Some albums are recorded under the influence of drugs and this is one of them. The drug in this case is caffeine. The first seven tracks are, in a word, explosive, a revved up Kinks/Yardbirds styled set, all covers except for one of their recent hit songs. The remaining (no pun intended) six tracks are various demos of songs that would appear on their one "official" album, Barry and the Remains, also from 1966.
The Remains were one of those bands that really should have made it, but never quite did. Most people may know them from their two Nuggets tracks, "Why Do I Cry" and "Don't Look Back". Guitarist/singer Barry Tashian was the driving force behind the band, handling pretty much all the leads. His vocals sound like a hybrid of Mick Jagger and John Lennon spun with an American accent. Probably the closest the Remains got to hitting it big was opening for the Beatles on part of the their last American tour, but they seem to have imploded before 1966 was done. The band members would appear in small roles in unlikely places in the following years, like Great Speckled Bird, Mountain, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Thanks to renewing interest in the band during the 1990's (this "lost" session came to light in 1996), the band reunited and even toured and released a new album. I'm not sure the band knew they would be all the rage circa 2005 back when they did their original recordings, but who cares, more power to them.
Incidentally, in doing the research on this piece, it looks like original drummer Chip Damiani passed away last week, so it seems unusually fitting that the Remains popped up on the radar today, even if his successor, N.D. Smart, was on the stool for most of these tracks.
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