“Don’t Chop Down My Tree” / “Think Of Your Love” (Smash S-2105) August 1967
The Raves | Don’t Chop Down My Tree | (Smash) 1967 | By their second release The Raves were if anything even more commercial sounding. Can’t believe these two records were not big hits. I’d call this punk bubblegum. Way better than that watered down poppy stuff that followed in 1968/69.
’Think Of Your Love’ is genius.
The RAVES – Mother Nature’ / ’Mister Man’ (Smash S-2088) April 1967
The Raves hailed from Brooklyn, New York and released three 45s on Smash. All are great garage pop classics with a slight bubblegum sound.
Their debut 45 ’Mother Nature’ is a pounding fast paced fuzzy popper with eastern promise. The flip ’Mister Man’ treads similar ground. Both sides are insanely catchy and would have obviously sounded cool coming out of those small 60s radios because they are very well produced and mastered loud.
The producer for The Raves was Ron Haffkine. He was also producer for another New York band The Gurus. He also produced and managed Dr Hook & the Medicine Show. They of course became simply Dr Hook by the start of the 70s.
The Raves – ’Everything’s Fire’ / ’Sing Children Sing’ (Smash S-2162) April 1968
This was the third and last single by The Raves after which they disappeared. Hopefully someone who knows the details about this combo will get in touch with information as they really were a hot band and unjustly ignored by probably everyone outside New York.
I’ve read elsewhere that they were regulars at the famous Cafe Wha? and Keith’s backing group. He had a big hit with ”98.6”. David Jimenez from The Raves was definitely involved and played guitar and co-wrote several songs on the album ”The Adventures Of Keith.”
Getting back to this disc then! ”Everything’s Fire” is a terrific blast of heavy mod beat and has a very English sound. It’s perhaps the rarest Raves 45 to find and may prove difficult to locate.
The white label promo had ’Everything’s Fire’ on both sides (mono / stereo) but my stock copy has the soulish ’Sing Children Sing’ on the flip.
Fragments | The Raves Jukebox (all 5 songs)
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