The Bougalieu - Let's Do Wrong / When I Was A Children - Roulette Records - 1967

After bringing this record home and doing a bit of research, here's what I came to learn about this group. ... ...pretty much nothing. They're from Albany, apparently, and have been comped on a few garage / psych records, most notably Pebbles. I, however, was unaware of this before buying this 45, purely on a whim.

Anyway, to the substance. This record is definitely a one-sider. "Let's Do Wrong" (which I believe is the A-side) is a fantastic rhythm & blues raving burst with a strangely atonal and nonsensical, albeit short, middle section. Clocking in at a wondrous minute and 45 seconds, this song delivers all that gets me jazzed in a nice short-attention-span-friendly package.

And then there's the flip side. "When I Was A Children" is a pretty forgettable, middle-of-the-road pop song. It's not good, and it's not bad, and I think that makes it worse. At least a REALLY bad song has the power to make me cringe, or feel embarrassed, sometimes even occasionally make me laugh. This is exactly mediocre, and I'm not impressed. Not one bit. Another convenient reason to not spin this side is that my copy has a locking skip in the final fading seconds of the song, and that can just about drive me nuts.

So what? I'll take a one-sider. Especially when that side is SO FUCKIN' GOOD.

On a side note: Isn't learning the ropes of good garage/fuzz/psych/whatever through Nuggets & Pebbles and What-Have-Yous at least kind of cheating? OK, buying them for the sake of owning those impossible gems (ie: Teddy & His Patches) on vinyl, or for DJ purposes seems to make sense, but having a nice little list laid out for you to begin with seems pretty passive and lazy to me. Isn't the thrill in the hunt? I guess some people just need to be told what's cool and what isn't... Then again, maybe I'm just a snobby music nerd. Who knows?
Psychedelic Elvis