MAINSTREAM RECORDS
Mainstream Records was an American indie record label, which released jazz, rock music, and soundtracks during the 1970’s. It was founded in 1964 by Bob Shad, and in its early history reissued material from Commodore Records and Time Records in addition to some new jazz material. The label released Big Brother & the Holding Company’s first material in 1967, as well as The Amboy Dukes’ first albums, whose guitarist, Ted Nugent, would become a successful solo artist in the 1970’s. Mainstream acted as the distributing label for Bob Thiele’s Flying Dutchman Records and continued issuing soundtracks and new jazz material through to 1978, when it ceased. (More from Wikipedia)
Bohemian Vendetta 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, 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.
(April 2011)
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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.
(April 2013)
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