Originally released on LP in 1985,
Vile Vinyl, Vol. 1 collects 16 rare American garage rock recordings from the 1960s, documenting little-known acts who managed to sound reasonably professional while delivering frantic sounds in the studio. Ranging from the good-natured pop of the Shy Guys' "Lay It on the Line" to the genuinely deranged "Thoughts of a Madman" by the Nomads (from North Carolina, not the later Swedish band) and the snarling "How Is the Air Up There?" from the Changin' Times,
Vile Vinyl covers a broad range of garage sounds, and there are some real gems here. Every band in the land must have played "Gloria" at one time or another, but Florida's
the Belles were an all-gal combo who had the vision to give it a gender switch and transformed
Them's classic into "Melvin." The Jolly Green Giant sound like the world's greatest
Sonics tribute band on "Caught You Redhanded," with the singer even approximating Gerry Roslie's iron-throated howl. While the compilers get the Paniks' name wrong (they spelled it the Panicks), their "You're My Baby" is a stone classic no matter how many letters are in the name. And Bobby Roberts & the Ravons merge garage rock bashing and frat rock twistability on "How Can I Make Her Mine?." Plenty of these tunes would pop up on other garage rock compilations over the years, making
Vile Vinyl, Vol. 1 less important for those looking to round up obscure numbers, but the album's ratio of great tunes to filler is very impressive, and it's a shame the
Vile Vinyl series petered out after only one more volume. (Both volumes appeared on a single CD from Tinfoil Daffodil in 2000; Past and Present gave
Volume 1 a CD reissue of its own in 2009, complete with liner notes.) ~ Mark Deming