Pebbles | Various Artists Vol. 1-4

Article published in Sounds, 10th November, 1979

VARIOUS ARTISTS ‘Pebbles’ VoIs 1-4 (BFD imports)****

Pebbles | Various Artists Vol. 1-4 | (TO BE read in a C&A Paisley shirt and matching tie, black lace-up school shoes and a pair of 16″ cuff flared trousers re-cut from your mum’s discarded front-room curtains).

Those concerned with the perfect effect should also hook themselves up to a container of carbon monoxide, suck HARD and imagine every other word is in italics, every sentence ends in two exclamation marks and three question marks and the page is awash with three different coloured inks — blue, cerise and shocking pink maybe.)

And I quote, ” . . . all the stray carburettor dung of the mid-60s garage bands who were so rancid, so greased-out, so ST00000PIDDDD that even the likes of the Trashmen looked down on ’em.

Nuggets

These bands were the losers in a scene where Question Mark & The Mysterians were winners. Jokers in a world full of aces! The warped miscreants on this album are so downright groungy that even Lenny Kaye didn’t have the moxie to put ’em on ‘Nuggets‘.

In other words, this album is WHAT’S HAPPENING . . .” From the sleeve notes of Pebbles Vol 2, supposedly from the pen of A Seltzer, Rock Critic At Large (and in fact a supremely accurately parody of the style of Richard Meltzer, A Rock Critic At Home With His Collection Of Beer Bottle Caps), that echoes my sentiments about this series of albums so accurately that I’d written something very similar before re-checking the sleeve notes and realising ‘A Seltzer’ had already done half my work for me WITHOUT EVEN GETTING PAID FOR IT.

(The last six words of that sentence are dedicated to the person who wrote the check for A Seltzer’s acquisition of the world’s entire collection of capital letters.)

Pebbles | Various Artists Vol. 1-4

Make no mistake, what we’re dealing with here, fun fans, is crap, crap and more crap. Those of you who are still squeezing your spots trying to recall the exact impact of the Trashmen’s impact on Western culture might like to consider this as four album’s worth of material so abysmally inspired that Eater would have been the proverbial one-eyed man in their version of our universe, a seventy-one track compilation that belies Strummer’s line about the truth only being known by guttersnipes — this lot puts truisms somewhere about six civilisations beyond Einstein’s little number on relativity and the likes of Randy Alvey and the Green Fuz (whose ‘Green Fuz’ is as honestly and entertainingly atrocious as its title suggests) would have to look ‘guttersnipes’ up in the Webster’s Junior Dictionary one of them was given for their twelfth birthday and THEY STILL WOULDN’T FIND IT.

This being a random world, this set of albums are in no kind of order that even approaches the kind of logic that the rest of us long-suffering mortals mostly adhere to. Maybe inevitably — given the kind of retarded mentalities we’re dealing with here — the story is best begun with Volume 4, eighteen tracks which ‘bask’ in the Ambre Solaire sheen of the sub-title, ‘Summer Means Fun; A fun-filled collection of great summer sounds and surf music rarities’.

If you’ve ever wanted the real bleached roots and dandruff of ‘The Pump House Gang’ twelve-foot Hawaiian board beach hums that Tom Wolfe alliterated to immortality and back, this one’s definitely for you, bub.

Farfisa sound

This is also the one album of the series where record industry hustlers and big names get their egos in the door. Gary Usher — later famous as Byrds producer — gets his name inked all over the back of the sleeve, bringing us the beachcombings of the Four Speed’s ‘RPM’ which has a Farfisa sound just like the one Dave Baby Cortez achieved on ‘The Happy Organ’ — an over-excited Little Weed — his own utterly ridiculous ‘Sacramento’ and, probably, the Wheel Men’s not surprisingly unsuccessful ‘School Is A Gas’ and the Knights’ Hot Rod High’ —which throws a whole new light on why school is cool and still don’t convince me.

Jan and Dean appear as a bonus track with their Coke (as in adds life) ad. Brian Wilson bestows a couple of productions including the delicious Spector homage, Sharon Marie’s ‘Darlin” and appears in his own right as one of the Survivors (aka the Beach Boys) on ‘Pamela Jean’ which is a smooth re-write of Dion‘s ‘Runaround Sue’ which is of course, in its turn, a re-write of Gary US Bond’s ‘Quarter To Three, fact freaks.

Pebbles | Various Artists Vol. 1-4

The real gem, though, is Dave Edmunds’ otherwise unavailable ‘London’s A Lonely Town, the nearest thing there’s been to walking, talking classic early sixties Spector since the man himself took a break after ‘River Deep, Mountain High’.

Volumes 1 and 2 are the real core of the carburettor dung, a whole slew of mid-sixties garage bands with awful names and even worse songs and I love it all from the first chord of the Wild Knights‘ version of ‘Gloria’, the unsubtly risque ‘Beaver Patrol, to the last minute of the Electric Prunes Vox Wah-Wah pedal ad.

As the voice-over says ‘You can even make your guitar sound like a sitar . . . it’s the now sound.’ Far out, er, man.

Side two of volume two is even quite good judged by the normally acceptable criteria of quality — both the Squires ‘Go Ahead’ with its Byrdsy country guitar and the Choir‘s ‘It’s Cold Outside’ are the measure of anything on ‘Nuggets, whatever that means to you — Stiv Bators even paid the latter the ineffable honour of covering it just the other week.

The Elastik Band‘s ‘Spazz’ which makes an extended joke of the title is just as it sounds and the Soup Greens‘ bossa nova treatment of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ is guaranteed to make any Dylan fan turn purple and approach your Dansette with intentions of GBH but, well, who said it was a perfect world?

Epicentre

The real epicentre of the raving shit though is on Volume 3, ‘The Acid Gallery; A mind-blowing collection of 18 demented classics from the psychedelic sixties’.

This is an album full of junior league Eric Burdon‘s drooling over San Franciscan nights, 101% Walgreen’s hallucinogenic visions. Taking an almost random example Dave Diamond and the Higher Elevation‘s ‘The Diamond Mine’ is the quintessence (talking of lysergic derivatives, remember them, drug friends?) of acid arrogance — ‘When you’re where it’s at, you’re not where it’s at’. Thanks for telling us boys, and how’s about keeping off the tabs for a while?

Pebbles | Various Artists Vol. 1-4

Even better is the Hogs‘ ‘Loose Lip Sync Ship’ which lets us know that soggy cereal is in fact a communist plot to undermine the good ‘ol You Ess of Eh. Stand up and salute the flag, men, even if you do see it as a mass of waving purple and orange palm trees.

As the Race Marbles leave us with the worst ever harp solo recorded on their ‘Like A Dribbling Farm’ (another song which ain’t too kind to Bobby Zimmerabettermanthanyou), I’m just wondering where they are all now?

At a Ted Nugent concert gobbling reds and ripple or at home with wifey and the kids, sucking on a six-pack and wondering whether to go to the mall to pick up the groceries Saturday or Sunday?

Two regrets only. What happened to ‘Little Dead Surfer Girl’? And why didn’t they include a track from Unusual Sandwiches’ second album, ‘Interesting Wounds’, on ‘The Acid Gallery’.

But still three hours to be thrown away by anyone who reckons life’s too long to be taken seriously. (All available from Rough Trade at £4.50 each) (Pete Silverton)