{"product_id":"challenge-recordings","title":"Challenge Recordings","description":"Recording information: 01\/1967; 02\/1965; 02\/1966; 02\/1967; 03\/1966; 03\/1967; 04\/1966; 04\/1967; 06\/1966; 06\/1967; 08\/1965; 08\/1967; 10\/1965; 11\/1964; 1964; 1966.\u003cbr\u003eContrary to popular opinion, the Knickerbockers had more than one hit. They had two. \"One Track Mind\" just missed Billboard's Top 40 in 1966, several months after \"Lies\" galloped to a peak position of 20 in late 1965. Twenty isn't a blockbuster number but \"Lies\" is considered a classic 45 thanks in part to its inclusion in Lenny Kaye's 1972 garage rock compilation Nuggets. Their presence on Nuggets suggested the Knickerbockers were a hard and wild garage band, an assessment that isn't strictly true. Certainly, the Jersey-based quartet could kick up some dust as they bashed out three chords but Sundazed's four-disc 2015 box set The Challenge Recordings -- a disc containing everything the group did, including the full-length LPs Jerk \u0026amp; Twine Time and Lies, the 1994 archival set The Great Lost Album!, singles, alternate takes, and previously unissued demos -- paints the portrait of a hard-working combo willing to try on any sound that might get them an audience. This eagerness led them straight to \"Lies,\" as expert an imitation of the Beatlemania-era Fab Four as there ever was, but the Knickerbockers didn't content themselves with mimicking John, Paul, George, and Ringo. During their brief time at Challenge -- a stint that essentially amounts to all of 1965 and 1966, although there is a demo from 1964, a stray single and other unreleased items from 1967 -- the band touched upon every mainstream rock or pop sound of the pre-psychedelic '60s, starting as a fratty combo grinding out party covers of R\u0026amp;B and British Invasion hits -- not to mention a version of \"The Jolly Green Giant\" by early '60s rock \u0026amp; roll kingpins the Kingsmen -- and quickly touching upon surf and the limbo, folk-rock, and swinging pop, coming across like an AM pop station condensed into one quartet. After the hit, the productions got grander -- they were slathered in strings and horns that placed them somewhere between B.J. Thomas and Glen Campbell -- but they also had an eye for snazzy covers of crossover standards (\"Harlem Nocturne,\" \"The Girl from Ipanema\") and they were hip enough to spin \"King of the Road\" into a groover in the style of the Sir Douglas Quintet. All of this can be heard on Sundazed's original CD reissues of the band -- apart from the unreleased 1967 side \"Guaranteed Satisfaction,\" where the group swaggers convincingly -- but the reason why these recordings sound better as a box than on their own is how listening to four discs in succession emphasizes how the Knickerbockers jumped aboard every trend and, even if they didn't always cop a style with distinction, there's a charm to their hard-working aesthetic. Plus, their malleability is almost an asset: it makes The Challenge Recordings seem like a time capsule of what American rock \u0026amp; roll really sounded like in the mid-'60s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine","brand":"MovieMars","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48440237621535,"sku":"090771122025","price":44.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0679\/7833\/0399\/files\/619fa207b4cfa8a472045be7e4f93d72.jpg?v=1778854452","url":"https:\/\/www.moviemars.com\/products\/challenge-recordings","provider":"MovieMars","version":"1.0","type":"link"}