Released for Record Store Day but with copies still available, Cavestomp! Volume One – A Torrent of Talent! collects live tracks by garage rock bruisers from the genre’s 1960s heyday amongst a batch of bands who followed in the, uh, footsteps of those style-defining bands to indeed stomp out some no frills high energy racket of their own. With Fleshtones frontman Peter Zaremba sharing MC duties with that compiler of Original Artyfacts Lenny Kaye, the celebratory atmosphere is as potent as the tunes are ripping. It’s safe to say this album is the next best thing to being there.
Many (and perhaps all) of the tracks on this comp have been previously released through the Cavestomp label on a series of CDs. Cavestomp! Volume One delivers a vinyl debut with the promise of a follow-up installment, likely for a Record Store Day in the not too distant future. The scoop on Cavestomp is that the events, instigated by John Weiss, span all the way back to the 1980s in the midst of a considerable neo-garage boom. However, the earliest songs on this set date from a reunion event of sorts held in 1997 at Coney Island High in New York City.
Numerous annual Cavestomp celebrations followed with the template essentially unchanged: To corral under the same performance umbrella reunited garage bands from the 1960s, many of which were included on the Kaye-compiled first Nuggets volume released in 1972, with outfits formed in the ’70s-’90s that are solidly in the garage tradition.
Cavestomp! Volume One makes clear that combining old and new schools of garage science is a smart impulse. If Beatles-Stones-Kinks-Yardbirds-Animals-Byrds is the foundation for the original garage bands, what they spat out as one-hit wonders and near misses was still an early iteration of punk rock. And so, the sounds of The Chocolate Watchband, The Monks, The Standells, and the Sonics weaves very productively with tracks from younger bands The Hatebombs, The Henchmen, The Mooney Suzuki, The Secret Service, The Mosquitos, and The Greenhornes.
Importantly, the ‘60s bands don’t come off like nostalgia acts while the newer entities, if to varying degrees more grizzled and amped up, still have a handle on the classique simplicity of garage song form. If “Let’s Talk About Girls” by The Chocolate Watchband scales back the scorch of “Wrong Place, Wrong Time” by The Hate Bomboras, who seem to be a live team-up of California’s The Bomboras and Florida’s The Hatebombs, whose “She Bit Me” opens the record, the energy doesn’t flag. And that makes all the difference.
The fuzz-laden swagger of “All Black and Hairy” by Grave Digger 5 leads into the Farfisa blitz of “Life Story” by The Henchmen, and then comes the gnawing, buzzy thud of “Heart Attack Blackout” by The Mooney Suzuki. After that, a sweet wrinkle, as “7” by The Lyres is the first cut by a handful of a bands of 1980s vintage. The full-bodied attack of The Lyres is a good lead-in to the ragged thump of “Black Monk Time” by The Monks.
Side two opens with one of the highlights of Cavestomp! Volume One, the smoking “Come On” by Portland, Maine’s all-gal The Brood (another act representing the ’80s), followed by an appropriately gnarled up take of “Biff! Bang! Pow!” by The Secret Service and then the lean sprint of the Little Richard meets A-Bones mania of “Let’s Stomp” by The Mosquitos. Next is “The Flop” by The Swingin’ Neckbreakers, which hotwires some pro wrestling exaltation to a dance craze spazz out, and then another highlight, a beautiful barrel-through of “54 40 or Fight” by Dead Moon.
The Greenhornes swoop in late with some fratty R&B flavor (“No More”), setting the table for the exquisite organ spiked garage pop of The Cheapskates (“Run Better Run”). Then for the homestretch Cavestomp! Volume One offers “Good Guys Don’t Wear White” by The Standells and caps the whole shebang with “He’s Waiting” by The Sonics, establishing the set as thematically solid, and without a bum track in the bunch.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
