I had never heard of this band before buying their record. So why did I? I guess it was a throwback to previous times; when I was in my mid-20's I'd blindly get any garage rock album I could find for an affordable price - something that I rarely regretted. So I found this, along with other stuff, in an Athens record store. Judging by the cover only, I thought I might like it, and asked to listen to a couple of excerpts ; right from the beginning I went yeah, this is exactly what I expected. Pretty good, but also pretty standard, mid-60's garage rock - only these guys come from Smalltown Sweden (i.e. Gnesta) rather than USA. Gnesta, aparently, also doubles as the fictional town of Hedestad in the 2009 film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The things that happen in those small quaint Swedish towns, eh? Nazis, murder, incest... and garage rock. Though, of course, only the latter will concern us now. The liner notes offer a detailed history of the band, but here's the gist: The Jackie Fountains started in 1964 as an instrumental band modelled on The Shadows; pretty soon they teamed up with singer Lasse Kjellström, a former a sailor who had traveled to England often, spoke English well and knew the lyrics to a lot of pop songs. He took them to a more R&B/R'nR direction, and they cut some demos together in 1965. Lasse unfortunately fell into some trouble with the law, and was replaced after a few months by a well-traveled Yugoslavian kid called Bob Yell (a.k.a. Boris Jelovic). The band released two singles in 1966 for a local label (Love Time / Bad Girl and You Better Look Around / Let's Make A Love) before calling it quits the next year - there's a coda to that story, which we'll get back to. A few, previously unreleased, songs were included in a weird spoken word album, also released by Dollar Records in 1969. This Swiss compilation (a limited pressing of 1000 copies) appeared in 2003, and contains 3 sides from their singles, plus the 4 tracks from the spoken word album, and a few more demos. It opens with "You Better Look Around" an accomplished garage folk composition, which is followed by a raw R&B cover of Animals hit "Club A Go Go". "Love Time" sounds more like early Kinks (nice piano by"Mimi" Matisic). "Listen Girl" and "Your Love" are a couple of garage pop gems worthy of inclusion in any volume of the Pebbles series. With the exception of "Club A Go Go" these are all original compositions, and there's not a dud among them; even the ballad "Sentimental Blues" (nice harmonica here) is emotive without being sappy, while the big pop production that closes the album ("Bad Girl") sounds like it should be the theme to a Swinging London movie. Side 2 features 5 songs of the Lasse period of the band; it opens with an energetic, very lo -fi, live version of "Buckle Shoe Stomp" (The Snobs), followed by an excellent cover of Vince Taylor's "Brand New Cadillac", Yardbirds-inspired original "Why Did You Leave Me?" and Chuck Berry rock'n'rollers "Bye Bye Johnny" and "I'm Talking About You". Great guitar and harp by "Hasse" Wärmling who also wrote most of the originals. A few years later (here's the coda I promised) Hasse was working as a nurse at a university hospital together with visiting biochemistry PhD student Hugh Cornwell. The two youths bonded over music, and left together for London where they co-founded a rock band they called The Guilford Stranglers. Hasse´s work permit expired sometime in '75, and he left before the band made any waves. Bad timing, because next year they'd re-invent themselves as punks, shorten their name to The Stranglers, and go on to have a long and successful career. Including a top ten hit with the re-recording of a Wärmling tune called "Strange Little Girl". The sounds in this comp are very typical of US garage rock circa '65-66, and yet made in a small Swedish town. If you like that period in music -and you can bet that I do- it won't disappoint you. Curiously, but happily for collectors, that original limited edition release hasn't sold out yet; even 20-something years later, new and unplayed vinyl copies are available online, some even for less than €10.
**** for You Better Look Around, Club A Go-Go, Listen Girl, Brand New Cadillac, Why Did You Leave Me?
*** for Love Time, Your Love, Sentimental Blue, Buckle Shoe Stomp, Bye Bye Johnny, I'm Talking About You, Bad Girl
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