The Elastik Band - The Elastik Band (1967-70/2007)

The Elastik Band's "Spazz" is the kind of single so strange and uncommercial that it boggles the mind as to how it managed to get released on a big label (Atco). Even by the standards of late 1967, when this came out, it was politically incorrect to the max, its lyrics viciously taunting a spastic, its standard blues-rock-garage verses bracketed by cheesy bursts of quasi-Oriental melodies. Could anyone have been surprised when it failed to make the charts?

From the San Francisco suburb of Belmont, the Elastik Band formed in 1965, and did one single as This Side Up, "Lose Yourself," for Century Records. "Spazz," their second single under the Elastik Band name, was released on Atco (according to the liner notes of the compilation The Elastik Band) after Action Records of San Mateo, CA, took the acetate to New York and the engineer met Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler in an elevator.
Following its release, the group signed to Kapp, which gave the Elastik Band more elaborate production than they'd had on their previous releases. The label did record about a couple albums' worth of music with the group, though it put out just a couple late-'60s singles with the band, the first of them ("I Would Still Love You") becoming a regional hit in Arizona. Their final 45, a cover of Jimmy Webb's "Tunesmith," was released in direct competition with a version of the same song by the Bards, with neither version becoming a hit. Universal (Kapp's parent company) then changed the group's name to Dangerfield, recording another album of material, though just one single ("Zig Zag Man"/"Rockpile") was issued.

For many years, the Elastik Band were known only for "Spazz," which gained fame among garage rock and psychedelic collectors due to its inclusion in the first volume of the Pebbles reissue series (getting resurrected again about 20 years later for the Nuggets box). In 2007, the compilation The Elastik Band, mixing released and unreleased material (including, of course, "Spazz"), illustrated that actually "Spazz" wasn't too typical of the group's material, which also spanned psychedelic pop in the spirit of the Electric Prunes, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and Association.