The Unclaimed: Shelley Ganz Talks About The "Primordial Ooze Flavored" EP, Fizzies & His Devotion To Garage Rock

Originally published in Rave-Up #8 (1984)

By Devorah Ostrov

"Primordial Ooze Flavored"
(Hysteria Records - 1983)

Ask Shelley Ganz, lead singer for the Unclaimed, what he wants to be when he grows up and he'll state: "Wanna be a farmer all year round!"

This is relevant. Because for Shelley, the '60s never ended. The bands he favors are the Seeds (the above quote came from their song, "The Farmer"), Count Five, the Syndicate of Sound, the Standells, and numerous other even more obscure '60s garage-rock groups. And with his band's recently released six-song EP, "Primordial Ooze Flavored" (Hysteria Records), Shelley says he hopes to bring back the feeling and the fun of that era.

Formed in April 1979 when guitarist Sid Griffin (late of punk band Death Wish) responded to Shelley's "musicians wanted" ad in The Recycler, the LA-based Unclaimed were at the forefront of the current garage rock revival. Shortly after the release of their 1980 four-song EP on Moxie Records, Griffin left the group (along with bassist Barry Shank) and formed the Long Ryders. But by then, the Unclaimed were playing to packed local clubs, and they'd progressed from covering little-known mid-'60s gems to being one of the few bands on the scene writing their own material — all of which could easily be mistaken for the genuine article.

We began the interview by gathering some background information on our fave rave.

The Unclaimed - early publicity photo with
Shelley Ganz and Sid Griffin.

Q: Were you born in Southern California?

Shelley: I was born in Hollywood, at the southern edge of Hollywood.

Q: As a kid, were you a big fan of '60s garage rock when it was happening?

Shelley: No, I was too young at the time it was happening. I only became aware of pop music a couple of years later, during the bubblegum era. Garage hit me when I was in boarding school in New York — which is too horrid an episode to get into. Luckily, I had a transistor radio so I could tune in to WCBS-FM, an "oldies" radio station. They played everything from Doo-Wop through surf and British Invasion to garage and bubblegum. It was literally the only thing that kept me from jumping out of a window.

Q: What it was that appealed to you so strongly about garage rock?

Shelley: It just hit me on an internal level. You get it or you don't. It talks to you or it doesn't. You hear something and it instantly grabs you. I remember very clearly hearing the intro to "Liar Liar" by the legendary Castaways on WCBS. I just froze. It was just... fantastic is not a strong enough word. I thought, "Oh my god, this is just the greatest!"

Poster for a 2015 show with the Outta Sites, the
Unclaimed & the Ogres at the Elbo Room in SF.

Q: Growing up, were you a Beatles fan or a Stones fan?

Shelley: I'm very tempted to laugh uproariously! You know the Stones covered "I Wanna Be Your Man," and you know the Beatles wrote it. Now, the Beatles' version is a very likable pop tune. But the Stones' version is this wicked cool, kick-ass, demonic death ray! And that's the difference between the two bands. A writer friend of mine put it this way: "The Beatles were more romantic; the Stones were more sexual." It's a profound statement. I don't profess to being that clever; I would just say that the Stones are more visceral.

Q: So, you're listening to oldies on WCBS-FM... Were you already thinking about forming your own band?

Shelley: No, not at that point. I loved the music, and I was very heavily into the Stones, but I was still quite young. So, when that school uhmm... thought I should be elsewhere, to put it mildly, I came back to LA and finished high school and started college. And that's when I became super garaged-out! One day, I was listening to KRTH — they were almost identical to WCBS; they played everything that WCBS played. So, I was listening to "Time Won't Let Me" by the Outsiders on KRTH... and BANG! I wanted to be the Outsiders. My thought was, I'm never gonna see the Outsiders, so I felt I had to become them. That's how passionate I was about garage rock. That's when I thought, I'm gonna have to put a band together that's devoted to garage. And that's when I started putting ads in The Recycler looking for like-minded people. And it slowly came together, but it was very slow.

The Unclaimed at the time of this interview
(publicity photo)

Q: How hard was it for you to find like-minded musicians to join the band?

Shelley: Well, it did take a few years to find the right group.

Q: Was it because no one understood what you were trying to do?

Shelley: That's one way to put it. It was tough because it's really a pigeonhole. The original garage scene only lasted for a couple of years.

Q: What kind of people responded to your advert?

Shelley onstage in 2013 at the Ugly Things 
30th-anniversary party. 

Shelley: A lot of hippies and ex-hippies... And y'know, God love 'em! But they were too far down the road, so to speak. They were beyond '65/'66. They were already up to '69. Somebody who'd played in Blue Cheer came down for a rehearsal...

Q: Which guy from Blue Cheer?

Shelley: Oh, I don't know. He played drums and he was a hippie. We played "Bad Girl" [by Zakary Thaks], but he couldn't quite get it. And we played "Dinah Wants Religion" [by the Fabs], but he couldn't quite get that, either. He wanted to go into a drum solo for five minutes. Haha!

Q: Were you called the Unclaimed from the beginning?

Shelley: No, there were a lot of names. I think we were called the Popes at one point. And we were the Uninvited for a little while. And from the Uninvited, we became the Unclaimed. There was a fantastic garage band called the Uncalled For. Oh, my god, they were so great! They had a song called "Do Like Me," and I was in love with that song. We used to cover it. And I kind of went, "The Uncalled For... The Unclaimed. That's it!"

Q: Where did the band make its debut?

Shelley: It was at the Nugget at Long Beach State. We opened for the Plimsouls.

Flyer for "another savage performance" by the Unclaimed
at the Troubadour in Los Angeles - January 30, 1980.

Q: That would've been a good show!

Shelley: Yeah, it was good! We played two sets. I remember the first song we played; it was "Little Girl" by the Syndicate of Sound — the greatest band of them all.

Q: What else did you play that night?

Shelley: Well, you see... I'd met Dave Gibson, who eventually produced our Moxie record, and he sold me a stack of singles for basically nothing. These were very rare and very obscure singles. So, our first set included a plethora of extremely obscure garage covers combined with some well-known '60s tunes by groups like the Chocolate Watchband.

Q: Did Peter Case give you some encouragement that night? He's very into garage rock.

Shelley: We were friends for a good two or three years prior to that. We would hang out and go to record stores. He's a very good cat, and he was very complimentary about our first set. He was very generous and kind with what he said when he saw us.

Q: This would have pre-dated the garage rock revival by quite a while.

Shelley: It pre-dated everything!

Q: What did the audience think?

The Unclaimed four-song EP (Moxie Records 1980)
Features two songs written by Sid Griffin and two written
by Shelley Ganz, including "Run from Home."

Shelley: I only have a recollection of our performance, and I just remember Peter beaming. That's all I can recall. I can't even see the audience. Presumably, they enjoyed it, but I just don't remember.

Q: In 1981, the Unclaimed track "Run from Home" was included on the Voxx Battle of the Garages LP. How did that come about?

Shelley: That was Greg Shaw's vision of what contemporary garage music was like, but half the group had left by then; that was the pivotal point. Sid was really into a more country sound, and I was into the grungier, punk sound of that period. So, we couldn't really come together on songwriting. We sort of did his songs and then we did my songs, and there was a constant battle. So, he split. But we're still pals.

Q: Wasn't "Run from Home" one of the two songs you wrote for the Unclaimed's 1980 Moxie EP?

Shelley: Yes, it was. But I thought the original version was recorded much too quickly, and in general, it's rather poor quality. We reworked it a bit for the Voxx LP. We enhanced the vocals and some of the guitars.

Q: Battle of the Garages was supposed to be a real Battle of the Bands, with write-in votes. Was an actual winner chosen from the entries?

Still rockin'! The Unclaimed in action at the Redwood - April 2019.
Photo: Boni Wolf Florian

Shelley: I don't know, it was probably the Chesterfield Kings. They did a cover of the Chocolate Watchband's tune "Are You Gonna Be There (At the Love-In)."

Q: Speaking of your East Coast rivals... The Chesterfield Kings offered 14 covers of obscure mid-'60s nuggets on their debut album. Meanwhile, you wrote five out of the six songs on "Primordial Ooze Flavored." What's your take on this difference between the two bands?

Shelley: I think the Chesterfield Kings are a great band! I think they chose superlative songs to cover and they did it brilliantly. Both our bands are very evocative of that stock mid-'60s sound. I'm pretty sure if you found their album and "Primordial Ooze Flavored" in a stack of records from 1966, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them and the originals. Not from a production end, anyway.

Flyer for an Unclaimed gig at Club 88, with support
from the Salvation Army & the Bangs (soon to become
the Three O'clock & the Bangles respectively).

Q: But I also think it's amazing that you're writing new songs which could easily be mistaken for the genuine article.

Shelley: Thank you! The Unclaimed's songs are strong. They may not be as great as the '60s punk hits that we all admire, but I don't think there's any loss of texture or quality in our original material. We just didn't think there was any point in recording covers because those songs are masterpieces. So, we were never really into that.

Q: How did you go about recording the "Primordial Ooze Flavored" EP? Did you try to get an "old" feeling?

Shelley: No, you see, we aren't trying to do it. We just do it. We know what we want, and we do it.

Q: So, you were able to use a regular, modern-day recording studio?

Shelley: Well, most of the studios are solid-state as opposed to tubes. But I think it's more like, if you know what you're doing and you sound how you want to, it's not really that important. A lot of the stuff was piecemeal recording, y'know, various bits and pieces here and there. We got bits of time for nothing or very, very cheaply. So, we just went up there and did as much as possible in the shortest period of time.

Q: You produced the EP yourselves?

Battle of the Garages - featuring the Unclaimed track
"Run from Home" (Voxx Records - 1981).

Shelley: Yeah! We had an engineer, but we essentially knew how to get the sounds. The problem with some bands is that they try too hard to capture "a sound." When the Seeds went to record, they didn't think: "Who are we going to emulate?" They just did it. Beatle boots and bowl haircuts are cool, but anyone can wear them. And that's not the criteria for cool anyway. A bunch of the mid-'60s garage groups look like physics students — like they'd be late for chemistry!

Q: Are you happy with how "Primordial Ooze Flavored" turned out?

Shelley: Uhmm... three-quarters happy. We learn more every time we go into the studio. We're not complete experts, and we were on a limited budget.

Q: Have you seen any reviews of "Primordial Ooze Flavored"?

Shelley: A local writer in a local paper said that it was easily the most stock sounding thing he'd heard, and why we weren't stars was beyond his imagination. Stuff like that. He liked it a lot! He was really nice; I thought about sending him some fruit.

Lost Trails #7 - Italian fanzine featuring an
Unclaimed/Vipers split single (1988).

Q: Have you had the opportunity to hear your songs on the radio?

Shelley: Yes! They played "Walk on the Water" on Rodney's [Bingenheimer] show, and they played "No Apology" a lot 'cause that's a very hot track. Rodney is always good to us.

Q: Are you hoping to get picked up by a major label?

Shelley: Y'know, that's like every kid's dream! That and a free trip to Hawaii. But yeah, it would be nice if we could make a living on what we like to do.

Q: The EP cover artwork is really interesting. How did that design come about?

Shelley: The cover is kind of hard to define. I got the idea from Fizzies. I dug some up and thought, "This wouldn't be bad." So, that's where I got it. But I dig it! The whole kinda cruddy, amusement park meets Halloween, meets B-horror movies, meets cotton candy that sticks to your shoe!

Q: Do you ever feel like you've held yourself back by locking yourself into such a specific musical timeframe?

Shelley: No! Because I love that timeframe. I worship it! I adore it! I can honestly say it's my religion. This is all I listen to. Other than bubblegum and a few notable exceptions, like the New York Dolls, the Ramones, and the Damned, I don't buy records that came out after Brian Jones died. I kinda feel like he took all the coolness with him. After '69, rock 'n' roll became big business, and it became really serious. But if you dig around there's stuff out there that is such a gas to listen to. The greatest things are songs like "Little Girl." It's utterly simple, and it really floors you!

Vintage Fizzies packages

★ ★ ★

The new Unclaimed EP
(Groovie Records)

But wait! The Unclaimed story isn't over. They've got a new self-titled, four-song EP on Groovie Records. You can listen to one of the fab tracks ("You Never Come") and find out how to order your copy here: theunclaimed.bandcamp.com

"I like to refer to our new songs as bubble-garage," says Shelley. "I've always adored bubblegum music. It followed garage chronologically, and these new songs have both qualities — garage and bubblegum forged together. And I think they're delightful!"

* Follow the Unclaimed on their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/TheUnclaimed

* Join the Friends Who Like The Unclaimed Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups 

* Watch the video for "You Never Come" on YouTube: www.youtube.com

The Standells: Banned In The USA!

Originally published in American Music Press (1990s)

By Devorah Ostrov

The Standells - publicity photo

It's hard to imagine in these days of "Cop Killer," "As Nasty as They Wanna Be," and Madonna that four nice young men who simply suggested their fans "Try It" could cause such a hullabaloo. The commotion took place in mid-sixties America, and the group was the Standells, who were following up their smash teen-angst hits "Dirty Water" and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" with the psychedelically infused and swiftly banned exhortation. Writing from the distance of 1972 in the liner notes to Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, rock historian and Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye declared the banning of "Try It" an honor. In reality, it spelled the end of the Standells' career.

"This guy, [radio mogul] Gordon McLendon, thought he was going to clean up the rock 'n' roll scene," fumes Standells' drummer/vocalist Dick Dodd.

Dodd, along with the group's keyboardist/vocalist Larry Tamblyn and guitarist Tony Valentino, had turned out in LA for a rare screening of Riot On Sunset Strip, which features performances by both the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband. "He was just a lot of hot air," continues Dodd, "but he was a very powerful man. He owned a bunch of radio stations across the country, and he said, 'I'm gonna tell kids what to buy and what to listen to.'"

"He went on the news," remarks Tamblyn, "showed a picture of our record and said, 'Don't buy this. It's a filthy record.' He made a national campaign out of us."

Shockingly innocent, the song never actually divulges what the band is urging its listeners to try, although popular opinion held it was a blatant plea for a girl to surrender her virginity.

Dodd recalls: "At the time, we just said, 'Well... er... uh... just try having a good time.' That's baloney! 'Try It' meant TRY IT! But McLendon took us on a TV show [Art Linkletter's House Party] and tried to rip us apart!"

However, like the P.M.R.C. vs. Twisted Sister/Frank Zappa hearings over record labeling some twenty years later, the moralistic moron underestimated the intelligence of the supposedly long-haired hooligans, and the nationally televised debate was a decided victory for rock 'n' roll.

Banned! The Standells' Try It LP

"We creamed the guy," exclaims Tamblyn. "Even my brother, who's an arch-conservative, said we made the guy look like an idiot!" (The brother he's referring to is Warren; his other brother is actor Russ West Side Story Tamblyn.)

"He said how bad we were, how bad we were for the country," states Dodd. "We asked him about that song from the '30s. The lyrics go: 'Bees do it/Birds do it... Let's do it.' Well, what's 'do it'? It's the same as 'try it'! Plus, Larry had found out some things about McLendon..."

"We'd gone to Dallas [McLendon's hometown] to do some shows," says Tamblyn. "I found out that the man was a pervert! He'd been booked for statutory rape of his 13-year-old niece. So, we planted people in the [television] audience, and every time it looked like he was making some headway, somebody would yell out, 'What about your niece, McLendon?' He'd get red and look out into the audience to see who was saying it."

Dodd adds, "There were so many kids there with posters saying STANDELLS! and WE'VE TRIED IT! that it was pretty one-sided. But it was either going to be that way or everyone would've been on his side. I don't think it would've evened out, so we could've had an adult discussion about the song."

The band wasn't always so controversial. In fact, the liner notes to The Hot Ones! — a collection of Top Ten hits covered by the Standells that included the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville," the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon," and Sam the Sham's "Lil' Red Riding Hood" — makes them sound about as wild as the Archies: "The Standells really like doing what they do. Sure, part of it's being famous and making money and who doesn't like that? But these four guys honestly dig their music, their performances, their recordings — yes, their fans too. They enjoy being a group."

Tamblyn and Valentino ("and two other guys") formed the nucleus of the Standells in 1962. The group's first job was in Hawaii as part of a Japanese floor show at the Oasis Club — they went on right after the stripper! When bassist Jody Rice and drummer Benny King left a few months later, Tamblyn assumed the leadership of the group (at one point the band's full name was Larry Tamblyn and the Standels; they added the extra l in 1963), and they came home to California.

The Standells - publicity photo

Tamblyn picks up the story: "We were booked into some horrible club. Right from Hawaii we went to Fresno, and it was one of those clubs where we were playing to two or three people. We finally picked up [bassist] Gary Lane [later replaced by Dave Burke] and [drummer] Gary Leeds [establishing the band's first solid lineup] and played a number of clubs in Eureka and Sacramento. Eventually, we came back to LA, and there was an opening at the Peppermint West. It was the hot spot at the time!"

The Peppermint West was also where the band hooked up with manager Bert Jacobs. Tamblyn recounts the succinct negotiations: "He came in and said, 'Hey, I'd like to get you a contract and do a record.'"

Jacobs lived up to his word. Not only did he get the group a recording contract with Capitol Records subsidiary Tower he also arranged appearances for them in cheesy teen flicks like Get Yourself A College Girl and Zebra In The Kitchen. The band performed regularly on American Bandstand and Where The Action Is, and even guest-starred as rowdy housesitters for The Munsters in the episode "Far Out Munster." And no one lets Dodd forget about that.

"Every time somebody sees it, they say, 'Hey, Dodd, I saw you on TV last night. God, didn't you guys know how to sing back then?' We went in to record the songs for the show ["Do the Ringo" and a cover of "I Want to Hold Your Hand"], and this old guy came out and put the mike in the middle of the room, right? He goes into this booth, and I'm looking at the rest of the guys going, 'I don't believe this.' No headsets, no dividers, no nothing! He says, 'Go through the song.' We thought we were putting down a basic track — putting the bass, guitar, and drums on one track. So, we went through it a couple of times. Then he comes out and says, 'All right, we're going to take one. Now sing real loud.' We didn't do the music and then sing to the tape. We had to sing REAL LOUD!"

Exactly how the Standells went from safe churners of Top Ten covers to snarling teen punks is still being deliberated, but it all centers around a fortuitous meeting with producer/ songwriter Ed Cobb — himself a member of the ultra-clean Four Preps. The liner notes to a Rhino Records Best Of compilation lean towards giving Cobb the imaging credit: "Rather than a combined future in a Disneyland-like middle American heaven, Ed and the boys pulled a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and bounded back with a very seething, resentful, provoking approach that was very influenced by the Rolling Stones."

On the other hand, Dodd (a former Mouseketeer, who replaced Gary Leeds in 1964 when Leeds joined the Walker Brothers) recalls his own sway on the group: "When I met the band they all wore suits, and they were playing really danceable, kind of tra-la-la music, while I was really into rock 'n' roll." He also acknowledges the group's effect on Cobb: "He was a real clean-cut kid. Then he met us and kind of changed!"

"Far Out Munster" — the Munsters meet the Standells

Whatever happened, it was Cobb who brought the Standells their first (and biggest) hit: "Dirty Water." Because of the song's well-known tag line ("I love that dirty water/Boston you're my home"), it's still hard to convince people that the Standells were LA-based. But the lyrics — which reference "lovers, muggers, and thieves" — were written about an actual incident. "Ed was in Boston," says Dodd, "and he was walking by the Charles River with his girlfriend checking out how grungy the water was, and some guy tried to jump him."

Tower released the single towards the end of 1965. By all accounts, the label didn't have any great belief in the tune, but it coveted a Ketty Lester record that Cobb had also produced. In July of the following year, "Dirty Water" astonished everyone when it climbed to #11 on the Billboard national chart.

"We kind of recorded it and then put it away," chuckles Valentino. "We were recording some songs with Sonny Bono at the time..."

"Yeah!" Tamblyn breaks in. "We recorded it along with 'Rari' and several others and had forgotten about it."

"We recorded it in a studio above this garage," reminisces Dodd. "It wasn't even air-conditioned or anything, and it was so hot in LA. The room was a sweatbox! So, we did 'Dirty Water,' and we all kind of looked at each other and went, 'Eh.' Then Ed called me up and said, 'Let's work on this vocal some more,' because he really didn't have the whole song finished. I came up with most of the last verse and [the intro]":

"I'm gonna tell you a story

I'm gonna tell you about my town

I'm gonna tell you a big fat story, baby

Yeah, it's about my town..."

The amazing success of "Dirty Water" meant the Standells were in a position to tour the States. That they did so as openers for the Rolling Stones made the shows legendary. Just how did that US tour come about?

According to Dodd, he pleaded with Bill Wyman to take the Standells on the road with the Stones. "I was always saying, 'C'mon, take us on tour, man. You guys are really big stuff!' And this was just at the time that they were really hitting. The English thing was just humungous! So, Bill's saying, 'If you guys had a hit record...' Then for some reason, we were in Seattle, and our manager called us up saying, 'You guys will not believe what happened. You're #1 in Miami!' From being #1 in Miami — that's where the song broke — it just spread. The next thing I knew, we were on tour with the Rolling Stones. And in every city we played, 'Dirty Water' was at #1!"

It must have been a culture shock to go out on a tour of that magnitude, not just because of the Stones themselves, but the hysteria surrounding them.

Advert for the Standells at the Cheetah

"Yeah, that part was really weird," agrees Tamblyn. "Our first show — I remember it vividly — was in Boston. We were bigger than the Stones in Boston because of 'Dirty Water.' And there was a big riot. They were throwing tear gas at kids when we drove through town. It was like a war zone!"

"We'd get off the plane and there'd be 50,000 kids waiting to see the Stones," recollects Dodd, "and we'd have our limo, and the McCoys [fronted by a barely teenaged Rick Derringer] would jump into their limo... This is a funny story: We were doing a soundcheck somewhere in the Midwest. The Stones hardly ever came to soundchecks, and usually we really couldn't get a soundcheck. So us and the McCoys were just jamming, y'know. It was an empty auditorium. I wasn't playing drums; I was up front doing this whole Mick Jagger thing — just going crazy! I had a pair of sweat socks stuffed down the front of my pants, and I was prancing and dancing around. Everybody was cracking up! Then all of a sudden, we heard some people clapping toward where the lightboard was, and there were Mick and Keith just cracking up! He says, 'Very good. Very, very good.' I was so embarrassed. I was just going, 'Oh, no.' But he thought it was funny. Nothing ever came down that he thought we were making fun of him."

The two follow-up 45s — "Why Pick on Me" and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" — lent their titles to the group's second LP but didn't sprint up the charts quite as quickly (reaching #54 and #43, respectively). Yet both maintained the gritty rhythm and blues attitude of "Dirty Water," and the growled lyrics cemented the Standells' tough stance...

"Good guys, bad guys which is which

The white-collar worker or the digger in the ditch

Hey, and who's to say who's the better man

When I've always done the best I can..."

Another Cobb-penned tune from the second album, "Have You Ever Spent the Night in Jail," was again based on personal experience. Recorded a year before the notorious Rolling Stones' drug busts, it was evidence, claimed one report, that the Standells were "the equivalence of a menacing, musical street gang."

With the Try It album, released in 1967, the Standells began to flirt with a new psychedelic style. This experimentation culminated in two of their most innovative songs: the title track single, and the hypnotic "All Fall Down," written by Dodd. (While the original LP gave Dodd sole writer's credit, subsequent reissues and best-of compilations give co-writing credit to John Fleck).

Dodd remembers their producer being resistant to including "All Fall Down" on the album due to its anti-war sentiments. "I really fought for that one," he reflects. "It makes me feel good that you like it."

"I was hanging out at the Whisky," Dodd explains of the group's changing direction, "and all these bands were playing there — Love, the Byrds... That whole drug scene. In those days, everybody was getting high." Noting some raised eyebrows, he hurriedly tacks on, "I, myself, just drank milk!" Then he reveals how he came to write "All Fall Down": "I got mad one night because of what was happening in Vietnam. I was watching the news, seeing all these guys running through the fields, getting shot, dropping like flies. Then the announcer said, 'We're in the race again...' And this nursery rhyme was going through my head — Ring around the rosy/Pocket full of posies/Ashes, ashes/We all fall down."

The Standells never recouped the losses from the banning of "Try It." Valentino points out that the song was #1 at every radio station playing it prior to the ban, which is estimated to have cost at least one million dollars in lost radio play and sales. "Our management could have really turned the ban into a gold mine," asserts Tamblyn, "but they didn't do it. They were scared; they didn't want to do anything to rock the boat."

Cover photo for the Dirty Water LP (Tower Records - 1966)

And their problems were further compounded by the release of some risky singles, which ultimately led to the end of the band's career. The first 45 to flop was the non-album track "Don't Tell Me What to Do" b/w "When I Was a Cowboy" (the B-side is categorized as a "psychedelic/western"). Released prior to "Try It" and recorded under the pseudonymous moniker Sllednats (Standells spelled backwards), no one was surprised by its lack of sales. "Nobody knew who it was," comments Tamblyn.

The group's final singles were "Can't Help but Love You," an unconvincing stab at Stax-inspired soul which only reached #78 in the charts, and "Animal Girl," an out-of-character, standard love song which failed to chart at all.

But nothing beats the sounds on those mid-sixties Standells' records, as dozens of current bands imitating the aggressive stance of "Dirty Water" will attest to.

"The thing about it was, Ed wasn't really trying to capture great musicianship," offers Dodd, giving producer/songwriter Cobb as much credit as the band itself for the music's lasting impact. "He was just trying to capture an emotion, and he did a pretty good job. There's a few mistakes here and there, but the feel was right. We weren't hot musicians or anything. We just had something, a chemistry, that made us sound the way we did. We played well together."

By the way, what did they think of Riot On Sunset Strip twenty-five years on?

Dodd: Well, when it first came out, people weren't laughing that much. The language... The way the kids were saying things like, "C'mon bird, let's fly out of this joint!"

Tamblyn: And nobody ever really said, "Let's cut out!" Or when that reporter was talking to the other one, saying, "These kids are on grass and acid."

And what about their own performance?

Tamblyn: I thought we looked pretty good, actually! I compared it with some of the other groups [in the film], and I thought we could be doing the same thing today and pass pretty well.

This article was revised on April 17, 2017, based on information gratefully received from @Standells on Twitter.