So these guys didn't always miss. This was their debut single and their one and only hit in America reaching #16. I mean it shoulda been number one for two weeks at least...
Hooks galore in a crunchy power pop style with a great glam-y caveman beat and an undercurrent of chunky chugging boogie.
Stunning infectious pure pop that outdoes Cheap Trick and Big Star at their own game...
All the non-hits and non memories. Cardross Maniac bringing you all the the great misses of the 70, 80s & 90s.
Today it's the sound of supreme melodicists, the power pop duo Dwight Twilley Band. That's Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour.
Talk about out of time and in between scenes.
This was kinda late glam, pre new wave power pop, sorta pub rock but also classic rock'n'roll in the original rockabilly sense. I mean it sounds like it coulda been recorded anytime between 1969 and 1982.
Looking For The Magic has been described as a song to rob banks to, whatever that means. Insane fluttering vocals giving Alan Vega a run for his money. Like a lo-fi drug fucked ELO without the disco element but going ecstatic and throwing in more hooks than a tackle box. The vocals, hand claps, Jangly guitars, drums and slippery bass are all put through an echo chamber and then some for maximum dream-a-delic affect.
As heard on 3MA on Sunday nights in the late 80s. The show which was maybe called Underground or The Underground or something like that. They played independent Aussie hits of the day. Stuff straight off Juke' Magazine's Independent chart which of course was where all the best music was to be found at the time. I think the radio announcer/DJ was Pat Gary.
Anyway I never understood why Mad Turks weren't as big as say Died Pretty or Ups & Downs. They had the pop smarts and the catchy tunes with great guitar interplay in a brisk jangly power pop style but I don't think they ever got anywhere near the top 40 which is a shame. They missed. While they were out of time and in between scenes their debut LP Cafe Istanbul is an unheralded 80s guitar pop triumph. We get twelve tunes with plenty of hard strumming and pop hooks galore all done with an irresistible youthful urgency.
On Holding My Breath you gotta love the take it down now moment at 2:23 where the instruments drop out and its just the "chicka chicka" of the muted strummed guitar and vocals. This trick is always excellent because you're waiting for the rest of the band to come back and when they do it's satisfaction guaranteed.
One of those tunes you've heard your entire life and finally you go "hang on! wait a a fucking minute, this is fantastic!"
The state of the art sound of the 70s with all of the gorgeous hooks effortlessly in the right place.
Like a really excellent multilayered cake. Each element is a delicious harmonious hook: the jaunty piano, those melodic tom toms, the slide-y Harrison-esque guitar, the immaculate multi-tracked backing vocals, the bass, the myriad of minuscule percussion flourishes, the entire delectable melody ripped straight from Carol King etc.
Evocative of first love, carefree summers and lost innocence I Saw The Light kinda now makes you wonder "Where did my life go?"
I can't remember when the last essential American 60s garage rock compilation was issued... sometime in the early 00s with the ace Teenage Shutdown cd series and those seven volumes of Fuzz, Flaykes & Shakes. This month however an excellent cd has been released Teen Beat Mayhem: Slipped Thru The Cracks.
So these never previously compiled tunes come from the secret stash of Mike Markesich's record collection. Markesich is of course known to garage fans as the author of 2012's TeenBeat Mayhem, the most exhaustive and authoritative reference guide to 60s garage rock, teenbeat & garage psych 45s.
Below are the only four tunes from this cd I can find on youtube at the moment and they were only just recently uploaded by the legendary channel Bolt24 Hot Sounds. Discogs info on almost all of these groups has only been added in the last couple of days. So this is rare stuff indeed but I wouldn't be talking about if it wasn't such good stuff so as Molly used to say "do yourself a favour"
Rogues 5 - Oh So Right [1965]
Outa Lorain Ohio comes the restrained menacing fuzzed twangery of Oh So Right from one and done group Rogues 5. All shadowy and threatening but uptight and controlled creating a simmering sinister tone.
Incredible stuff.
Egyptians - Walkin' Shoes [196?]
Mesmerising moody and brooding teen garage. A dreamy lo-fi sound not dissimilar to the Velvets in mellow mode. A pulsating, haunting and ultimately addictive tune.
Downbeat baby!
Soul Survivors - Need You Love [1967]
Scuzzy party time. Get the dance floor sizzling at your next shindig with this groovin' organ driven garage banger.
Resurrection - Like The Way [1967/1968?]
Catchy girl/boy lusty obsessions lyrically captured in a tune with great organ riff, jangly guitar, hypnotic organ and a groovy beat.
All done in a nonchalant rudimentary manner.
The coolest.
Outa sight!
*That's just the tip of the iceberg there's another twenty four crude unknown regional gems waiting for you to discover. I gotta say I'm pretty fucking surprised at the strike rate of the tunes on this cd. Who would have thought that we'd still be finding toppermost primitive 60s garage, homespun jangle-y pop and lo-fi moody teenbeat tunes in 2026.
Roll up roll up for some teenbeat moody and broody garage from Holland Michigan group The New Era.
This killer sunshine pop smash has got all the irresistible rolling jangly guitars and hook laden sweetness you could want from an ace 60s pop song yet it's still barely even a cult record.
Classic supremely melodic moody and broody garage from one and done group The Wonders outa Omaha Nebraska. Soaring haunting harmonies in cool disorientating guitar pop gem.
Funky psychedelic bubblegum glam in an atmospheric horror pop style.
The sort of novelty hallucinogenic glam you'd imagine was a seminal influence on the hypnagogic pop underground... er... maybe I'm just imagining Ariel Pink doing a cover of this brilliant tune for a limited edition Halloween release.
Charming and tuneful pop perfection from 1979 baby!
If your idea of a heavenly pop hit is soft rock somewhere between Drivers Seat and Baker Street hold on.
Everything here is in exactly the right place: That lovely 12 string, prominent melodic bass, cascading somewhat eerie piano, a masterclass in understated or perhaps perfectly stated hook laden harmonies & backing vocals, great sounding drums and to top it all off a reigned in clear saxophone played by the guy who funnily enough played on Baker Street. Cozy, slightly melancholy and ultimately romantic, Hold On's still highly resonant today. Timeless baby. FM AM... it belongs everywhere forever on your radio dial...
Surprisingly #18 Billboard chartbuster Hold On wasn't a top 40 hit here or even in Canadia...
A lo-fi slacker rock jam that's probably mostly forgotten these days.
In 1993 before burning cds from your mates became a thing I had One Sock Missing on a TDK D90 blank cassette with Archers Of Loaf's Icky Mettle on the other side. A couple of years later I saw The Grifters support Jeff Buckley at The Palais in St Kilda which I guess is a notable gig because soon Jeff was dead and he became a superstar in the rock history while this excellent tune has just 3436 views on youtube.
Ramshackle Rolling Stones damaged rawk. A messy drunken singalong where the raw lo-fi noise becomes cosmically unhinged.
From the raucous garage-y end of slacker rock comes this ultra scuzzy monster of a tune. A style much closer to ye olde noisey proto-punk groups like The Electric Eels than contemporaneous lo-fi acts such as Pavement.
The greatest group you didn't know in the 90s. It's the dude from top 80s band Great Plains Ron House and with TJSA he put together an even more explosive group to realise his vision of charming yet volatile drunken nihilism.
Bringing you all the underground misses of the 90s!
The guitarist from St✮Johnny Tom Leonard had a solo side project called Luxurious Bags. Their little known cd Frayed Knots was a toppermost lo-fi psychedelic slacker noise pop jam. There's a gorgeous euphoric pop anthem hidden beneath the muffled lo-fi layers of hazy sound here.
The 90s you never heard... it doesn't get any better.
A lot of people missed St✮Johnny at the time. I mean you'd already had Dinosaur Jr for ten years plus Swervedriver, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Pavement, Polvo et al. for a while so by the time these guys got signed to Geffen they got overlooked. However Bill Whitten had a way with a downbeat melody and in conjunction with guitarist/Moog-ist Tom Leonard they stacked together cool sometimes surreal layers of thick ecstatic sound. The noisey pop aesthetic on their 1994 cd Speed Is Dreaming was slacker rock in excelsis.
St✮Johnny - I Give Up [1994]
Slacker anthem folks!
Blissed out dejection at its finest.
Daydreamy daze...
St✮Johnny - You Can't Win [1994]
A bewitching tune from the dreamy shoegaze end of slacker rock.
Lovely & wistful with energetic bursts of euphoric noise.
These guys were called Iron Virgin so... after two singles Scotland's very own answer to The Sweet vanished into obscurity. Yet since 2003 they keep turning up on glam "nuggets" type compilations on a regular basis. The junkshop glam aficionados consider this one of the finest and most beloved lost singles of the glam rock era, who am I to disagree. I'm no British heavy metal expert but Rebels Rule has even been cited as proto-NWOBHM.
