The Flamin' Groovies - 68/70 (1992)

The Flamin Groovies are a band who built a career out of demonstrating the positive aspects of living in the past. While they first rose to fame in San Francisco in the late '60s, they had little interest in the psychedelic music that was all the rage in the Bay Area. Instead, the Groovies celebrated the joys of first-era rock & roll and vintage R&B, as well as the greasy raunch of early-'60s rock. They came up with the classic tune "Teenage Head" from the similarly classic LP of the same name in 1971, but after some lineup changes, the band evolved into British Invasion obsessives whose songs echoed the glory days of the Beatles (with some of the Byrds' 12-string jangle mixed in.) Their second classic song "Shake Some Action" -- which was the title track of their 1976 album of the same name -- is a chiming, elegiac ballad that helped define the softer side of power pop in the mid-'70s. Some form of band -- always helmed by guitarist Cyril Jordan -- continued playing on and off in the following decades and released what seemed like a final record, Rock Juice, in 1993. Jordan revived the group in the 2000s and various permutations of the classic line-ups played festivals and toured. In 2017, they released their first album in more than two decades, Fantastic Plastic.
The Flamin Groovies' story began in 1965, when Cyril Jordan, a guitarist who dug Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles, was a high school sophomore. Jordan had been playing in a band with drummer Ron Greco when he met like-minded teen musician George Alexander, who played bass. Alexander was working on music with his friends Roy Loney (vocals and guitar) and Tim Lynch (guitar), and they invited Jordan and Greco over one evening to jam. Over the course of the evening, the five musicians learned 20 songs, and decided they had the makings of a real band. Jordan and Greco teamed with Loney, Lynch, and Alexander, forming a combo first known as the Chosen Few, and then the Lost and Found. This edition of the band played teen dances and Battles of the Bands, but briefly broke up before reassembling in August 1966, with drummer Danny Mihm replacing Greco. (Greco would later play bass with pioneering San Francisco punk band Crime.)..