Search - Sonics :: Savage Young Sonics

Great historical artifact

Fran Fried | Fresno, Ca. United States | 03/31/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This album (whose title and cover are a great nod to that old "Savage Young Beatles" record) is for students taking the Advanced Sonics course, not for novices who've never studied Sonics 101. And the fine folks at Norton Records (who put out the late '90s/early '00s Sonics reissues) did all the digging so you won't have to.

Actually, Sonics lead guitarist Larry Parypa (who started the band with brother Andy, the bassist, in 1961) did all the digging, and wrote the lengthy liner notes as well. Their father taped several home recording sessions and almost every live show they played from 1961-64, and Larry found the tapes, and we get a great picture of the group as it evolved from one of many instrumental teen bands in the Tacoma/Seattle area into arguably the first and rawest punk band of all -- come and gone long before the term was ever used.

The recordings are rough, both musically and (no pun) sonically -- especially the live gigs, sound being as primitive as it was back then. But we hear them grow from the tentative original surf quartet of '61 into the solid, R&B-influenced legends of loud rock we came to know.

Of course, what put them over the top for good was the addition of three members of local band The Searchers: saxophonist Rob Lind, drummer Bob Bennett ... and, most especially, their keyboardist/singer/wailer, Gerry Roslie, who quickly grew into one of the great voices of rock'n'roll history.

The four home recordings from '64 with The Sonics' "classic" lineup capture a group that's that close to crystallizing their sound. Their transition from surf band to R&B-fueled rockers is now complete, and Roslie is just asserting himself in the band. His singing on James Brown's "Think" is shaky at best, but his open-throated howling through Little Richard's "Keep A-Knockin'" isn't much different from the later studio version.

Again, this isn't the introductory course for people who've never heard the band in its mid-'60s glory. But diehards will at least get a kick out of this.

"