the remains - the remains

The stereotype of 60s garage rock bands is that they were all made up of a bunch of teenagers who could barely play their instruments, kids who just wanted to make noise and managed to stay in tempo long enough to mash out one or two singles that were the talk of the neighborhood before fading off into obscurity and the occasional post-Nuggets burst of trendiness. And for the vast majority of these bands, that's completely true. Which is why we love them. Who can resist a band like the Rats, who pounded out three shitty chords for five minutes straight, repeated the word "rats" over and over with scattered meaningless lyrics about how they are, in fact, the Rats, and then cut it in half to make up both sides of a single? That's pure rock 'n roll right there.

But then there are the anomalies. Some of those no-talent, one-off teenage outbursts actually had some talent *gasp* and released some damn good records. The Shadows of Knight, the Standells, the Count Five, and so on. Some of those bands are actually really, really good, to the point that they left marks on the music world far greater than mere compilation footnotes. The Seeds, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Monks, hell even Paul Revere & the Raiders fit that category.

And then there's the Remains.

This is a band that should've been huge. These guys had the garage rock attitude down to an art form, but they did it all with a tightness and precision that you just can't find amongst their peers. They were just as ugly as the Stones, if not uglier, and their Boston swagger topped everything those wannabe badass schoolboys had to offer. And they had the songs to boot--nothing anywhere close to the Stones' seminal singles, but you could easily place their only studio album against any of the early Stones albums. Just as the Stones grew into their skin and stopped releasing albums made up almost entirely of Chuck Berry covers, these guys too would've grown into a monstrous rock 'n roll force over time. They just gave up too soon.

And who can blame them, really? The Remains would sell out every show they played in the New England area, with fans lining up halfway through the city to see them in Boston, but they still couldn't get an ounce of recognition outside of their home turf. Not to mention, if I was in a band still covering songs like "Diddy Wah Diddy" and I heard Rubber Soul for the first time, I'd want to give up too. They were a Beatles opening band and didn't seem destined for much else as long as those Liverpool assholes were parading around with their goofy hair and pseudo-reckless drug use and groundbreaking pop songwriting.

The Remains were stuck somewhere between the instant super-stardom of the Beatles and the trashy underground appeal of every other garage band in America. They never recorded their "She Loves You" or "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," but "Don't Look Back" is still miles beyond anything the Rats could've spat out.

So are the Remains really "America's Lost Band"? Sure. Would they really have become America's answer to the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? Probably not. But would I have still loved to hear their sophomore album? You're goddamn right.