One of my favorite 1960s bands was a band called The Remains, or sometimes Barry and the Remains. They were from Boston, and they were great. Of the millions of 1960s garage bands that formed in the wake of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I have to say that the Remains had an insane number of great songs that they wrote themselves, and also recorded the best versions of other people’s songs (for instance, a young Billy Vera wrote one of their best numbers, called “Don’t Look Back”). They had a hard-driving style, snotty with proper punk delivery, but also with lots of interesting chord changes, melodies and vocal harmonies. Not just a couple good songs, but several dozen truly great songs. Their big claim to fame was touring as the opening act for the Beatles on most of their 1966 national tour, along with the Ronettes.
The Remains re-formed and performed at several garage-rock festivals back in the 1990s. When I found out they would be performing at the Las Vegas Grind festival at the Gold Coast Casino in 1999, I was thrilled, not only because I would be there and could see them play, but also because I had been hired to provide the backline for all the groups at this festival.
If you know me, you know that proper tone is a major component of the music that I love. And while I’ve certainly seen it possible to translate the energy and emotion of the music I love with modern gear, or gear that isn’t “right,” it’s always been a particular thrill to me when I see one of my favorite artists of the previous decades playing their older equipment and still getting that killer TONE they got on their original records.
Well, I was thrilled that the Remains would be playing on my gear. I brought my best stuff: a 1965 Ludwig four-piece drum kit, a Fender Dual Showman amp with two JBL 15-inch speakers for the bass, an old Fender Super Reverb and a Twin Reverb for guitar and keyboard, and best of all, an original 1950s-era Wurlitzer Electric Piano—a trademark of the original Remains sound.
The Remains had a rehearsal and sound check scheduled for something ridiculously early on the day they were to play—9 am, if memory serves. I had everything ready to go, and the guys showed up ready to play in a small rehearsal room located backstage at the Gold Coast casino. If I recall correctly, it was the four original members of the band, promoter Josh aka Sinbad J Collins, Babz, his wife and partner, and myself.
They started playing “Why Do I Cry” and the three of us bystanders looked at each other with disbelief. IT SOUNDED EXACTLY, and I mean EXACTLY, like their original record. It was freakin’ unbelievable! There it was, the same hard driving TONE that defined why these guys were so great. The electric piano had the “bite” and proper unhinged, slightly out-of-control sound from the records. It was PERFECT. My jaw hung open as I watched my heroes. They were so freakin’ GOOD!! They played with the same fire and fever they had in the original 1960s era, and the TONE WAS PERFECT. I’ve never heard an original 1960s band sound so good.
For about an hour, they rehearsed all their songs—“Don’t Look Back,” “All Good Things,” “I Believe In You,” “Lonely Weekend,” “You Got a Hard Time Coming,” “Diddy Wah Diddy,” and tons more. I watched and listened. It was perhaps the most perfect hour of 1960s rock and roll I’ve ever had the opportunity to witness. It all happened in this small rehearsal room, with just myself and Josh and Babz in attendance. The memory of it is seared in my brain.
They finished their rehearsal, and…immediately the backlash began:
“This old drum set SUCKS! All this old hardware SUCKS! I need the promoter to get me a new, modern kit for the gig tonight!”
“Yeah, and I can’t use this old Wurlitzer electric piano at the gig. It’s too unreliable. I’ll need some kind of modern keyboard.”
And so on. The Remains hated all my old original 1960s gear.
They brought in Tom Ingram, the other promoter of the event, who was then forced to shell out hundreds of dollars on top of the money he was already paying me to get Studio Equipment Rentals to bring over the modern gear they requested. It was a bad scene, and hugely embarrassing to me. The worst part about it was that the rehearsal had sounded so ON POINT it would have made people’s heads explode!
At the gig that evening, the Remains still killed it. They were a great band and had lost none of their chemistry. But the tone of the keyboards and the drums was fully modern. I guess that’s the way they wanted it. But all these years later, I still can’t get the sound I heard in that rehearsal out of my head. It was spot on, and the gig wasn’t anywhere close. It lacked the proper TONE. It broke my heart, to tell you the truth.
Don’t let me rattle on: I have a ton of stories like this, including renting my Vox Continental organ to ? and the Mysterians (sublime) to the great Ray Sharpe insisting on using his chorus pedal at every show (I eventually learned that if I turned off his chorus pedal after the first song, he didn’t notice), or Sonny Burgess playing this horrific Gibson Corvus guitar (google it) that he thought was so cool and modern looking. I mean, vintage gear isn’t everything, and I hate snobbery as much as the next guy. But sometimes, I’m telling you, when the right combination of player and equipment comes together….it’s magic. It’s goosebumps time. And the thing that really made those 1960s bands come together was a meeting of all those great TONES coming together into something amazing and great. That’s the stuff I live for. I’m lucky I’ve had so many of these goosebumps moments in my career.
I’m playing The Remains at full blast tonight and remembering how freaking great that rehearsal was. I’ll never forget it. What a band.
