Before I began writing the Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month posts, I wrote several articles in Wikipedia. I was aware of Wikipedia for several years before I ever visited the site, and it is a most intriguing idea: an encyclopedia that was available for editing to anybody who felt like doing so. (There are some restrictions, however, for highly contentious topics such as "evolution"). I am still not sure I understand quite how that is accomplished, particularly considering the sheer volume of "contributions" made by Wikipedians on a daily basis.
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 during The Colbert Report 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 for Ugly Things magazine. I still haven't updated the Wikipedia article on Milan 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 Rabbitt on a cover of "Psychotic Reaction", a hit song 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 title street in this Dylan hit, 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 "Gloria" by Van Morrison and Them in the United States. The Nuggets song is their cover of a terrific Bo Diddley song, "Oh Yea"; 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 Wikipedia 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 wasn'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 Wikipedia 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 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 in Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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; Rough Diamonds 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 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, I'm in Pittsburgh (and it's Raining) 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 Wikipedia article on the Outcasts can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcasts_(Texas_band) .
(September 2013)
