 "when music was raw and fun" | 2008-01-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: AB3JKFG3U3ST1 |
the sonics are one of the music world's best kept secrets....
their music is raw...fun and simply GREAT...
you can see who actually started the garage/punk sound.....by the way these guys are still together and still tour...
catch them on YOUTUBE......jack |
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 "Proto Punk" | 2008-01-09 |
| - Reviewed By dewwy321 |
| When you look in the history of punk you always hear the stooges were the first proto punk band, but anyone who actually wants to dig deeper into punks past ull find the Sonice, they recorded cheap, they were loud and dirty. If you want to know where punk came from, look no futher cause uve found it! |
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| "ROCKING OUT THE WOODWORK" | 2007-12-19 |
| - Reviewed By whpurcell |
Basically I agree with the tons of reviews here. Especially the ones that say that this band stands tall against pretty much any cult sixties rock bands. This is some stuff they did early on, with a slew of the same standard rock and roll covers that you heard every early sixties rock band do. I dig a ton of versions of these songs, done by the likes of some of my favorite sixties rock bands... such as The Kinks, The Stones, The Animals, Blues Magoos etc.
While I personally would recommend all of those bands for their style, this is the sixties rock band that I would push for people who don't necessarilly dig the other bands covers... or just get bored with the standard covers in general (all of the above mentioned bands are guilty, even in their earliest and freshest, of just going through the motions once in a while) There isn't a single song on this album that doesn't deserve a good amount of volume...and the last three for some reason are all Christmas songs, but still, they rock.
The Top shelf and/or songs better than the originals: KEEP A KNOCKIN, ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN, DIRTY ROBBER, NIGHT TIME IS THE RIGHT TIME, STRYCHNINE, and of course the holiday favorite DONT BELIEVE IN CHRISTMAS, which sort of rocks out to the tune of Too Much Monkey Business, another song that every band covered back then.
From what I've heard from any Sonics fan is that pretty much every Sonics recording is a treasure... I've only heard this album so far, but I really think I will be looking further. |
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| "Supa dupa fly" | 2007-11-09 |
| - Reviewed By ashleypomeroy |
This is great fun. I don't usually champion cult albums from obscure artists because they are mostly awful - you know it's true - but this is an excellent way to spend half an hour. It's a collection of loud and tight garage rock tunes from 1965. When the groove starts the drums become awesome monsters of bass. The drummer's name is Bob Bennett and, in a just world, he should never have to buy a drink for himself. The band recently reformed and played a few shows, and the original members are still alive. They live in obscurity in and around Tacoma, which is somewhere in America, and based on this album they can hold their heads up high wherever they go. Bob Bennett in particular can hold his head up high. He must have arms like a giant. The lead singer is a real screamer. He has a limited bag of tricks - "woaaah!" and "uh!" - but they are great tricks done well. His name is Gerry or Jerry Roslie, "the blackest white man ever" according to a blog called Agony Shorthand.
The rhythm section is tighter than a robot. The songs are basically all the same, which gives the album a real Ramonesy quality; they are riff-based twelve-bar rock'n' roll tracks from the Chuck Berry era, albeit that this album came out just as The Beatles were hoovering up the charts, but the production is louder and tighter than Chuck Berry, and much bassier. The band plays piano and saxophone, and the electric guitar isn't very prominent - typically the solos are done with a sax. The solos are very short, because the tracks are never more than 2:30 long. The album itself is not quite half an hour long.
"The Witch" and "Psycho" are pure nasty aggression. The Witch is a famous garage single that was on Nuggets. Psycho has a superb short cymbal break at 1:34. The intro is excellent and invites contemplation. There are some clattery drums that sound as if they were recorded in a living room with a single microphone, and then "whoah" (pause) "baby!", and the band comes in right on the very first syllable of "baby". I have just sampled it with my computer, there is no gap between the entrance of the band and the first audible utterance of the lead singer when he sings "baby". The band was tight.
"Do You Love Me" is fast and, along with "Boss Hoss", has the best equals loudest bass. Boss Hoss is one of those hot-rod songs that the Beach Boys briefly tried to do, but The Sonics would beat up the Beach Boys any day. Brian Wilson would have wet himself if he had ever met The Sonics. "Dirty Robber" is a typical twelve-bar blues, with lots of good screaming from the lead singer. He sings the title as if it was "diddy bother". The ending is very Beatles-esque, in the sense that it goes "dang-dang-DANG! (stop dead)".
The singer pushes himself on "Keep a 'knocking" (1:52), and the band is again rocking. The drummer sticks mostly to straight pounding, but he does some wicked fills at the end of every fourth bar. He goes shrurururoom-tiddly-braaaam, diddly-brap-brap, just like that. "Knocking" was the b-side of The Witch, surely the best pair of songs pressed onto the same piece of vinyl until The Beatles did Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.
"Have Love Will Travel" almost has the same swaggering, tough riff as Psycho, but it's still awesome. Going by the vocal performance, it should be called "Have LUUUUHV! Whoah babe I will trav-UL!". The vocals really push the edge of the recording technology and if the faders had been pushed one tiny iota higher the record would crackle. I cannot imagine how this sounded on a 1965 vinyl LP coming out of a 1965 record player.
This album should have been a big hit, except that its aggressive rock'n'roll must have sounded old-fashioned in 1965, and it was years before Iggy Pop and the like. I can't emphasise how excellent it is, doubly so if you are having a party. It will rock any dancefloor. It's fun, it's catchy, it's loud. If it could be combined with a Nintendo Wii and beer it would be the ultimate party entertainment product.
The band's version of "Money" is closer to the original than the Beatles' version, or for that matter The Flying Lizards'. I think the Beatles arrangement is superior, because the riff is stronger - the Sonics were good at doing riffs, and it's a shame they didn't riff it up. The guitarist has a showcase on this song. I love the production, on this song and throughout the album. It's technically wrong, distorted and echoey, but it's alive.
"Roll Over Beethoven" is a bit crap. "Don't Believe in Christmas", "Santa Claus", and "Village Idiot" are terrible, but "Village Idiot" is funny though. It's a comedy song, with a Simpsons-style vocal performance from a village idiot. It's quite philosophical, because it is a mirror of human society; a comedy song sung by a village idiot, under duress. That's what the world is like. Three minutes of meaningless gabble from the mind of a madman, followed by an eternity of nothing.
There is no Mellotron anywhere on the album. |
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| ""Stomp, shout, work it on out!"" | 2007-05-20 |
| - Reviewed By mr105601 |
Led by piano-poundin' madman/throat-shredding vocalist Gerry Roslie, the Sonics came roaring out of Tacoma, Washington with this, their 1965 debut. Rightly considered a classic by garage rock fans worldwide, Here Are The Sonics is a mercilessly good platter of primal, pounding garage rockers. It's lightening in a bottle, a set of absolutely insane songs whose ferocious intensity simply does not let up. Bolstered by filthy guitars, primitive rhythms, and Roslie's vocal self-slaughter, the Sonics' sound is pure rock n roll, an epitomization of music at its most very basic. In short, it's absolutely awesome.
Highlights include "The Witch," which lurches along on a pulverizing two-chord guitar line and some hulking vocals. "Boss Hoss" is a non-stop sixties party apocalypse, with a blaring sax riff and some roaring guitars, and the aptly titled "Psycho" is quintessential three-chord frat-punk. "Strychnine" absolutely, positively rules- it's a droning raver with a bad-to-the bone melody and lyrics about Gerry's favorite drink (rat poison). On top of that, you get ferocious covers of songs such as "Have Love Will Travel," "Do You Love Me," "Dirty Robber," and "Night Time is the Right Time." The group's version of "Good Golly Miss Molly" is almost as wild as the mighty Little Richard's original, and "Money" sounds fantastically cool. Plus, the CD edition features three bonus tracks that were originally recorded for a Christmas Album (!): "Santa Claus" and "Don't Believe In Christmas" are both novelty tunes set to the tune of classic rock n roll songs ("Farmer John" and "Too Much Monkey Business," respectively), while "The Village Idiot" may very well be the most offensive Christmas song ever recorded. Great stuff.
Here's the point- this is a rock n roll classic, a musical juggernaut that begs to be listened (and danced) to from now until the end of time. It's worth your dough. |
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| "4 1/2 Stars- Some very fine garage insanity." | 2006-02-17 |
| - Reviewed By thisisntreallymyname |
"The Witch," with its distorted two-chord vamp, maniacal drum attack, and a very possesed young man named Gerry Roslie on vocals, is an awesome way to open any album. The real triumph here is that Here Are The Sonics manages to maintain the intensity of "The Witch" through 11 more tracks. The result is friggin' awesome garage-rock record, a howling slab of unstopable percussion, industrial-strength buzzsaw guitar chords (not to mention the demented brilliance of the solos), and the screeching, howling madman that is Roslie. And all this was about a decade before the Ramones. Highlights are everywhere, just like communism in 1950's America: "Boss Hoss" is about a car that can make anyone jealous. The song moves like a tank ripping open enemy lines, the chorus is heartstopping, and the verses can wake up a coma patient. There's even a saxophone solo! "Psycho" borrows the riff of the mid-sixties Premiers classic "Farmer John" and loads it up with white-hot amphetamne insanity. Roslie is at the helm with a mantra-like vocal, plus an amazing screech. And then there's a guitar solo that's worth fighting for, and some great sax work. "Strychnine," the album's deranged centerpiece, just about blows the socks off of anything recorded before or since. A (relatively) slow-burner, its equipped with menacing guitar drone, unrelenting percussion, and lyrics about the joys of drinking rat poison. A total masterpiece.
While "The Witch," "Boss Hoss," "Psycho," and "Strychnine" (genuflect!) are all band originals, the majority of Here Are the Sonics is made up of covers. Some of these are pretty darn great: "Have Love Will Travel" is an all-out stomper, with a drumbeat you should set your pulse to. "Dirty Robber" is a high-speed pulse with a killer sax break. "Money" finds the Sonics approacing pop, and yet they're all the better for it: The song grooves and bounces, and Gerry sounds good, despite being relatively restrained. But it isn't all great: The version of "Roll Over Beethoven" is pretty stiff and passionless, while "Do You Love Me" seems a bit superflouous. The covers in general are less fun than the originals, and aren't entirely that necessary. Why on earth would I want to hear a Sonics version of "Good Golly Miss Molley" when we have Little Richard's, preserved on countless compilarion discs?
Nonetheless, "Have Love Will Travel," "Dirty Robber," "Money," and the four originals are more than worth the price of admission, making Here Are the Sonics an all-out garage classic. |
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| "absolutely essential american rock and roll !!!" | 2005-03-04 |
| - Reviewed By urbanshaman |
Basically stated, The Sonics were one of the USA's best rock and roll bands EVER ! The rough-sounding recording quality gave their primal compositions an immediate urgency, and every song has vocalist Larry Parypa delivering some amazing throaty screams! Must be heard to be believed....The Sonics delivered raw rock and roll that easily stands up to anything by their equally essential partners-in-rock the Johnny Burnette Trio, Ramones, Cramps, Stooges ...
awesome stuff! |
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| "60's garage rock, raw, sweaty, & heavy!" | 2005-02-21 |
| - Reviewed By therechargers@yahoo.com |
Better than the stones at their cave-man best. Better than the beatles in their cave-man best. Some of the covers are nothing to sneeze at, but others will make you fall off your chair. The originals are in a league of their own.
And true, as various garage rock CD re-issues from the 60's have recenlty proven, the niche-market has no limit. But listen to many of those bands, while they might have been a little rocking - a little bluesy - perhaps, even a little psycadelic (65-67) no one touches the Sonics. Especially this first album. The second album is good, too. But nothing touches this one. A good reason is perhaps the heavy raw production on the sound. Other garage bands from that era, today come off as light, and even cheesy, not a fault of the bands per say, but handicaps of recording tecniques in a pre-Sgt. Pepper era.
This band sounds like cave-man got guitars bass keys sax and drums and decided to go pump out some crazy punk rockers b4 the genre exsisted. But as an added plus some of the soothing Covers, work surprsingly well for a band known as rockers. "Night time is The Right Time" "Walking the Dog" "Have Love Will Travel" could have worked at any r & b club of the 60's on either side of the tracks. A classic. A must for any old-school punk rock fans. Warning:PRIMIAL, but solid, polished and good!!! |
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| "One of America's greatest rock 'n' roll bands" | 2005-01-16 |
| - Reviewed By timothyfarrell22 |
| This is one of those bands that you just wished you could have the chance to see live. Too bad they disbanded a good decade or two before I was born. This is second only to "Black Monk Time" as the greatest garage rock record of the 60s. Few bands have managed to have such a pure unadulterated rock 'n' roll sound as these guys. The originals such as "The Witch" and "Psycho" are proof to these guys' greatness. A must-buy. God bless Norton Records for reissuing so many great and forgotten rock 'n' roll bands (like this band and the great Hasil Adkins). |
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| "Garage Bands ROCK!" | 2004-12-22 |
| - Reviewed By 1964t-bird |
What a wonderful treat! All you need is a cool 1965 Dodge Dart 270 sedan with your dial on the Cool Top 40 196.5 FM - 1965 all the time and you're good to go!
The Sonics were the precursor to the grunge bands from the Pacific Northwest and the Sonics were indeed ground breakers. They had a fresh, raw sound and hard driving energy that distinguished their work.
I love this collection. This garage band from the Pacific Northwest has done a lot to forge musical trails in that part of the world. The Sonics' rocking "Have Love Will Travel" is, at the time of this review used on the Land Rover commercial. It's an excellent piece as is the other songs on this collection, including the covers and remakes such as the 1962 Contours/1964 Dave Clark 5 smash, "Do You Love Me." This band adds a fresh, cutting edge and an intensity to their treatment of the songs. The Sonics will make you want to dance, cruise in a serious Dodge Dart custom and rock!
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