Garage Beat '66 Vol. 5: Readin' Your Will! CD

Sundazed's excellent Garage Beat '66 series doesn't lose momentum on its fifth volume, Readin' Your Will! Where the previous four installments focused almost exclusively on bands that aped the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds, this set digs into the trippier, psychedelic side of garage rock with a set of 20 tracks recorded between 1964 and 1968. There's still some straight-ahead rock & roll here, such as the Arkay IV's "Little Girl" or the Heart Beats' take on "Little Latin Lupe Lu," but there's a heavier dose of spacy harmonies, jangling guitars, fuzz tones, and swirling organs here than on previous installments of the Garage Beat '66 series. After four volumes of pile-driving garage, this comes as a welcome change of pace, particularly because there are a lot of quite excellent singles here. A lot of this leans toward the menacing side of Texas garage rock, à la 13th Floor Elevators, but there are gentler moments like the Thingies' "I'm Going Ahead" that helps make this the most musically diverse and enjoyable disc of the series. Like the other Garage Beat '66 discs, this does contain a bunch of songs that will be familiar to hardcore garage-psych collectors -- and it does contain such cult favorites as Unrelated Segments and the tremendous Zakary Thaks -- but while those collectors will love the excellent sound and liner notes here, this isn't intended solely for collectors. This, like the other entries in Garage Beat '66, is for garage-psych fans who love Nuggets and want to dig deeper without resorting to sorting through the Pebbles and Rubble series, or listening to all of the Trash Box. For those listeners, Readin' Your Will!, like the rest of Garage Beat '66 series, is an irresistible addition to their library. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Personnel: Thomas Whittington, Richard Lipscomb, Glen VanLandingham, Greg Johnson, Dana Ishihara, Malachy Robinson (vocals, guitar); George Ratzlaff (vocals, keyboards); Peter Krause, Barrie Edgar, Linda Sanders (vocals, drums); Phil Weaver, Ron Stults, Jim Quarles, Ken Tebow, Dave "Soulfingers" Williams, Terri Revely, Danny Smola, Chris Gerniottis, Mike Taylor (vocals); Jeannie Foster (guitar, organ); Rod Prince, John Dalton , Bob Sustak, Whit Snell, Ricky Erickson, Mike Imbler, John Torok, John Lopez, Rory Mack, Martin Eshleman, Bobby Lunak, Donald Anderson, James Foster (guitar); Mike Florence, Ernie Swisher (organ); Barry Orschlen (keyboards); Andy Angellotti, Gordon Marcellus, Gary Weiss, Bobby Donaho, Bill McCullough, John Nicotora, Don Sligar, Armand Poulin, Mark Valentine, Mike Rogers, Stan Moore (drums).

Liner Note Author: Mike Dugo.