The Chocolate Watchband: No Way Out (180g) [ELEMENTAL]

Why you'll love it

This edition puts the 1967 Tower album on 180g vinyl, pressed in the EU. Its distorted guitars are cited as early proto-punk, and "Let's Talk About Girls" went on to open many a garage rock education via the 1972 Nuggets compilation.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Pressed in the EU
• Poly-lined inner sleeve
• Stereo mix

About the album

The band's name started out as a joke, which is about the last thing that was lightweight about The Chocolate Watchband. Formed in Los Altos, California, in 1965, they built a huge live following around San Jose and the Bay Area, with one critic calling them America's answer to the Rolling Stones.

Tower signed them in 1966, and producer Ed Cobb picked most of the songs for this debut, cut at American Recording Studios in Los Angeles in mid-1967. "Let's Talk About Girls" opens with a snarl, "Are You Gonna Be There (At the Love-In)" came out as a single that October, and "Gone and Passes By" is the band's own composition, a woozy piece of psychedelia. Covers of "Midnight Hour" and "Come On" show off the R&B roots, and "Expo 2000" and "Gossamer Wings" head somewhere far stranger.

Critic Bruce Eder called the material "highly potent, slashing, exciting, clever pieces of music," and garage rock fans have been nodding along ever since. Nearly sixty years on it still sounds like it's about to kick the amp over, which in garage rock is the highest compliment going.

Also at Kops: more The Chocolate Watchband on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Tower / Elemental (cat# 700242), a reissue of the 1967 album.