The Moon Rakers, "You'll Come Back" c/w "I Was Wrong," Tower 157 (rel. 8/1965)
You might recall the recent-ish post of "If You Need Me" by Sir Walter Raleigh. Here's the next release in the Tower Records discography. (This label always makes me think about Tower Records the store, and how its passing in the 2000s broke my heart. Life has never been the same post-Tower Records.)
The Moon Rakers, whose name evokes James Bond and the NASA space program in one 60s-rific swirl, hailed from Colorado, where they became the local band. Capitol Record's talent scouts caught wind of their fervent local following and pegged them as their potential garage-rock hitmakers, alongside The Standells. Though the group (who preferred the unbroken Moonrakers) never got a chart it, two members later formed a mainstream success with the band Sugarloaf.
For reasons unknown, the group was assigned to producer-songwriter Roger Christian, best-known for his hand in several Beach Boys songs, including "Don't Worry Baby," "Little Deuce Coupe" and "No-Go Showboat." Christian thus was deemed a good match for this surly Mountain State quintet. With co-producer/cleffer Richard Russell, Christian penned the lesser side of this debut single. Dennis Flannigan delivered the excellent "You'll Come Back," a track anthologized on a few garage compilations.
Though it was the official B-side, this song charted on the band's home turf and got what little airplay there was outside their Colorado bubble. This minor-keyed beat mover sounds like The Zombies fronted by Dave Davies of The Kinks. The group get a chonky garage sound that Christian and Russell didn't attempt to sweeten. It's a pity the group's lead guitarist Veeder Van Dorn didn't take the instrumental break; a pianist delivers an underwhelming interlude.
Still, it delivers all the attitude one could want in a 1965 garage single, and the singer doesn't attempt a Mick Jagger impersonation; nor is there screechy plastic organ (the two great irritants of the garage-rock genre to these august ears). Another '65 release that was lost in the sauce, as they say. No reviews nor publicity bits in columnists' weekly pages.
"I Was Wrong," penned by the producers, takes a more upbeat approach on an r&b flavored downbeat lyric. A party atmosphere seems unapt for this tale of romantic disappointment. So many pop songs of this period share this disconnect of a song's content and its sound.
The group sounds like a grubbier variant of the Dave Clark 5 crossed with The Standells. Guitarist Van Dorn gets in a couple of brief spots on his Rickenbacker 12-string, but the song begs for a redemptive guitar solo that never happens.
Christian and Russell didn't understand how this style of rock 'n' roll worked. They got the idea on the group's follow-ups, perhaps due to complaints from the band. They worked with the group on three further releases which all out-performed in the Colorado region and must have sold well enough to warrant the group's continuance on this Capitol Records imprint.
Post-Tower, the group turned religious, in a plot twist no one saw coming; meanwhile, Van Dorn and Robert Webber, as said, formed Sugarloaf, which got mainstream hits with "Green Eyed Lady" and "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" among others. All members of The Moonrakers came in and out of this far more successful rock band.
The original Moonrakers lineup reunited in 2015 for a 50th anniversary concert ina Denver nightclub.
Tomorrow: Lowman Pauling, guitarist and songwriter for the "5" Royales, broke away from that group for a handful of solo singles, some which are big-ticket rarities. We'll hear his first such effort as El Pauling via a 1960 Federal Records platter.
"You'll Come Back" is another one of those 'second verse same as the first' songs that are just plain lazy. It is a fun—that piano solo is something odd for 1965. Looked up the Standells because "I Was Wrong" sounds very much like their "Dirty Water." Since The Moonrakers and The Standells were BOTH on Tower, I wonder who did what first? Wikipedia says "Dirty Water"was recorded in March 1965 but not released until November and this Moonraker's song was released in August 1965. Bet ya a nickel The Moonrakers (and their producers) heard "Dirty Water" in its formative stages.
ReplyDeleteThose repeated lyrics, I've learned, were encouraged in the music world into the mid-1960s. The idea was to give 'em just enough so they could remember the words...that would increase their potential desire to buy the recording. It happened in the old Tin Pan Alley days and the big band era; it was seen as wasted effort to write additional lyrics because most people would forget everything but the chorus. They underestimated the public--not for the first time!
DeleteIt is likely that mixes of "Dirty Water" were floating around the record company when Roger Christian co-wrote "I Was Wrong." There were also similar riffs in Charlie RIch's big 1965 hit "Mohair Sam" and a few other popular recordings of that year. It's a common sound in 1965-66 pop and rock music.