Now Playing: Caravan "Grey & Pink"
Topic: Addition
After 15 years a cycle is closed, thanks to an attentive Acid Archives reader/collector. The Bondsmen LP was included in Ron Moore's pioneering pre-Archives book Underground Sounds back in the late 1990s. However, when transferring all of Ron's data to the Acid Archives, we were unable to confirm any of the Bondsmen info, and no one remembered much about it either. So I did what we usually did when info is too scant for even a place-holder info, and put it up in The Attic awaiting illumination.
And now illumination has arrived--the Bondsmen exists, it's a genuine teenbeat era album, and a damn rare sucker too.
BONDSMEN (TX)
April 2, 1966 1966 (Austin WAM-33-6652)
This rarely seen album includes typical 3rd-tier club band cover versions of "Farmer John", "Just Like Me" and "Gloria" along with less exciting MOR like "Unchained Melody" and "Theme From A Summer Place". "Ebb Tide" lays on a sleepy early '60s lounge mood a la Willie Wall Trio. "Seventh Time Around" with tough garage moves, crude playing and snotty vocals is a high-point, and they reap bonus points for rarely done covers like "Night Time" (Strangeloves) and a strangely depressed "Ferry Across The Mersey". The recording is crude and possibly done on-stage before a show (no audible crowd noise). A roller rink organ bounces along somewhere in the back, and the lead guitar too is mixed low, while the happy amateur singer is all over the place, depending on how close he held the mic to his mouth. It's almost as off-the-wall as the Rebs on Fredlo, but a frantic drummer, the atmospheric organ, and the energy of the front man keeps the Bondsmen ship floating. The recording took place in Beaumont, which may be the band's home-town, and was custom-pressed in Austin. As few as 100 copies may have been pressed, and it's a rare one even as local teenbeat LPs go. [PL]
