The Sonics Psycho 7"

Después de este éxito pasaron a grabar para el dueño de Audio Recording Studio su siguiente single, se trataba ni más ni menos que de “Psycho”, que acabó siendo uno de los mayores clásicos del garage de todos los tiempos y que rápidamente escaló las listas de éxitos. Este tema recogía el sonido sonics en su estado más puro, guitarras saturadas y sucias, temas de desamor y a Gerry desgañitándose como si le fuera la vida en ello, si se busca constancia de la existencia del punk antes del 77 aquí está la prueba más palpable.

NORTON RECORDS

The Sonics: Very Rare Live Comp (US, 1966/72)

Lead singer Gerry Roslie was no less than a white Little Richard, whose harrowing soul-screams were startling even to the Northwest teen audience, who liked their music powerful and driving with little regard to commercial subtleties. With hit after hit on the local charts (and influencing every local band that ever took the stage), the band inexplicably was never able to break out nationally, leaving its sound largely undiluted for mass consumption. Breaking up in the late '60s (after one ill-fated album attempt to water down their style for national attention), the Sonics continue today to be revered by '60s collectors the world over for their unique brand of rock & roll raunch.

THE SONICS LIVE 66/72
brutally/raw live recordings!!!yeah! thats what you like ah?

The Sonics: This Is... The Savage Young Sonics (US, 1961)

Before the Kinks and the Who came along and planted the seeds for what is commonly referred to as proto-punk, several obscure and/or one-hit U.S. wonders beat the two aforementioned British acts to the punch -- the Kingsmen, the Trashmen, and the Sonics. While the Kingsmen and the Trashmen managed to score a massive hit each ("Louie, Louie" and "Surfin' Bird," respectively), the Sonics never broke through outside of their home city of Tacoma. Regardless, the Sonics are often name-checked as one of the greatest garage rock bands ever, and the 2001 compilation This Is... The Savage Young Sonics focuses entirely on the group's early years. It turns out that the father of the Sonics' brother guitar/bass tandem, Larry and Andy Parypa, taped nearly every live show the group played during the early '60s, and these recordings serve as the basis for this 20-song release. Although the group was still a ways off from perfecting its tough-and-rough sound (which eventually included a heavy R&B influence), the comp includes such early instrumentals as "Sonic Blues" as well as covers of popular bar band standards of the day -- "Rumble," "Bony Maronie," "Keep A-Knockin'," and even the aforementioned "Louie, Louie." While newcomers should stick with one of their classic mid-'60s releases (e.g., 1965's Here Are the Sonics), longtime Sonics fans looking to trace the group's roots will certainly be able to do so with This Is... The Savage Young Sonics.

THE SONICS LIVE IN TACOMA 1961
link served by Roadrunner

The Sonics: Live In Tacoma, Busy Body!!! (US, 1964)

Given the many stories of their crazed on-stage prowess and the frantic drive of their classic studio sides, fans of real-deal garage rock have often wished that someone had the presence of mind to make a decent-sounding live recording of Tacoma, WA, madmen the Sonics in their glory days. And, as it happened, someone did -- a radio station in Tacoma, KTNT-AM, used to have a regular Friday night feature called Teen Time, in which they broadcast a live spot from one of the area's teen clubs. A guy in Seattle named Doug Patterson owned an Ampex reel-to-reel tape machine and frequently taped the Teen Time shows to collect songs for his own teenage band to cover, and two surviving tapes featuring the Sonics in action have been collected on Busy Body!!! Live in Tacoma 1964. Since these two shows (lasting less than 33 minutes combined, including patter from the announcer) predated the release of their debut single, "The Witch," and the epochal album Here Are the Sonics, the emphasis is on covers and instrumentals, and while the audio is quite good for AM radio broadcasts more then four decades old, the mix is a bit sloppy and Gerry Roslie's vocals are barely audible, with Rob Lind's sax and Larry Parypa's sax way up front. Still, if this isn't the ideal document of the Sonics on-stage, it's a whole lot of fun; these tapes show they were admirably tight and full of fire when playing for their fans, and having a wild good time cranking out "Ooh Poo Pah Doo," "Goin' Back to Granny's," "Night Train," and "Have Love, Will Travel" with all kinds of attitude. And while they didn't deign to play "Psycho" while Patterson was rolling his tapes, there's a wicked early version of "The Witch" that points to things to come. Busy Body!!! captures the Sonics in a transitional phase, when they were still minding the template of Northwest heroes the Wailers but developing an overdriven personality of their own, and it's loud-and-proud teenage fun.

THE SONICS LIVE 64