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chocolate

  • hymns smI was a fan of Sonics/Seeds/Shadows of Knight-inspahrd garage grunt right up until the moment when the likes of the Hives (My new favorite band? Not likely, pal) and the execrable Jet arrived on the set – which coincidentally was around the same time I started running, not walking, away anytime some SXSW shill offered me a new band’s CD-R that sounded “just like the MC5!” It seemed to me that the whole trip was starting to sound not just stale and derivative, but even a tad bit formulaic. What to do, then, but recede back into my bunker with my Boris and Ornette Coleman records? But The Barman pulled my coat to these guys, and the Barman is an honourable man.

  • revolutions

    Beware reformations. Nostalgia is huge so trying to recapture past glories looks tempting on paper, but the reality often falls well short. Not so this 2012 re-assembly of Chocolate Watchband with four pieces of their 1966-67 line-ups in place on a redoubtable Scottish label. The band does sound markedly different to its original recorded persona. Drop the preconceptions and prejudices, however, judge this on its merits, and it works just fine.