The New Tweedy Bros.

They tawt they taw a putty tat!

That was a great joke that the band members have never heard before.


The New Tweedy Bros! - Ridon 1968
Rating = 7

Born in Oregona, moved to San Francisca - TWEED BRUH'S!

Yes, it's great to sing songs about obscure '60s psych bands to the tune of Steve Martin's "King Tut," but at some point today's insightful readers demand more. It's for this reason that All-Music Guide exists. Hey everybody! Look at my ass!!! ----> (.)

The New Tweedy Brothers recorded only one (terrible) single and this brief 10-song LP before fading away into the woodworks of a dream. Nobody knows anything at all about them aside from their names and influences and what they're all doing now and stuff, but I tell you what: if you're in the market for an unknown old San Francisco band, these guys sure beat ass-hell out of the Grateful Dead and every Jefferson Airplane album aside from Surrealistic Pillow. And Moby Grape? Don't make me LAUGH! That bald bonehead can't even win a rivalry with Eminem, let alone form a duo with Shaun Ryder, so d

Although clearly very young and untutored, The New Tweedy Brothers made an honest effort to incorporate all kinds of different types of music into their set, from electric folk-rock to sleazy swing jazz to jugband oldtimey music to basic Stonesy choogle rock to psychedelic experimentation incorporating group chant/singing, viola scraping and full-on dramatic freakout (with triangle!). Not all of the experiments hold up forty years later (somehow I don't think the dark psych epic "Her Darkness In December" was intended to make the listener crack up at how fuckin' stupid and full of shit it is), and a few of the songs are so underwritten you can almost hear the studio clock ticking away as they struggled to come up with ten whole songs (Rock on, "I'd Go Anywhere"! Keep on not really having a melody!). However, spread among this screwy mess of lead electric pickin', rhythm chord skrankin' and vocals by must-be-17-year-olds are a couple of amazing songs that rival Buffalo Springfield in the anger-folk-psych department (ie "Somebody's Peepin'" and "I Can See It") and a few others that honestly sound like top-rate '90s lo-fi efforts - quieter and more amateurishly-sung than your favorite '60s hits, but very interestingly composed and arranged, full of creative ideas that are about 75% effective (egg "I See You're Looking Fine")(egexie "Somone Just Passed By")(eg-ie-eg-ie-o "Wheels Of Fortune").

Though short, this is a seriously interesting and worthwhile addition to your '60s folk/psych/rock collection. They love doing group vocals (harmony or otherwise), they're wicked cool at transmogressing their basic electric guitar/bass/drums setup by bringing in a harp (a REAL harp, not harmonica), a viola or whatever else they can find lying about, and no two songs on the record sound alike (especially the one where they all hum "Pomp & Circumstance" together at the beginning) (oh, and the one where the entire 'lyrics' component involves a guy wordlessly singing the same notes he's playing on the guitar). Certainly some of the numbers are more developed than others, but even the underwritten tracks make you feel good about the fact that they were able to release an LP before being forgotten forever by everybody on Earth including the band members themselves. Wait - Who the hell am I talking about?

And what are all those WORDS up there? What do they do!?

Dave?? Is this Dave???

Reader Comments

jjunea2@lsu.edu
Interesting addition. You should check out the review at www.lysergia.com. He disagrees about the "Her Darkness... track. I will look for it myself and eventually give my 5 cents worth. I appreciate the well written review though.

Thank you for being a Rainbow in the darkness of record reviews

JohnTBerg@msn.com (John Berg, Seattle fan of the NTBs)
Your "review" of the New Tweedy Brothers album is meant as a joke, right? Perhaps your entire website/blog is meant as a joke? A way to relieve stress or boredom or ???

Anyway, go to this site for a more intelligent review: http://www.rasputinmusic.com/manifesto_web/lostandfound0805.html

The "Lysergia" (run by my friend Patrick Lundborg in Sweden) website also has a decent review.

Many punters feel that this LP epitomizes the innocent first wave of "the West Coast Sound" before it was quickly corrupted. The band were indeed from Portland, ventured down to the S.F. Bay area circa 1966 and had a major influence on the "Warlocks" (who soon changed their name to "the Grateful Dead"). Both bands started off as quasi-jugbands but the addition of electric instruments and acid quickly steered them towards more fertile places. Once the 4 gents in the original "New Tweedy Bros" [by the way, their name was a tribute to the original "Tweedy Brothers" old time folk band of several decades earlier - not some dumb kittykat joke] saw the media hoardes decending upon "the Haight-Ashbury" scene, along with seemingly half the midwest, they headed home to their beloved Oregon hillcountry haunts, preferring obscure purity to the riches of being "discovered" and rendered impotent. Original bass player Dennis Fagaly departed the band to become a teacher before the band cut their LP, but at least one of his songs (Lazy Living) remained in the set, albeit in drastically shortened form (I have a tape of Dennis doing the entire song complete with several verses). They continued to play local music halls through 1969, releasing their sole LP with a bit of help from Rick Keefer at Ridon Records and his SeaWest studio, but doing most of the work themselves including the design and assembly of their LP sleeves. A fire at the printing plant destroyed half the "slicks", leaving behind over 100 orphaned and unplayed copies of the vinyl -- later to be reunited (by Thomas Hartlage of Shadoks Music) with newly minted sleeves made from the original negatives and virtually identical materials. The officially licensed and newly pressed vinyl reissue is an exact clone of the original 1968 album, while the CD adds the "alternate" (demo) take of Her Darkness In December along with the two sides of their DOT single from two years earlier (and another lifetime). The CD comes straight from the master tapes, courtesy of me and another Seattle area friend who came upon them via mysterious circumstances. We are currently working on tranferring a recently discovered live 1968 gig from reel to reel tape onto digital format, with possible future release being mulled over.

k2kelley@tds.net
If you want any history on these boys, I lived with them in the "Broadway House" in 1966. We used to sit around in the kitchen right after moving in, name off obscure songs and Danny would play and sing them. Danny was adapt at almost any instrument and had a real natural talent. I remember sitting around, in our usual state, and listening to Leadbelly songs. None of us had any money, none of us were going to school, we were too busy starting the hippy era.

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