songs for broken hearts, no. 29

Have you ever had one of those days where you have a rocky time of it just as soon as you get out of bed, and then the rest of the day goes down the toilet as a result? That's the kind of day I had today. The first 15 waking minutes are so key to the way the rest of my day goes. If I stumble out of the gate, I rarely recover and it's best to just put the day to bed as quickly as possible. So I'm not gonna have much that's all that scintilating to say about tonight's song for a broken heart, except that Paul Revere and the Raiders are one of my favorite American bands of the 60s. I don't know how much these guys played their own instruments and how much was the work of LA session players, but the music that came came out under the Paul Revere banner was some of the most electrifying shit you'll ever hear. They worked a lot with Terry Melcher, the guy who produced the Byrds (and, as an aside, was the real target of the Manson Family on the night of the Sharon Tate massacre), and I think he had a big hand in their rough-and-tumble sound. It's a sound you don't really expect when you see the costumes they wore and the somewhat prissy dance routines they did. But lord have mercy! Their stuff is undoubtedly garage punk-ish and, in the absnece of their silly costumes and dance routines, they would have been remembered much more fondly. Most people when they think of Paul Revere and the Raiders remember them as a joke. It's really too bad. Check out the rockingness of the Telecaster in tonight's song, for starters. I think it might be the rockingest guitar playing I've ever heard, and the added vibe you get from the go-go dancers gives you a taste of how exiciting it was on the Sunset Strip at the height of human civilization...