Search - Barry & The Remains :: Remains

Stellar compilation of stellar 60s Boston band

hyperbolium | Earth, USA | 04/03/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wow--where did they get these GREAT master tapes? The sound on this new compilation is sparkling. For rock/pop recordings of this vintage ('65 and '66), the sound is amazingly clean. This certainly wipes out Remains tracks I've heard on the psych-punk compilations. From other reviews I've read, this comp also surpasses the French reissues of Remains material (on Eva?). Many tracks appear on this disc in stereo for the first time.Fifty-five minutes, twenty-one tracks, great mid-60's British Invasion influenced American pop. Much of this reminds me of the Beau Brummels... though with more vocal interplay, and without Sal Valentino's instantly recognizable voice. I also hear hints of The Leaves and The Searchers (though, in the Leaves case, at least, the influence could just as easily been the other way 'round!)Great guitars (with some nice fuzz and distortion), cheesy Farfisa, some harmonica... all in all the perfect '65 sound. Good enough to have garnered an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and a slot opening for the Beatles. Not good enough, for reasons known only to the programmers of the era, to get much radio play.In addition to the relatively well known (or at least, well-anthologized) "Don't Look Back" (written by Billy Vera... how long has this guy been around! ), and their blistering cover of Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy", this disc features a ton of great originals and covers. Originals include their great debut single, "When I Want to Know", a bluesy-jazzy-poppy kind of thing; the rockin' "When I Want to Know", that seems to combine the quirkiness of bands like the Nightcrawlers with Beatles-like chords thrown in here and there; and many many more. Most have a blues sound to them, in the Human Beinz - Shadows of Knight sort of punk-blues vein.The covers include a hard rockin' (for 1965) version of Chuck Berry's "I'm Talkin 'Bout You", a slower, more sedate take on Willie Dixon's "My Babe", a Rolling Stonesish version of "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" (taken up the charts by The Buckinghams, among others), a really really really cool slowwwwwed down version of Charlie Rich's upbeat "Lonely Weekend", a great acoustic-based arrangement of "Heart" (a non-hit for Petula Clark, apparently) that almost sounds like it could've been on a "Let it Bleed" era Stones album.The presentation of the tracks includes some interesting false starts, which gives the listener a short glimpse of how the band worked with their producers in the studio. Perhaps the only really disconcerting thing is that the most well-known track ("Don't Look Back") was remixed into stereo from the original 8-track master, and in doing so they salvaged a couple of extra lines on the fade ending. After having listened to the Nuggets version about a billion times, it just sounds *wrong*.A stupendous collection from tracks from a grossly overlooked band."

An excellent anthology by an excellent band.

David Goodwin | Westchester, NY United States | 01/06/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Think of this as the Remains' version of the Left Banke's "There's Gonna be a Storm" CD; a near-complete career overview of a short-lived, but excellent, band, featuring re-shuffled tracks and completely-revisionist-but-excellent remixed sound. And like that anthology, this one turns out being splendid.The Remains were an excellent band, with excellent songwriters *and* musicians...as many of the other reviewers have said, they really deserved to be bigger. The reshuffled tracks, remixed sound (and occasional track countoffs, studio chatter, et cetera.) serve an important purpose, however; instead of being a rote reissuing of the Remains' one album, this feels more like an "into the vaults" sort of release, which helps one evaluate the Remains anew from a perspective thirty years down the road. Verdict? They're still fresh, vibrant, and full of potential which, sadly, never really worked out for the band."

The difference

. | Chicago, IL USA | 10/11/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"WLS Chicago did a live broadcast on location at the Beatles (2nd?) US tour opening gig. The Remains opened the show. None of the actual music was supposed to broadcast, but a little warmup by the Remains made it through, and it was quite incredible. I was listening with the frame of mind that if it wasn't the Beatles , it wasn't anything, but this was good enough to shoot right past that attitude problem. Indeed, this was the -right- US band to playing with the Beatles. What Happened? In a nutshell, they didn't have George Martin produce them,(in hindsight, that's a shame, because he probably would have been willing to, but who was thinking that way at the time?). "Cleaning Up" great live acts without losing their gritty charm is a rarity. You -can- hear on this cd that these guys had the creative juices to write a whole lot of hits; but they didn't have the "trusted old hand" to guide them away from little awkward intros and seques, to invoke the "less is more" rule when arrangements got a little dense, and to take time to find the perfect-for-the-ages tempo for each song."