Main menu
Fretplay home Submit tabs

The Sonics
The Sonics tabs The Sonics discography

Channels
Guitar channel Bass channel Guitar videos Reviews

Message Forum
Guitar forum Bass forum Bands and artists Promote your band Recent discussions All categories

Fretplay.com

The Sonics guitar tabs

CD reviews

Here Are the Sonics

The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics Audio CD

A fair review of the The Sonics "Here Are the Sonics" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Sonics reviews here, or go back to the The Sonics tabs.

Band: The Sonics
Title: Here Are the Sonics
Rating:

Release Date: 1999-06-01
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Witch 2: Do You Love Me 3: Roll Over Beethoven 4: Boss Hoss 5: Dirty Robber 6: Have Love, Will Travel 7: Psycho 8: Money 9: Walkin' the Dog 10: Night Time Is the Right Time 11: Strychnine 12: Good Golly Miss Molly 13: Keep a Knockin' 14: Don't Believe in Christmas 15: Santa Claus 16: Village Idiot

Oldstyle meets young blood
The Sonics were like the Cramps, but the original stuff. I picked up this album in a store in Dresden, Germany, where they sold the most amazing stuff that was unavailable in the Netherlands at the time. I love Iggy and the Stooges and MC5, but this is where they they got their inspiration from. Still, after all these years their songs blast through your speakers, headphones or any other way and make you wanna rock it all night long. Oh yeah! .

when music was raw and fun
the sonics are one of the music world's best kept secrets. . .
their music is raw. . . fun and simply GREAT. . .
you can see who actually started the garage/punk sound. . . . . by the way these guys are still together and still tour. . .
catch them on YOUTUBE. . . . . . jack.

Proto Punk
If you want to know where punk came from, look no futher cause uve found it!. When you look in the history of punk you always hear the stooges were the first proto punk band, but anyone who actually wants to dig deeper into punks past ull find the Sonice, they recorded cheap, they were loud and dirty.

ROCKING OUT THE WOODWORK
Especially the ones that say that this band stands tall against pretty much any cult sixties rock bands. Basically I agree with the tons of reviews here. This is some stuff they did early on, with a slew of the same standard rock and roll covers that you heard every early sixties rock band do. I dig a ton of versions of these songs, done by the likes of some of my favorite sixties rock bands. . . such as The Kinks, The Stones, The Animals, Blues Magoos etc.
While I personally would recommend all of those bands for their style, this is the sixties rock band that I would push for people who don't necessarilly dig the other bands covers. . . or just get bored with the standard covers in general (all of the above mentioned bands are guilty, even in their earliest and freshest, of just going through the motions once in a while) There isn't a single song on this album that doesn't deserve a good amount of volume. . . and the last three for some reason are all Christmas songs, but still, they rock.
The Top shelf and/or songs better than the originals: KEEP A KNOCKIN, ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN, DIRTY ROBBER, NIGHT TIME IS THE RIGHT TIME, STRYCHNINE, and of course the holiday favorite DONT BELIEVE IN CHRISTMAS, which sort of rocks out to the tune of Too Much Monkey Business, another song that every band covered back then.
From what I've heard from any Sonics fan is that pretty much every Sonics recording is a treasure. . . I've only heard this album so far, but I really think I will be looking further. .

Supa dupa fly
I don't usually champion cult albums from obscure artists because they are mostly awful - you know it's true - but this is an excellent way to spend half an hour. This is great fun. It's a collection of loud and tight garage rock tunes from 1965. When the groove starts the drums become awesome monsters of bass. The drummer's name is Bob Bennett and, in a just world, he should never have to buy a drink for himself. The band recently reformed and played a few shows, and the original members are still alive. They live in obscurity in and around Tacoma, which is somewhere in America, and based on this album they can hold their heads up high wherever they go. Bob Bennett in particular can hold his head up high. He must have arms like a giant. The lead singer is a real screamer. He has a limited bag of tricks - "woaaah!" and "uh!" - but they are great tricks done well. His name is Gerry or Jerry Roslie, "the blackest white man ever" according to a blog called Agony Shorthand.

The rhythm section is tighter than a robot. The songs are basically all the same, which gives the album a real Ramonesy quality; they are riff-based twelve-bar rock'n' roll tracks from the Chuck Berry era, albeit that this album came out just as The Beatles were hoovering up the charts, but the production is louder and tighter than Chuck Berry, and much bassier. The band plays piano and saxophone, and the electric guitar isn't very prominent - typically the solos are done with a sax. The solos are very short, because the tracks are never more than 2:30 long. The album itself is not quite half an hour long.

"The Witch" and "Psycho" are pure nasty aggression. The Witch is a famous garage single that was on Nuggets. Psycho has a superb short cymbal break at 1:34. The intro is excellent and invites contemplation. There are some clattery drums that sound as if they were recorded in a living room with a single microphone, and then "whoah" (pause) "baby!", and the band comes in right on the very first syllable of "baby". I have just sampled it with my computer, there is no gap between the entrance of the band and the first audible utterance of the lead singer when he sings "baby". The band was tight.

"Do You Love Me" is fast and, along with "Boss Hoss", has the best equals loudest bass. Boss Hoss is one of those hot-rod songs that the Beach Boys briefly tried to do, but The Sonics would beat up the Beach Boys any day. Brian Wilson would have wet himself if he had ever met The Sonics. "Dirty Robber" is a typical twelve-bar blues, with lots of good screaming from the lead singer. He sings the title as if it was "diddy bother". The ending is very Beatles-esque, in the sense that it goes "dang-dang-DANG! (stop dead)".

The singer pushes himself on "Keep a 'knocking" (1:52), and the band is again rocking. The drummer sticks mostly to straight pounding, but he does some wicked fills at the end of every fourth bar. He goes shrurururoom-tiddly-braaaam, diddly-brap-brap, just like that. "Knocking" was the b-side of The Witch, surely the best pair of songs pressed onto the same piece of vinyl until The Beatles did Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

"Have Love Will Travel" almost has the same swaggering, tough riff as Psycho, but it's still awesome. Going by the vocal performance, it should be called "Have LUUUUHV! Whoah babe I will trav-UL!". The vocals really push the edge of the recording technology and if the faders had been pushed one tiny iota higher the record would crackle. I cannot imagine how this sounded on a 1965 vinyl LP coming out of a 1965 record player.

This album should have been a big hit, except that its aggressive rock'n'roll must have sounded old-fashioned in 1965, and it was years before Iggy Pop and the like. I can't emphasise how excellent it is, doubly so if you are having a party. It will rock any dancefloor. It's fun, it's catchy, it's loud. If it could be combined with a Nintendo Wii and beer it would be the ultimate party entertainment product.

The band's version of "Money" is closer to the original than the Beatles' version, or for that matter The Flying Lizards'. I think the Beatles arrangement is superior, because the riff is stronger - the Sonics were good at doing riffs, and it's a shame they didn't riff it up. The guitarist has a showcase on this song. I love the production, on this song and throughout the album. It's technically wrong, distorted and echoey, but it's alive.

"Roll Over Beethoven" is a bit crap. "Don't Believe in Christmas", "Santa Claus", and "Village Idiot" are terrible, but "Village Idiot" is funny though. It's a comedy song, with a Simpsons-style vocal performance from a village idiot. It's quite philosophical, because it is a mirror of human society; a comedy song sung by a village idiot, under duress. That's what the world is like. Three minutes of meaningless gabble from the mind of a madman, followed by an eternity of nothing.

There is no Mellotron anywhere on the album.

You can see a complete list of all The Sonics discography, or go back to the The Sonics tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.