Play it loud!

I pretty much grew up listening to garage bands on the radio, some great and some great one-hit wonders. The Kinks, The Guess Who, Paul Revere, The Troggs, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and on and on. I still listen to those bands today and I’m still drawn to that raw and loud rock music.

Minneapolis has a rich history of garage bands. They were all a little bit before my time, but I did listen to a few of them when I was young and they made the radio. One of the bands you might have heard of was The Trashmen because of the popularity of their song Surfin’ Bird which was a cover/reinterpretation of The Rivingtons Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow and Bird is the Word. But enough of them.

The band I chose for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme of Garage Bands is The Stillroven. The Stillroven were another local Twin Cities band who mixed garage rock with psychedelia and gave us a sound similar to what was happening out on the west coast. I think it’s a cool sound. The band had local success, but not quick enough for some of the members so they had a lot of lineup changes before they disbanded in 1969.

The Stillroven song I chose is Sundance and it was written by the band’s guitarist and singer, David Rivkin and it has that cool sound I mentioned above. Maybe also interesting is that Rivkin, later working as David Z, engineered some demos for Prince that helped him secure his recording contract at Warner Brothers Records in the mid-70’s, and he helped to define the “Minneapolis Sound”. His brother Robert, known professionally as Bobby Z, became well known as the drummer for Prince’s band, The Revolution, as well as for his work with many other national artists including George Thorogood, Garrison Keillor, Boy George, and the Manhattan Transfer.