In The Past: Garage Rock Podcast

It's time for our year-end gala! Categories include: Bo Diddliest Goofy Great Bo Diddliest Girl Group  Bo Diddliest Song From A Theme Episode Bo Diddliest Tambo and the big one: Most Insane Song!!

Xmas time is here! So we're bringing our annual Yuletide gifts to you in the form of rockin' and poppin' tunes. The first present under the tree is "I Want a Beatle For Christmas" by Patty Surbey & The Canadian VIPs . Requests for people put Santa Claus in an awkward position. The next gift is "Deck Five" by Saturday's Children . We think this one should...

Bo Diddley time! In this episode, we examine his 1955 b-side, "I'm A Man." The original is sparse, minimal, sexual, spiritual and powerful. We get real deep into the lyrics and textbooks get slammed. It took a long time, but in 1964, The Yardbirds  authored a version that sounds like it comes from a utopian future of highly skilled R&B robots. And it has the ultimate Royalette!...

Ringo on the bongos! That's right, it's "You're Going to Lose That Girl" by The Beatles . John is at his snarly best in this number, and George & Paul provide some nice call-and-response. Anyways, the bongos and lyrics are our main focus, as they should be. And who sings "yeah" better?! - no one's better than the Beatles, there. The second version comes...

This week, we feel the need ... the need - for speed! The first song out of the blocks is "Bad Girl" by The Zakary Thaks . Crazy words, great guitar work, and a fast tempo by a drummer whose snare sounds like two textbooks slamming! The second speedster is "7 & 7 is" by Love . More wild lyrics and singing, and again ... it's a drummer who holds the thing together ... b...

This one's as garage as it gets: 5 Versions of "I Need You"! - The Kinks , The Zakary Thaks , The Rationals , and two (!) versions by  The Ascots. 

This week the genre is baroque proto-power pop and the song is "She May Call You Up Tonight" by The Left Banke , Great melodies by Michael Brown , a killer chorus, velvet vocals by Steve Martin Caro ... but what's it all about?! A band called California Spectrum produced a faithful cover in '68 and added some cool fuzz ... but why does the singer sound like they're 12?! Wh...

The Byrds had a bad time in England, and wrote a curiously grey-mood tune that many consider "the first psychedelic song of all time" - "Eight Miles High." It's known for its sound, but we take a deep dive into the lyrics, too. Succulent, truculent. The next flight was piloted by the semi-legendary obscuros, Index. Some nice warm guitar strummin' & lotsa negative...

This week, we manage to talk about 7 songs in just over 2 hours - appropriately, all are versions of "Train Kept a Rollin'"! The original is by Tiny Bradshaw , a 1951 jump blues number that contains a rock n roll instro break that clearly caught the ears of  the next crew, namely Johnny Burnette & The Rock n Roll Trio . They take Tiny B's joyous number and inject it with so...

Stop! and check out the new episode, featuring The Supremes . who were on a run of consecutive #1 hits in 1965. "Stop! In the Name of Love" is the one with the iconic choreography, but we dig even deeper to explain the charms of this arresting song. The first cover we discuss is a very busy garage version from 1969 by Crosstown Switch. Beverly Kelley, the lead singer on this tune, sounds...

After our wild celebration of Episode 200, we woke up a little hungover ... so the perfect prescription to get us back in the saddle for this Canadian Holiday Weekend is "Double Shot of My Baby's Love"! by Dick Holler & The Holidays . Despite the band name, you gotta wait for the third version for true frat rock shenanigans. The first cover version is a weird swamp-pop duet by D...

We just passed go and collected 200 ... episodes!! We celebrate this achievement with a bunch of "party" songs, including discussions of The Sundowners, The Gallows, The B-52's & Jonathan Richman.  Crack open a cold one and celebrate with us!! Yay yay!

This episode: all THREE versions of "I Met Him on a Sunday" by The Shirelles : the 1958 snap 'n' clap original (when they were in high school!!), the '64 re-do, and the '66 Wall of Sound version (with FUZZ!) ! But that's not all - 3 boffo renditions by The Orlons (1962), Reparata & the Delrons (1970), and Laura Nyro & Labelle (1971). The only thing we don...

Hey! The  Gruesomes twosome -  Bobby Beaton & John Davis - join us once again and they wanna talk about Nederbeat this week! Both songs are by  The Outsiders - but we have cover versions, too! First up is "That's Your Problem," the original, then the 1984 renditions by  The Tell-Tale Hearts . Second song is "Touch", the weirdly tense folk-garage masterpiece, with versi...

Sometime in the early 90s, a record store owner asked Weldon the question: "Have you heard Gruntruck?" And until recently, the answer was no. But the memory of this exchange leads us to this bonus episode, where we listen to "Crazy Love" by Seattle's   Gruntruck  and dismantle the semiotics of grunge. A little pain feels good!

On Friday the 13th, we satisfy Pastronauts with "Frustration," the uptight 1966 number by Vancouver's Painted Ship . It's a quiet, beatnik-y talk-sing, yet it has the classic garage theme of rejection of society and rejection by girls! In 1982, Plan 9 took the song on an extended, almost 12-minute jam, and we might actually talk about a song for less than its length for once! S...

In 1959, Charles Brown & Amos Milburn recorded a beautiful duet called "I Want to Go Home." It's like a nice highball, two ingredients that blend well (Milburn is the Rum and Brown is the Coke). Sam Cooke later transformed the song into "Bring it On Home To Me", which he sang with Lou Rawls, an impassioned vocal performance with some Gospel call and response. The Anima...

This was supposed to be a bonus episode, but it's really a textbook  ITP episode where we talk about a garage classic and two other versions, with lots of crucial digressions - like the early days. The song is "Go Ahead" by garage legends The Squires from Connecticut. A folk-punk jangler with churning organ - if you don't like it, what are you doing here?! The second version is...

In this episode, we celebrate the work of Michael Bouyea: singer-songwriter, Vietnam vet, and DJ. We start with two  rippin' 1966 garage numbers by The Rogues , "Same All Over the World" and "The Original." In the 70s, he went pop! - and from this era we play "Just an Illusion" (sorta new wavey) and lost Canadian classic (he was livin' in Toronto), "The...

In this episode, we tackle  seven versions of "The Witch" while also trying to remember the Seven Wonders of the World!: 1. The Sonics 2.  Atilla & The Huns 3.  The Pointed Sticks 4.  The Gruesomes 5.  Heart 6. Mojo Beatnik 7. Marcel Bontempi

This week we go gaga over The Pretty Things' 1964 number, "Rosalyn." You know it, you love it. Textbook early garage that takes its cues from Saint Bo Diddley. The second version is by Steve and the Board , a group of Australian teen treblemakers who change the lyrics for some reason. The third is by scary Cheshire cats Stack Waddy. Thick, fuzzy, thudding claustrophobic 70s sledgeha...

Beautiful song alert! Canadian legend  Joni MItchell 's early classic "Both Sides Now" is the tune of the week, and it touches Erik and Weldon's Prairie souls. A wide-ranging discussion of Canadian accents, British Surrealists, Plato's Cave, and the journey of life ensues. Judy Collins   had a hit with the tune in '68, and we dig the Baroque arrangement, and isn'...

Three versions of  99th Floor , all featuring  Billy Gibbons of future ZZ Top fame! Two demos by  The Coachmen V , his original band, and the more well-known  Moving Sidewalks version. All different, all great - but that's not all! In the mid-70s, some weirdos from Pennsylvania called  TNT recorded the tune and made it even more psych! Last but not least,  The Chesterfield Kings  filed a fait...

The sound is timeless, the bass is fretless. This is the bonus episode we recorded immediately after "I'm a King Bee", celebrating the sexy sliding sound of the fretless bass. In the words of Erik Komarnicki, "The fretless bass is like a road with no speedbumps." It was late, we were drunk, and we forgot about Mick Karn. All kinds of weird things happen in this episode, li...

I guess this could be a Canada Day Long Weekend Special? The song this week is "The Cat Came Back," a song written in the 1890s by a Tin Pan Alley songwriter but made famous by a Canuck. The first version is by  Sonny James , a country dude who picks n grins his way through this Goofy Great. The man, the myth  Fred Penner didn't pen the song, but people think he did. So let's c...