The
Remains | The Remains
Epic/Legacy Records
Review
by Peter Aaron
Besides
being the biggest regional draw in New England, The Remains were
the proud owners of another honor to which none of their envious,
Nuggets-anthologized American peers could lay claim: They actually
got to tour with The Beatles. In the summer of 1966, the Boston
quartet was an opening act on what ended up being the Fab Four’s
final jaunt, an adventure later chronicled by Remains singer-guitarist
and leader Barry Tashian in his book Ticket to Ride: The Extraordinary
Diary of The Beatles’ Last Tour. It’s also probably
safe to add that not many other garage bands are the subject of
both a documentary film [They Were How You Told a Stranger About
Rock ’n’ Roll] and a stage musical [All Good Things].
But
of course any such marks of distinction would ring hollow if the
music didn’t measure up. No worries there. Despite the intervening
40 years since its original release, this, The Remains’ sole
1960s LP, will still put a pointy-toed Chelsea boot squarely in
your butt. Packed with tough, Brit Invasion-influenced proto-hard
rock, the foursome’s debut is marked by wild guitar, contagious
harmonies, frenetic drumming, and, in particular, keyboardist Bill
Briggs’s electric piano, which sounds like it’s augmented
by a harpsichord much of the time.
According
to legend, The Remains was comparatively overproduced and failed
to capture the band’s fabled high-energy live show—a
belief most listeners will have difficulty swallowing once they’ve
had their skulls kicked in by “Once Before,” “You’ve
Got a Hard Time Coming,” or the explosive version of Petula
Clark’s [!] “Heart.” If this is indeed the glossed-over
version of The Remains, they must’ve really been something
live; it’s pretty easy to picture sweatsoaked prep-school
mods frugging vengefully to these tunes in the basement of the Rathskellar
or at some campus beer-bust. [The covers-heavy, posthumously released
live set, A Session with The Remains, perhaps offers a truer glimpse.]
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