbert nation" spread to other pachyderm-related articles: African forest elephant, African bush elephant, Babar the elephant, white elephant, Dumbo, etc.
I remember another time when Stephen Colbert changed a Wikipedia entry on camera so as to fit his worldview – that is to say, the worldview of his buffoonish character "Stephen Colbert" who hosts the show; he is a different person from the actual human being.
There were well over one million articles in Wikipedia when I first looked it over. Currently, over 4.3 million articles are in the English Wikipedia, and Wikipedias have been created in 287 languages – yes, Klingon is one of those languages, as is the constructed language of Esperanto.
I quickly learned that there were oodles of articles on rock bands; and this point was driven home to me in 2007 when I read an article in Discover magazine called "You Know Too Much" that praised Wikipedia but started off with: "Despite scads of entries about virtually unknown rock bands . . ." I laughed out loud (and probably blushed) thinking of my own additions to those scads! But there were still some important bands and artists that were not listed. Mostly, I wanted to get some articles written about legendary garage rock and psychedelic rock bands and artists that weren't yet in Wikipedia.
Anyway, in August 2006, I made my first edit: The album Peter Ivers by Peter Ivers – the late host of the cult-classic cable television program New Wave Theatre – has an alternate name of Peter Peter Ivers. That edit has survived to this day; that is not true of many, if not most of my early contributions – since anyone can edit Wikipedia, a lot can happen in seven years.
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One day, I was listening to a delightful psychedelic rock album by a band called the Head Shop and wondered what Wikipedia might have to say about it. I had found a copy of the album a long time ago (probably at the semi-annual Record Convention in Hillsborough, NC) and was ecstatic when I saw the name of Milan as the producer of the record. There was nothing in Wikipedia about the band, so after a few days, I started writing an article about The Head Shop. Though there have been some additions and changes over the years, that Wikipedia article is still largely my work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Head_Shop . (I feel no need to restate what I have already written on Wikipedia, since those articles are more readily accessible on the Internet than these Facebook posts).
As with many of my later Wikipedia articles as well as the UARB and UARA posts, I relied largely on information given on the Allmusic website, the best source that I have found about older rock bands and artists. Surprisingly, after I wrote up the Wikipedia article on the Head Shop, the Eugene Chadbourne piece about the band on Allmusic disappeared, even though Chadbourne still has several other pieces on other rock bands. I have often thought that I should question them about that, wondering if they were aiming to be "Somemusic" rather than Allmusic. I later found the Chadbourne piece on www.barnesandnoble.com, though that one is gone as well. I just found something by Eugene Chadbourne about the Head Shop on Allmusic, but it was filed under the artist Joe? and seems to be mostly a gag piece.
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A while later, I started scouring the Internet for information about Milan himself, and as I have written previously, that Wikipedia article became the genesis for the more complete article that I wrote about Milan the Leather Boy for Ugly Things magazine. I still haven't updated the Wikipedia article on Milan the Leather Boy with the information that was in the Ugly Things article, but I'm sure that I will get around to it one day. That article can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_the_Leather_Boy .
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Mouse and the Traps was one of the first bands that I wrote about; they were featured on the original Nuggets album with their fabulous Bob Dylan soundalike song "A Public Execution" that was released under the name Mouse. The band later backed a singer named Jimmy Rabbit on a cover of "Psychotic Reaction", a hit song originally recorded by Count Five. The song was released under the name Positively 13 O'Clock; this is a Bob Dylan reference as well: The band name was adapted from his hit song "Positively 4th Street". It was quite a thrill when we moved to New York in early 1990, and I found that our first apartment was within sight of the western end of West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village. Their version of "Psychotic Reaction" was included on the very first Pebbles album.
The only other band to be featured on the original Nuggets album and also on Pebbles, Volume 1 is the Shadows of Knight. They are best known for their fantastic cover of "Gloria" that outsold the original by Van Morrison and Them in the United States. The Nuggets song is their cover of a terrific Bo Diddley song, "Oh Yeah"; while the Pebbles entry is a novelty song by the band called "Potato Chip" that was issued only on a flexidisk as part of some snack food promotion.
What's more, I had long owned a retrospective album by Mouse and the Traps called Public Execution, and all of the songs on the album were great, particularly "Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice", which was their failed second single following "A Public Execution". I truly could not believe that no one had written up an article on Mouse and the Traps yet. This article won an "Original Barnstar" award by another Wikipedian, who praised me for this "long overdue" article. It can be seen at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_and_the_Traps .
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The Human Expression is another amazing psychedelic rock band; they are well known for "Love at Psychedelic Velocity" that was included on Pebbles, Volume 10, one of the first two Pebbles LP's that I bought. Not so well known, but even more highly prized is "Optical Sound"; as the title suggests, the song deals with the synesthesia effects of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs, where someone will seem to see sounds and taste colors. The 45 with "Optical Sound" on it has brought as much as $2,650 at auction.
The Human Expression had a chance to record "Born to be Wild" before the song was made available to Steppenwolf, but the band weren't impressed with that song and chose another Mars Bonfire song instead, "Sweet Child of Nothingness". The Human Expression only recorded a handful of singles, so their retrospective album, Love at Psychedelic Velocity includes several demos of the songs as well as the singles versions. Still, their music is as good as it gets for my money; this article is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Expression .
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After I got a copy of Choir Practice, the retrospective album by the Choir – which someone at a pre-blog bulletin board about the Raspberries told me about – I wrote up an article on that band. They are basically a predecessor band to the Raspberries, before Eric Carmen joined as the lead singer – in fact, Carmen had failed his original audition to join the Choir. Their hit song "It's Cold Outside" is one of my favorite songs of that era; it was a big local hit but unaccountably never made much noise nationally. Read about them at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Choir_(garage_band) .
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Once I had that article written, I undertook an expansion of the article on the Outsiders, a better known Cleveland band that had a big hit with "Time Won't Let Me". Wikipedia had a little something on the band but only a few sentences – what is known in the Wikipedia world as a stub. This was my first long article for Wikipedia, and I also wrote up articles on their four albums (although I only own three of them, and even those three had gone through Katrina and weren't available to me at the time); this article is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsiders_(American_band) .
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I had ordered an retrospective album on a predecessor band to the Outsiders called the Starfires; as a matter of fact, the band still had that name when "Time Won't Let Me" was first recorded. That became yet another Cleveland band that I wrote about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starfires_(Cleveland_band) .
I had always intended to write up something in Wikipedia about Cyrus Erie; this was the band that Eric Carmen was in shortly before the Raspberries were formed. Instead, Cyrus Erie became the third UARB that I wrote about in this series of posts. I included in that article information about the Cleveland music scene in the 1960's and 1970's that I had learned from writing the Wikipedia articles – and from that point on, I have generally included information about better known bands and musicians in the Under-Appreciated Rock Band and Under-Appreciated Rock Artist posts.
Actually, when I ordered the Starfires CD, I was hoping against hope that they would turn out to be the band called the Starfires who recorded one of my very favorite Pebbles tracks, "I Never Loved Her". This 45 has brought up to $1,500 at auction. But of course that was a different band, so I put in what little information I could find on those Starfires in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starfires .
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GONN is another legendary garage rock band; their amazing song "Blackout of Gretely" was slated to be included on the original Nuggets album but was omitted due to its length (4:29 – most garage rock tracks clock in at 3:00 or less). But Greg Shaw had included this song as a bonus track on the CD reissue on AIP Records of Pebbles, Volume 1 and also put their follow-up single "Doin' Me In" on the Pebbles, Volume 10 CD. I had also acquired a retrospective album by GONN that was identified as Rough Diamonds, Volume 9; this is a series of albums that Greg Shaw put out on Voxx Records by garage rock bands who had recorded more than just a few singles.
Even better was their 1995 reunion album – actually their first true album of any kind – GONN with the Wind that I have played over and over again. The Wikipedia article on GONN has had more additions and changes to it than most of these, but it is still largely my work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GONN .
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For whatever reason, the article on GONN took much longer to put together than most of the others. I had also just had an extended fight with the powers that be at Wikipedia over whether Milan the Leather Boy was "notable" enough to warrant an article. Wikipedia has a lot of idiotic rules and procedures as well: Other Wikipedians slap your hand if you go outside the boundaries of what an encyclopedia is supposed to read like, and an album cover cannot be used as the photograph in the article on the band – it can only illustrate the article on the album.
Thus, I was beginning to tire of Wikipedia, but not before I put together another greatly expanded article on Linda Ronstadt's first band the Stone Poneys (as well as their three albums). The Stone Poneys had a big hit with "Different Drum", written by Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, but all three of their albums are just wonderful and have become some of my very favorite Linda Ronstadt music. I heard just this week that Linda Ronstadt has Parkinson's Disease, and that the disease has progressed to the point where she can no longer sing – so sad. Here is the Stone Poneys article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Poneys .
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One of the other garage rock bands that I wrote about is the Outcasts. They won the statewide Battle of the Bands contest in 1966, the high water mark of the garage rock era – furthermore, they won in Texas, which probably had the highest concentration of 1960's garage rock and psychedelic rock bands in the nation. The AIP Records series Highs in the Mid-Sixties concentrates on regional musical scenes rather than groupings of obscure songs from across the nation, and 5 of the 23 albums in that series are on Texas bands.
The Outcasts had an early hit song called "I'm in Pittsburgh (and it's Raining)" that was included on the Pebbles, Volume 1 LP. A retrospective album by that name was put out on Collectables Records. After Galen Niles joined the Outcasts as their new lead guitarist, the band recorded another classic called "1523 Blair".
The unusual name is taken from the street address for a recording studio that was operated in Houston by Doyle Jones. One recent reviewer said of this song (as posted on www.officenaps.com): "The music on this selection is jarringly experimental, the spirit is possessed fervor. '1523 Blair' is one minute and forty seven seconds long because it couldn’t have possibly been any longer."
Galen Niles was later a member of the past UARB Ultra and a future UARB Homer. The article on the Outcasts can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcasts_(Texas_band) .
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I have been collecting Pebbles albums for around 30 years and have also purchased many, many other albums that have come out on Greg Shaw's record labels: Bomp, Voxx, AIP, Total Energy and Alive. There have also been several compilation albums that have collected highlights from Bomp Records releases over the previous several years, and I have most of those as well. One of the most comprehensive is Destination: Bomp!, a two-CD set that is subtitled "The Best of Bomp Records' First 20 Years". Bomp celebrates its 40th anniversary next year.
Among the many admirable traits of Bomp Records releases is that you get your money's worth. The Pebbles LP's typically have 16 songs on them; to this day, it is common even for "greatest hits" CD's to have just 9 or 10 songs. The Bomp CD's are virtually filled to capacity as well: Destination: Bomp! has a remarkable 48 songs on its two CD's.
The first CD in particular walks the listener through the chronological history of Bomp Records, beginning with the "A" side of their very first release: "You Tore Me Down" by the Flamin' Groovies. Greg Shaw's liner notes about this song describe how Bomp Records got started: "When Cyril Jordan first played me this, and the other stuff that they'd done in England (including 'Shake Some Action') that nobody would release, I was stunned. Then he said, 'why don't you put it out?' I couldn't think of a good reason, except of course that there was no way to distribute, promote or sell it. . . all I knew was that music this good had to come out. So we did. And that's as good a foot to start on as any, I reckon."
The second song on Destination: Bomp! is by a past UARB, the Poppees; and there are also tracks from two other past UARB's: the Breakaways (credited as Paul Collins) and the Unknowns. Who knows how many future UARB's are represented as well.
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The music on Destination: Bomp! is amazingly good from end to end, but the next to last song really caught my attention: "Fantasy of Folk" by BLAIR 1523. I immediately caught the reference to "1523 Blair" by the Outcasts. Sonic Boom, a member of the 1980's British psychedelic rock band Spacemen 3, told Greg Shaw about this band: "[They'd] sent him a tape from a place with the unlikely name of Praze-an-Beeble, somewhere in Cornwall. By the time I got in touch to offer them a deal they'd already broken up, but I went ahead and compiled a CD from their various demos, and it became a favorite of mine and many others. This ["Fantasy of Folk"] is one of their charming, poppier tunes, but the album also includes some stretched-out, deep space jams that are not to be missed."
Praze-an-Beeble – the name translates as "meadow on the River Beeble" – is large enough to have its own Wikipedia article, where it is identified as the largest village in Crowan parish; it is located in Cornwall near the very end of the southwestern tip of England.
Blair 1523 was founded in 1989 and broke up in 1992. They released an EP called On the Rise on a small English label, Wilde Club Records, so Blair 1523 might have dropped from sight altogether had they not caught the attention of Greg Shaw. Their Voxx Records release Beautiful Debris came out on LP and CD in 1993. As shown on the CD, the bandmembers are Alan Duke (vocals/guitars/effects), Simon 'Floyd' Harris (guitars/noises), Andrew Jenkins (organ/vocals), Scott Moyle (bass/vocals), Tim Huxley (drums), and George Harris (tambourine/vocals/harmonica).
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Allmusic has a glowing 4½-star review of Beautiful Debris, as written by Ned Raggett: "It's a fun and accurate album title, Beautiful Debris, collecting the quite wonderful and indeed more often than not sweetly beautiful output of Blair 1523. . . . Compiling both the EP and unreleased tracks, it makes a solid case for Blair 1523 as underrated modern psych gods, mixing a fun kick-up-your-heels rave-up sense – 'Swell' is particularly great on this level – with some drone feedback zone-outs to good effect."
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I ran across Alan Duke on a blog sponsored by Julian Cope, a long-time alternative rock musician who started out in the excellent band The Teardrop Explodes. (The site has security certificate problems, so I won't identify it here, though those of you who want to could safely bring up the cached information; it is easy to locate). Duke's first post on the "Unsung Forum" was on June 18, 2013:
"Hello to the initiated
"My name is Alan Duke who many moons ago fronted and wrote songs in a band called Blair 1523
"In my self indulgent net surfing way I often type our bands name in and came across a thread of people talking about said band . . . Just want to open up any correspondence with people who wanted to know more. . I still think it was the biggest mistake and regret that we disbanded . . . . . ."
In a later post in the same blog, Alan Duke writes: "I've been doing some psych/noise/ambient/shoegaze stuff on the side myself in a project called Spaghettiman. I'm mostly known for my 'noise' project Foot and Mouth Disease though . . ."
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That is pretty much the extent of the information that I have been able to find out about Blair 1523, I'm afraid.
There are actually a lot of websites out there that talk about Blair 1523: It might be surprising to some that a search of the band name in quotes brings up 18,100 hits on Google. The first page of Google hits has a YouTube video of "Fantasy of Folk", the Bomp mailorder site where the "last copies" of the CD can still be purchased plus another listing on www.amazon.com , the mention of the band in my Wikipedia article on the Outcasts, the Allmusic review and the Julian Cope blog mentioned above, a listing on www.last.fm that actually has some information and even a photo of Blair 1523, and more barren listings on www.mtv.com, www.discogs.fm and www.rateyourmusic.com. Further Google pages bring up other barebones listings – the one on www.ticketmaster.com that offers concert tickets and tour schedules for a band that broke up 20 years ago is particularly hilarious – and other places to buy the CD and rate the music and see the lyrics and download "free" MP3's (Napster lives!).
So how can there be so many Google hits when, on one of these sites, Blair 1523 has a 94.0% rating on the "obscurometer"? Simple: The album exists, and it is easy for web pages to be generated for even unknown albums by websites that pride themselves on knowing about all of the music that is out there. But trying to get a handle on actual information about the band is difficult indeed among all of that dross. That is the reason that Wikipedia typically comes to the top of a Google search.
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Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for September 2011 – ULTRA
It is amazing how often I will mention a past UARB or UARA in the article on this month's entry, only to find that they come up in the Flashback or the Picture Gallery. Maybe these really are flashbacks! In this case, Galen Niles of the Outcasts – who performed the furious psychedelic guitar on "1523 Blair" – was one of the founders of the Texas hard-rock band Ultra.
YouTube has several videos by Ultra; this audio-only recording is of "Mutants", the opening song on the collection that I have – simply called Ultra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzblyTnm1Zg . There are also live performances by Ultra: "Mutants" again at Sunken Garden Theatre in San Antonio – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBlcCH098Tk – and another song at Six Flags in Arlington, TX – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFm0k_QN1g . Methinks that the studio recordings have been dubbed over the concert performances, but the video footage is nice to watch anyway. At a 2011 reunion concert, Ultra played "Mutants" yet again at Floore's in Helotes, TX, but this one really is a live recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YjxhBGrpgU .
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Picture Gallery: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for September 2010 – THE STILLROVEN
This is the retrospective CD on the Stillroven that I have:
This is a second CD that was released later by Sundazed Records, Too Many Spaces:
Here is the original 45 for their cover of the 1960's classic "Hey Joe":
This is another single that the Stillroven released of a song that the band wrote:
Here is a shot of the band in concert at a venue called the Cave:
This is a color photograph of the Stillroven:
