Here at Club Maine, we love pop music. There's nothing quite like a well written single that has a hook, a chorus, and a heart, and doesn't have to waste time getting the point across. It can be obscured with noise, blotted with rhythms, or howled out of key, yet a good song is a good song.
However, some of these gems never make it to many people's ears for various reasons. These include bad timing, under-exposure, label woes, band fighting, drug abuse, and in the case of the 1960s, the draft.
There's a hard to pinpoint beauty in the "lost single." It represents the work of artists who may have had only chance to say everything they could. Only one tune with which to capture a moment of youthful and creative abandon before everything changed.
There's dissolving rock music cowboys in wet, northeastern basements banging on chipped electric guitars and keyboards fed through overextended power strips. Swoony singer-songwriters exploited in L.A. after arriving with a stereotypical dream of being "discovered." Supreme dance music virtuosos, so eclipsed by technology and hype, the world moved on. Underfed idiot savante college kids, too short sighted to see the possibilities past exam weeks and one time flings.
The circumstances sucked, but the music was good. These were songs before the dream faded.
The Baroques:
Formed in late 1965, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Baroques were turned on by the still-fresh British Invasion and like minded groups such as The Byrds.
The Baroques are further testament to the idea that something was simply in the water in 1966. Experimenting with feedback and distortion, deep, bouncy vocal stylings, and repetition in songwriting, the similarities to the great Velvet Underground are definately prevalent. However, the VU weren't yet doing their thang in early 1966. Nonetheless, it was already happening in artless midwestern cities before Lou Reed shook Andy Warhol's hand.
The liner notes to The Baroques only compilation CD, on Distortions records, portray a band of high-school kids, unable to properly play their instruments, who nonetheless went on concert circuits and shocked all the teenyboppers with piercing sounds and strange antics (before the Unicorns did it in Canada, the Baroques would hire homeless men to impersonate them onstage, while the actual band would heckle from the crowd until a riot ensued).
A shitty demo tape somehow drew the attention of the infamous Chicago blues label, Chess Records, home of more famous artists than one could count, and a highly respected and profitable label at that.
Looking for something more, Chess signed the Baroques, and in a matter of months, the only recorded album by the band, a self-titled effort was released. Filled with a bummed-out vibe the album had traces of early psychedelic experimentation that would be en vogue in just a few years time. Completely unmarketable, Chess soon gave the band up. Strangely, only then did the group discover drugs and spiraled out of control by 1968.
The music blog, therisingstorm.net writes, "The Baroques had a fuzz-guitar/keyboard-damaged sound that retained much of the garage intensity of ’66 while plunging into the experimentation that marked the latter part of the decade. Sure, there are traces of the Byrds and the Zombies, but by the time the Baroques have had their way with a pop song, it’s like the deformed bastard child of those bands hobbling around on one leg."
These guys were clearly completely in their own world. Mid 60s in Wisconsin, and they make this? Something in the water.
For your enjoyment:
The Baroques- Rose Colored Glasses
The Baroques- A Musical Tribute to the Oscar Meyer Weiner Wagon
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