Anyway, Surfin’ USA was The Beach Boys’ second album. It went to #2 on the US charts. The lead single and title track “Surfin’ USA” hit #3 in the US and has become “become emblematic of the California Sound, and the song’s depiction of California is emblematic of the genre. Professor Dale Carter notes that the Beach Boys’ lyrics depict them as “enjoying all the material benefits of the promised land (typified by southern California) … liberty and security are accommodated at drive-in and drag strip, on surf board and in T-Bird, from hamburger stand to beach party…'”(wiki). Writing credits go to Brian Wilson and Chuck Berry since it’s a reworking of Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen.” Both songs are recognized as some of the greatest singles of all-time. I feel like most of the rest of the tracks on the album are yet another reworking of that theme and sound. The only standouts for me are the instrumentals (without the sappy harmonies – I will admit their voices are flawless, but tracks like “Finders Keepers” are just cringey for me), in particular the banger “Surf Jam” (written by Carl Wilson) which has a touch of darkness. “Stoked” (written by Brian Wilson) is pretty groovy, too. The instrumental “Misirlou” is not a Beach Boys original – it’s a Middle East/Mediterranean folk song, with the earliest known recording from 1927, recorded most popularly by Dick Dale (1962) prior to The Beach Boys and then more recently by the Black Eyed Peas in 2006 (renamed with new lyrics “Pump It“).

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Revolution was Q 65’s first record and it’s an excellent mix of hard psych and bluesy garage originals and American blues and soul covers. My top picks of the Q 65 originals: “I Got Nightmares” which has Jagger-level maracas and a killer Bo Diddley beat, “Just Who’s In Sight” an exotic psych number and the growly “Summerthoughts in a Field of Weed.” The best cover is hands-down their raucous version of Willie Dixon’s “Down in the Bottom.” Also pretty great are “I’m a Man” (Bo Diddley), the dirty blues “Spoonful” (also by Willie Dixon) and the slinky “Get Out of My Life, Woman” originally by Allen Toussaint. The record is capped off by an epic rendition of “Bring It On Home” (written by Dixon and released/performed by Sonny Boy Williamson) pre-dating Zeppelin’s version by three years.

Because up until now I knew absolutely nothing about Q 65, I’ll pull some quotes from Allmusic’s biography of them here: “The Q 65 were Frank Nuyens (guitar, vocals, sax, flute, harmonica), Willem Bieler (vocals, harmonica), Peter Vink (bass), Joop Roelofs (guitar), and Jay Baar (drums), first got together in 1965, in the Hague. The city was known as “the Liverpool of the Netherlands,” with a music scene that had been thriving since the end of the ’50s…The group’s professed influences were American soul acts like Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding, yet somehow, when they performed, what they played came out closer in form and spirit to the likes of the Pretty Things, the Downliners Sect, and the Yardbirds than it did to any of those soul acts, at least at first…The album [Revolution]sold 3,5000 copies, a respectable number in the Netherlands, and established the group sufficiently to rate a spot playing with the Small Faces, the Spencer Davis Group, the Kinks, and the Pretty Things when they toured Holland.”

Q 65 did not make any significant inroads to the UK or US market – but this story about them trying is hilarious: when trying to promote the single “The Life I Live” which opens Revolution, their label’s management wanted to promote them in England “which led to a publicity stunt that was not only a waste of time, but utterly foolish, sending the group to England by boat and having them come ashore in a rubber lifeboat, as though they’d come across the ocean that way. They were then supposed to play a gig, but as nobody had secured work permits, the group was only able to pose for photographs and press interviews before returning to the Netherlands. The Q 65 were greeted at the shore in Schevenning when they landed (again manning the lifeboat to land) by 30,000 fans, and ended up playing a gig right there at the pier. The band may not have done much for themselves in England, but they garnered a Top Ten hit in the Netherlands.”

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I had never heard of The Stalk-Forrest Group before (though I’m clearly aware of Blue Öyster Cult – more cowbell!!); I received this record as a gift this past Christmas from a yoga student (I’ve been gifted waaayyyy more records as a yoga teacher than a vinyl blogger 🤷‍♀️) and apparently – or at least according to my student – until its physical release on vinyl, it was considered kind of a holy grail of lost recordings to collectors of late 60′s/early 70′s psych. There’s also a fair bit of confusion about the timeline of recordings, for what label they were being recorded, even what the band’s name was at the time! From Discogs: “There were at least two recording sessions by the band. The first, possibly at Elektra’s NYC studio, was archived under the briefly-used band name Oaxaca and resulted in a 10-song master tape. The second recording session, as The Stalk-Forest Group, was at Elektra’s Los Angeles Sound Recorders studio where six songs were re-recorded. These six songs were combined with three songs from the Oaxaca master to produce a 9-song Stalk-Forrest Group master tape. Both versions of the album were rejected by Elektra and not released, although the Stalk-Forrest Group album was assigned the catalog number EKS-74046…The Stalk-Forrest album is a combination of six re-recordings done in LA in February of 1970 and three songs from the earlier Oaxaca master: “What Is Quicksand?; “Donovan’s Monkey” and “Arthur Comics.”

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