The comps continue to reign here! If you've heard of any of the 23 bands represented here, you probably listened to way too much (good) music in the late 1960's.
The garage/psych scene in the USA was a kind of laboratory of all sorts of music pouring in and strange arrangements pouring out. In the garages of America, bands were attempted to weld Jingle Bells, James Brown and the Byrds into the next big hit. There's a common misconception that these bands were a bunch of lo-fi hipsters, actively shunning modern technology and abhorring fame. Not true! Numerous survivors of the scene have gone on record to say that what you hear is all they could afford. If a copy of ProTools was zapped into their garage from the future, they would have adopted it in a flash. As weird as some of the material is in this compilation, all of these bands were cutting singles to make it big. No vanity projects because there was no money or time for that sort of thing. Consequently, when the fame didn't arrive immediately following the release of the single, life intervened and most of these bands folded for good.
I consider myself lucky I even found a home state for these bands: Changin' Tymes (Tennessee), Flower Power (Florida), The Dutch Masters (Arkansas), Tom Dae Turned On (Connecticut), The Cardboard Box (Pennsylvania?), The Crystal Rain (Ohio), The Inner Light (North Dakota?), Mammoth (Texas), Lazy Nickels (Michigan).
The Light from California's Inland Empire released a single through A&M Records, while Catfish Knight & the Blue Express was on Verve, especially impressive considering their the only group here that is a total geographical mystery.
I was only able to piece together a little info on the following, mostly from comments left in response to various blog spots: The Bondsmen, The Si-Dells (both North Carolina, shared band members), Zoser (Minnesota...I think?), The Sound System (North Carolina), Haymarket Riot (Michigan).
Adam (New Jersey) has connections to the Balloon Farm, Sir Lord Baltimore, and (very loosely) Bruce Springsteen. Must be a N. J. thing.
These bands have actual websites of varying quality and size: The Aardvarks (Missouri), Factree (Ontario), The Legend/Dragonfly (Colorado), Lovechain (Ohio), Enoch Smoky (Iowa) has a Facebook page and appears to be the only band here still active - wow!, and Mind Garage (West Virginia) is considered one of the earliest Christian Rock bands, though you would never know it from this song.
Garage Hangover and 45cat were very helpful in getting info on these bands. Good job Internet!
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