Customer Reviews

Here Are the Sonics

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As kids growing up in the Seattle area in the mid-60's, we had some great bands playing at dances in the roller rinks and lodge halls. We just didn't know it at the time. We had the Kingsmen, The Fabulous Wailers, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Don and the Goodtimes, Marilee Rush and the Turnabouts, and more. We didn't think anyone listened to them outside the Pacific Northwest. Then, the Beatles and the British Invasion came along. It was good stuff, but different. More smooth and polished. Suddenly, out of our little transistor radios came a wild, blasting sound. The Sonics! Hard guitar, screaming vocals, and that whacking snare drum. The Sonics were great on record, and fabulous live - especially considering that we were dancing to them in places like the little up-stairs ballroom at Normana Hall in Everett, WA. Amps turned to 10, Jerry Roslie screaming into the mic, and "Boom Boom" Bennett hammering his drums. It was amazing. Now, reading the reviews on Amazon, I realize that hearing and dancing to The Sonics was experincing rock history. When my kids brought home the Hives CD, I told them, "These guys that listened to The Sonics!" I'm SO pleased that The Sonics are being released on CD.

By the way, if you are interested in the Northwest sound of the early and mid-60's, read "It Was All Just Rock 'n' Roll" by Pat O'Day. He was a very influential disk jockey in Seattle. Reading the book, I kept saying, "I remember that!" And, "I was at that show!" It's a great read.

When the Sonics came roaring out of Tacoma with this 1965 album, the band pulled out all the stops. The Sonics did not care about making pretty love songs or serious artistic statements. They wanted to rock hard and loud and that they did. Lead singer Gerry Roslie screamed his lungs out, drummer Bob Bennett broke his drum pedals, Rob Lind wailed away on his saxophone and the Parypa brothers made sure that the guitar sound was absolutely filthy. The four original tunes on the album are the ones that really shine which are "The Witch", "Boss Hoss", "Psycho" and "Strychnine". The covers rock with abandon but simply do not hold up very well which hurts the quality of the album. The CD reissue from Norton contains three tracks from an Etiquette Christmas album from 1965 which are pretty funny. One of them is the "Too Much Monkey Business" knockoff "Don't Believe In Christmas".

This has to be the heaviest thing ever committed to wax. Gerry Roslie and company were one of the greatest american garage bands to ever make a record. For years this record was unavailable except for the rare and expensive original on the Etiquette label. People lucky enough to have a copy have spoke of its greatness for decades. Thankfully Norton has reissued this and the equally great Sonics Boom. Now everyone can hear this powerhouse. Gerry Roslie was no less than the white Little Richard, screaming his way through classics like Psycho, The Witch, Strychnine and Have Love Will Travel. Every song is a killer. Anyone interested in the true birth of punk rock has to hear this stuff. Norton did a beautiful job remastering and repackaging this classic with the tracks from the ultra rare Etiquette Christmas record as a bonus. This stuff is definitely not for the faint hearted!

The Sonics' debut album Here Are The Sonics!!! is a low down, trashy, classic garage rock record. The band buzzsaws their way through classic rockers like "Good Golly Miss Molly", "Do You Love Me", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Walkin' The Dog" and others with a reckless abandon. There are four originals on the album and two in particular, "The Witch" and "Strychnine", are bona fide classics. There's nothing complicated about The Sonics' music, it's just good, old-fashioned rock.

Take a heapin' helping of Little Richard, a couple slugs of the Dave Clark Five, and a liberal dash of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and you'll have a band that wishes it could sound like the Sonics. HERE ARE THE SONICS!!! is the most all-out rock'n'roll tornado ever cut into wax. Granted, the songs don't have the topicality or nastiness of the Sex Pistols or even the MC5, and it's obvious on songs like "Do You Love Me" and "Roll Over Beethoven" that these guys listened more to the English covers than to the much-better originals, but most punk bands of the mid 60's were more influenced by the British Invasion than by American R&B, and the band's having fun and spreading it around. What's wrong with that! It's a well known story that John Lennon did his "Twist and Shout" vocal at the end of a session and "let it all hang out." Well, Gerry Roslie must have sung every song at the end of a session! And too close to the mike. The rest of the Sonics keep up well, and the result is a record that propels any party until nobody has the strength to walk home. If you need Pink Floyd-quality sound, don't come here...but if you want to rock and roll with complete abandon, come to the guys who showed the Pacific Northwest what "abandon" is: the Sonics!!! It's not too late to correct the injustice of the past and put HERE ARE THE SONICS!!! in every house.

When you think of Seattle, Washington in terms of the rock and roll genre, your brain starts up the usual list of artists that average music fans have within, namely Jimi Hendrix, Heart (shame) and of course, bands from the late 80's/early 90's forming from what MTV called the post-hairband scene during that period in Seattle, "grunge rock". What defies all logic is that "grunge rock" (and even punk as most fans know it) owed everything to The Sonics, a garage band that came together in Tacoma, Washington nearly 20 years or more before "grunge" or even punk rock had a name. Their attitude, "Little-Richard-like" vocal deliveries, wailing fuzz guitar and raw lyrics made them innovators - ten years ahead of their time; a band that pushed the envelope so much that your ears begged for more, more more. Above all, The Sonics were loud. Since everything represented on this compact disc was recorded "in glorious mono", you are hearing the music as it was meant to be heard with no overdubs or studio trickery. Amid the originals penned by Gerry Roslie (vocals/keyboards) and Larry Parypa (guitar), The Sonics took old rock and roll standards and turned them into sheer powerhouses - unadulterated mayhem. The sad fact is that these guys never broke big on the international pop scene of the time, considering they were achieving what UK based bands like The Who and the Small Faces could not do....raw power, energy and volume in a studio setting. This compact disc gives you a glance into that energy and brings to light the early roots of garage rock and probably even the indie-rock scene that has emerged in today's ever-changing music world. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. WOOF-WOOF!!

The Sonics. While other groups were trying to sound like the Beatles in 1965 the Sonics were playing garage rock with an edge that sounded more like the Stooges. Granted, on this disk you will find cover versions of songs like "Do You Love Me" that are probably not that interesting but original rockers like Boss Hoss and the song from the Landrover comercial, "Have Love, Will Travel", rock very hard with aggresiveness and menacing distortion that will mark the later work of the Stooges, Heartbreakers (not Tom Petty's group) and the New York Dolls.

This is great fun. I don't usually champion cult albums from obscure artists because they are mostly awful - you know it's true - but this is an excellent way to spend half an hour. It's a collection of loud and tight garage rock tunes from 1965. When the groove starts the drums become awesome monsters of bass. The drummer's name is Bob Bennett and, in a just world, he should never have to buy a drink for himself. The band recently reformed and played a few shows, and the original members are still alive. They live in obscurity in and around Tacoma, which is somewhere in America, and based on this album they can hold their heads up high wherever they go. Bob Bennett in particular can hold his head up high. He must have arms like a giant. The lead singer is a real screamer. He has a limited bag of tricks - "woaaah!" and "uh!" - but they are great tricks done well. His name is Gerry or Jerry Roslie, "the blackest white man ever" according to a blog called Agony Shorthand.

The rhythm section is tighter than a robot. The songs are basically all the same, which gives the album a real Ramonesy quality; they are riff-based twelve-bar rock'n' roll tracks from the Chuck Berry era, albeit that this album came out just as The Beatles were hoovering up the charts, but the production is louder and tighter than Chuck Berry, and much bassier. The band plays piano and saxophone, and the electric guitar isn't very prominent - typically the solos are done with a sax. The solos are very short, because the tracks are never more than 2:30 long. The album itself is not quite half an hour long.

"The Witch" and "Psycho" are pure nasty aggression. The Witch is a famous garage single that was on Nuggets. Psycho has a superb short cymbal break at 1:34. The intro is excellent and invites contemplation. There are some clattery drums that sound as if they were recorded in a living room with a single microphone, and then "whoah" (pause) "baby!", and the band comes in right on the very first syllable of "baby". I have just sampled it with my computer, there is no gap between the entrance of the band and the first audible utterance of the lead singer when he sings "baby". The band was tight.

"Do You Love Me" is fast and, along with "Boss Hoss", has the best equals loudest bass. Boss Hoss is one of those hot-rod songs that the Beach Boys briefly tried to do, but The Sonics would beat up the Beach Boys any day. Brian Wilson would have wet himself if he had ever met The Sonics. "Dirty Robber" is a typical twelve-bar blues, with lots of good screaming from the lead singer. He sings the title as if it was "diddy bother". The ending is very Beatles-esque, in the sense that it goes "dang-dang-DANG! (stop dead)".

The singer pushes himself on "Keep a 'knocking" (1:52), and the band is again rocking. The drummer sticks mostly to straight pounding, but he does some wicked fills at the end of every fourth bar. He goes shrurururoom-tiddly-braaaam, diddly-brap-brap, just like that. "Knocking" was the b-side of The Witch, surely the best pair of songs pressed onto the same piece of vinyl until The Beatles did Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

"Have Love Will Travel" almost has the same swaggering, tough riff as Psycho, but it's still awesome. Going by the vocal performance, it should be called "Have LUUUUHV! Whoah babe I will trav-UL!". The vocals really push the edge of the recording technology and if the faders had been pushed one tiny iota higher the record would crackle. I cannot imagine how this sounded on a 1965 vinyl LP coming out of a 1965 record player.

This album should have been a big hit, except that its aggressive rock'n'roll must have sounded old-fashioned in 1965, and it was years before Iggy Pop and the like. I can't emphasise how excellent it is, doubly so if you are having a party. It will rock any dancefloor. It's fun, it's catchy, it's loud. If it could be combined with a Nintendo Wii and beer it would be the ultimate party entertainment product.

The band's version of "Money" is closer to the original than the Beatles' version, or for that matter The Flying Lizards'. I think the Beatles arrangement is superior, because the riff is stronger - the Sonics were good at doing riffs, and it's a shame they didn't riff it up. The guitarist has a showcase on this song. I love the production, on this song and throughout the album. It's technically wrong, distorted and echoey, but it's alive.

"Roll Over Beethoven" is a bit crap. "Don't Believe in Christmas", "Santa Claus", and "Village Idiot" are terrible, but "Village Idiot" is funny though. It's a comedy song, with a Simpsons-style vocal performance from a village idiot. It's quite philosophical, because it is a mirror of human society; a comedy song sung by a village idiot, under duress. That's what the world is like. Three minutes of meaningless gabble from the mind of a madman, followed by an eternity of nothing.

There is no Mellotron anywhere on the album.

What a wonderful treat! All you need is a cool 1965 Dodge Dart 270 sedan with your dial on the Cool Top 40 196.5 FM - 1965 all the time and you're good to go!

The Sonics were the precursor to the grunge bands from the Pacific Northwest and the Sonics were indeed ground breakers. They had a fresh, raw sound and hard driving energy that distinguished their work.

I love this collection. This garage band from the Pacific Northwest has done a lot to forge musical trails in that part of the world. The Sonics' rocking "Have Love Will Travel" is, at the time of this review used on the Land Rover commercial. It's an excellent piece as is the other songs on this collection, including the covers and remakes such as the 1962 Contours/1964 Dave Clark 5 smash, "Do You Love Me." This band adds a fresh, cutting edge and an intensity to their treatment of the songs. The Sonics will make you want to dance, cruise in a serious Dodge Dart custom and rock!

This is one of those bands that you just wished you could have the chance to see live. Too bad they disbanded a good decade or two before I was born. This is second only to "Black Monk Time" as the greatest garage rock record of the 60s. Few bands have managed to have such a pure unadulterated rock 'n' roll sound as these guys. The originals such as "The Witch" and "Psycho" are proof to these guys' greatness. A must-buy. God bless Norton Records for reissuing so many great and forgotten rock 'n' roll bands (like this band and the great Hasil Adkins).