VA - Garagemental! The Cuca Records Story Volume 2 (2006)

Based in Sauk City, WI, the Cuca label was so small it made barely any commercial impact, even on a regional level (its big claim to fame was releasing the original version of the Fendermen's "Mule Skinner Blues," which became a big hit when it was re-recorded shortly afterward in 1960.) The label did, however, release many recordings in the '60s. Not all of those were of rock music, but this 26-track collection, Garagemental!: The Cuca Records Story, Vol. 2, focuses on the garage rock and psychedelic music Cuca issued in the mid- to late '60s, most taken from rare singles, with five of the cuts previously unreleased. Like many such efforts undertaken in small towns by obscure bands of the era, these are more reflections of how big trends were mimicked and trickled all the way down to young local acts far removed from the action than they are repositories of innovative obscure gems. As such documents go, however, this anthology isn't bad, piling on more evidence of how British Invasion, folk-rock, and psychedelic sounds mutated into something more naive and amateurish (if energetic) when it reached the hinterlands. Echoes of Merseybeat, the Byrds, Paul Revere & the Raiders, and one- or two-shot psychedelic pop bands like the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Electric Prunes abound, even if none of the songs are outstanding. Sometimes, unsurprisingly for those who've heard a lot of this stuff, the material becomes quite derivative: it's easy to mistake "Is Love Real" for a cover of the Nightcrawlers' "Little Black Egg" until the singing starts. There are also some not-so-hot covers of songs by much bigger artists, though the Hitchhikers get points for doing a folk-rock treatment of a Bob Dylan song that wasn't often rocked up ("One Too Many Mornings"), and the lead female vocals and horns on Raylene & the Blue Angels' "Shakin' All Over" make for a nice change of pace in this company. The Challengers' instrumental "The Challengers Take a Ride on the Jefferson Airplane" takes the prize for psychedelic outrage, both for its song title and its deranged combination of fuzz guitar, pounding piano, and washing-machine-tumble percussion.