Compilations of '60s garage music come and go. There's probably been about a million since the godfather of them all -- Nuggets -- appeared in 1972, with Lenny Kaye slyly zeroing in on that moment just before pop's collective self-consciousness kicked in, catching America's youth in the midst of the anything-can-happen excitement of the British Invasion, appropriating every Stones and Yardbirds lick in sight for posterity (not to mention a fighting chance with the girls). Norton's new Fort Worth Teen Scene series finds Texas kids a country mile away from the stultifying self-consciousness of adulthood, in a time of wide-eyed exuberance and amateurish abandon. And electric guitars.
Sleuthing its way through the titans of Cowtown's musical hotbed during the post-Beatles era, resurrecting long-vanished 45s and digging deeper for unreleased tracks, this is history set to a maniacal scream and a Gloria beat. Ranging from horror-movie pastiches to hyper R&B, melancholy folk-rock to psychotic rave-ups, the series is a set of aural snapshots, some blurry and ill-formed, others sharply drawn and powerful nearly 40 years down the line.
The giants of the '60s Texas circuit -- 13th Floor Elevators, Mouse & the Traps -- often set their sights on esoteric subject matter, but the name of the game for these high-school guys is girls girls girls. The Jades' leering "Little Girl" and the Bards' spiky "Alibis" brilliantly crib from early British R&B giants such as Them and the Animals in grappling with the opposite sex.
The Cynics' hopelessly rare "I'll Go", another gem, is a brooding rocker with deranged bursts of crazed guitar peering around every clipped verse. This band fancied itself as Texas' answer to the Yardbirds (whose anti-authoritarian "Mister You're A Better Man Than I" was an anthem among hipsters in conservative Texas), but "I'll Go", sporting a bit more finesse than your average garage band, was an early T Bone Burnett composition. Burnett was a central figure on the Fort Worth scene then, both as a studio manager and with his band Loose Ends, whose "Free Soul" is a nice blend of ringing Hollies-style guitars and downcast Rubber Soul fare.
Over 73 tracks, the series paints a vividly kaleidoscopic picture of adolescent longhairs projecting a catalogue of cool. From the pile-driving rocker "It's A Cry'n Shame" by the Gentlemen to "Never Again", a jangly bit of R&B by Five Of A Kind, this music is a fascinating time warp. And even if one song starts to blend into another, a demented, speaker-melting guitar solo (as on the Boys' "You Deceived Me") might have you reaching for the repeat button.
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