I once read their music described as “primordial punk” and it’s a description that really fits. The term “punk” is used and abused so much that it doesn’t really mean anything anymore. When a subgenre includes everything from Iggy and the Stooges to Nomeansno, from Dead Boys to Chaos U.K., you know it’s become just too damn broad. This is why I am not a fan of genre labels. Music itself is so diverse that the handles assigned to different styles become useless. Nevertheless, The Standells are “primordial punk” in the sense that they are a great 1960′s garage band with a lot of attitude.
Dirty Water was released in 1966. The title track, as well as “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White,” are both classic Standells tracks. ”Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” has been covered by Minor Threat and The Wretched Ones, and it really captures the punk attitude of celebrating individuality whether it’s for better or worse. Whether it was written for image, or sincerely from the heart, the sentiment is basically this: This is who I am, take it or leave it because I don’t care. Consider the spoken word ending as the song fades out:
“You mean those guys in the white collars are better than I am baby? Then flake off!
You don’t dig this long hair? Get yourself a crewcut baby!”
Musically the album is very solid garage rock with bass, guitars, drums and keyboard. Most original material was penned not by the band but by Ed Cobb (who also wrote “Tainted Love” for Gloria Jones.) This day in age it seems strange to have a hired songwriter for a band but it was fairly commonplace in the 1960′s. The notion of “singer-songwriter” was not the norm at the time. And don’t forget that although Cobb wrote much of the stronger material, the interpretations by The Standells are really what brought it to life.
The write-up on the back of the jacket of Dirty Water markets the band as an up-and-coming group of young men that are “going places in a big, big way!” There are headshots of each band member with descriptions beneath that read almost like an OkCupid profile. That strategy all changed with their 1967 album Try It.
Try It is -from a marketing standpoint – an image makeover for The Standells. The selling point here is the fact that the title track was banned. In fact the word “Banned!” is the first thing you notice when you look at the album.
And just in case you couldn’t deduce that the song “Try It” was banned by reading the front cover, it’s reiterated on the back cover. I’m not sure under what circumstances the song was banned, who banned it, or when. Apparently somewhere along the line, someone found it to be sexually suggestive and controversial so this was used as a selling point. It should be no surprise that the song itself is very tame. Tamer even than Tommy James and The Shondells’ “I Think We’re Alone Now.”
Although not as good as Dirty Water, overall Try It is a good record and has enough going for it to make it worthwhile. The first few tracks on side 1 (one of them being a Wilson Pickett cover) are more along the lines of R&B and just don’t quite work for The Standells. They have a bit more polished production value and also have a brass section. The best material is the good old garage rock such as “Try It,” “Barracuda,” and “Riot On Sunset Strip.”
