Rock and roll has been around long enough now to have developed its own traditions. Some, we could do nicely without — drum solo, I’m looking at you! Several of the early rock traditions that have disappeared over the years, though, are true losses and none more so than the live album.
Of course, plenty of live concert recordings, audio and video, are released every year, with increasingly-sophisticated enhancements like 7.1 (and counting) surround sound and hi-def resolution. And while studio sweetening has long been a mainstay of live recording, the out-of-tune bass on Steppenwolf Live and Morrison blowing out his throat on the Doors’ Absolutely Live are the kinds of authentic concert moments that make live rock and roll so exciting and unpredictable, and which would never make it onto a contemporary live album.
Another rock and roll institution that has nearly disappeared is the battle of the bands. Beginning about five minutes after the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, kids started bugging their parents for electric guitars and drum kits. Soon after that, it was common for even small communities to have several rock combos—with names like The Dukes and The Elements of Time—competing for the few available gigs at area high schools, church basements, and teen hangouts. This was the environment that led some enterprising individual to invent an ingenious means of providing entertainment for the kids, performance opportunities for the musicians, and some modest admission fees for the promoters.
Battle of the Bands Live! (from the wonderful Collectables label) is as close as you can come to reliving those band competitions that were fixtures of the local music scene across America throughout the 60s and early 70s. Unlike Hollywood’s depiction of the “typical” American high school rock n’ roll dance, this CD offers an unvarnished, vérité version that’s as raw and immediate as the best documentary film.
Over the course of 22 tracks, The Outcasts, The Stingrays, and The Apollos blast through short sets, comprised mainly of mid-60s rock standards. While the setting isn’t identified, the recording is low-fi to the extreme, almost as if it was made using the bulky tape recorder that ordinarily played the national anthem over the school PA each morning, and the gray, plastic mic the principle used to read the daily announcements and lunch menu.
The lack of 21st century high-fidelity is what makes Battle of the Bands Live! so genuine; short of building a time machine, this is as close as you will get to experiencing a classic rock and roll throwdown. And the disc more than compensates for lousy sound with its authenticity. In contrast to today’s freeze-dried, computer-assisted perfection in “live” performances, the bands’ punky energy and exuberance are as refreshing as an ice-cold glass of Bosco.
Like on their swaggering take on “Dirty Water” when The Apollos’ singer daringly spouts off about how he “can take a shower with my baby and walk around”! The same guy also takes some entertaining stabs at the lyrics on a three-song mini-set of Animals covers—such as “sweatin’ ‘round, at my command” (“It’s My Life”) and something that sounds like “don’t you know that no allow can always be natured” (“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”)—because, man, it’s a hassle to suss out the right words off the record! And it wasn’t like you could look them up on the Internet.
There’s much more to the appeal of Battle than the lack of polish, of course. Looking at the track list, you may wonder why, apart from the improvised lyrics and asides, you would possibly want to hear yet another version of many of selections here. But The Outcasts’ snappy take on “Louie Louie,” for instance, actually sounds fresh with the addition of their vocal harmonies. Strong group vocals also rejuvenate worn-out standards like “Little Latin Lupe Lu” and lend polish to The Stingrays’ “Eight Days a Week.”
What may be most unexpected is (holy manzarek!) how often the combo organ players get to the front of the mix for solos and fills. It’s been a long time since bands included the distinctive sounds of Farfisa’s and Vox’s instead of a generic digital “keyboard,” and the combo organ-grinding here is a welcome sound.
If anything, the degree of professionalism these three bands display is the only aspect which may not be truly representative of the typical battle of the bands. One band member even refers to making a demo. At most of these “battles,” you would have had a better chance of hearing Marty McFly on lead guitar than a band that had seen the inside of a studio. Still, this disc provides a glimpse of the career path that wasn’t entirely improbable back then, when a band could rise to regional prominence, get a recording contract, and be professional musicians, at least for a while.
Most participants in these battles, however, never cut demos, never signed record deals, and probably never realistically aspired to any glory much greater than besting the other rec-room rockers they competed against. For them, a night like the one captured on Battle of the Bands Live! was the stuff of local legend and lifelong bragging rights. Although The Stingrays express the hope that “we can do something with” their original, “If She Were Mine,” it was The Outcasts who later records a single (“I’m In Pittsburgh and It’s Raining”) that has realized impressive longevity by appearing on garage-psych anthologies such as the first Pebbles volume. Otherwise, it’s safe to assume that the performances on this disc, which someone thought enough of to not only record, but also to preserve all these years, were career high points.
Given the ongoing American Idol-ization of popular music, it is more important than ever that upcoming young musicians get to hear what actual amateurs sound like performing genuine rock and roll, without any sweetening, enhancement, or retakes. Imagine how disillusioned the pioneering rockers of the 50’s and 60’s would have been if TV then had been so saturated with the glossy airbrushed perfection of most of today’s “live” music performances.
So, while it may seem ludicrous to hunt down a definitively low-fi CD of obscure cover bands from forty years ago (or to read a few hundred words extolling its virtues), Battle of the Bands Live! is nothing less than an artifact of a time, long past, when a group of neighborhood kids with some talent had the chance to perform, and maybe even get a shot at the Big Time.
