Party Party Party: 34 Raw, Ruthless And Rugged Sixties Garage Rockers

Various Artists: Animated Sounds.
Subtitled "34 Raw, Ruthless and Rugged Sixties Garage Rockers," that about gives you an idea of what to expect from the 79 minutes of music crammed onto this single-CD compilation. Even by the measurements of '60s garage comps, however, this is pretty raw, and as the title indicates, geared more toward fun-loving workouts with a frat rock influence than most such anthologies. Not a single one of these acts is well known, even within the garage rock collecting community, and don't expect to find out much more about them than the track titles, as there aren't any liner notes save reproductions of original 45 labels. Sure, this is kind of fun if you're in the right mood, but there's nothing in the way of lost nuggets here, and most of the material is basic and derivative (and often lo-fi) even by the standards of the garage genre. As for tracks that might make the cut if you were to be selective and just put your favorites on a homemade compilation, King's Ransom do a tough cover of the Searchers by way of the Coasters rave-up "Ain't That Just Like Me" (here retitled "Ain't That a Shame") and Johnny & the Uncalled Four offer an absurdly rocked-up mauling of the nursery rhyme "Shortnin' Bread." A bunch of these, too, are novelties with ridiculous lyrics and sound effects that aren't too durable but are good for a laugh, like Jimmy White's "Diamond-Coated Banana Bush," the Chessmen's "Baby Weemus," and Sur Royal Da Count the Parliaments' demented (and idiotically repetitive) "Scream Mother Scream." Some of the covers of '50s rock & roll standards and British Invasion numbers, though, sound as if they might have come from private vanity pressings (or, at their lowest-fi, even field recordings), so crude are both the fidelity and the playing. ~ Richie Unterberger