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.
(January 2015/2)
