Yet another Texas group, the great Mouse and the Traps existed throughout the mid to late 60′s, sadly never having a chance to release an album. They did record a bunch of singles though, some of which are under different names/alias’. This compilation covers most of their singles and some outtakes (contains 25 of the 30 or so songs they recorded).

Nearly all of these songs are good and well worth a listen. On single, they forged 3 unabashed classics: A Public Execution, Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice and Sometimes You Just Can’t Win (a soulful why me rocker). Public Execution was a song that many radio listeners mistook for Bob Dylan’s next big single in 1966. This song as well as the excellent garage punk rocker Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice has been anthologized on Nuggets. Public Execution, while a great song, is not the best on this superb compilation, sounding like a bubblegum garage version of Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone. The followup, Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice is one of the greatest mid 60′s hard rockers with a great speaker shredding, mind frying guitar solo. This legendary performance showed the band could tear it up, they were strong musicians and Mouse was a good singer who speckled his songs with clever lyrics.

The album runs the gamut, showing the Traps to be a diverse unit that played love torn country-rock, psychedelia, sunshine pop, tex-mex, blues-rock, folk-rock and garage-rock (all effectively). Nobody Cares and I Am The One really catch the ear as melodic folk-rockers with a defiant edge and great outsider lyrics. Also, I Satisfy and Beg, Borrow and Steal are psychedelia with tons of fuzz, crazied vocals and imagination. They even released a nice baroque pop/psych-pop single under the Chris St. John name.

The Traps had personality in spades and it’s really strange how they did not succeed commercially/artistically. They ceased to exist by the early 70′s and by then the dream had faded.

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“Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice”

The Night Shadows were one of the first and longest lived garage bands. They started out in the 50′s hailing from Georgia and first received notoriety when releasing the dirty, perverted garage rock single Garbage Man. The early 60′s were not kind to the Night Shadows as they went through various lineup changes. Other singles followed though, influenced by the British Invasion, utilizing feedback and other current recording techniques. In 1966 a new revived Night Shadows (including Little Phil) released the excellent 60 Second Swinger. It’s similar to the Seed’s efforts from around the same time but the Night Shadow’s cleary had more instrumental prowess and experience behind them.

In 1968 they released their psychedelic masterpiece, Square Root of Two. Square Root of Two has some rerecorded psychedelic interpretations of earlier singles along with then current compositions. Of the 11 songs there are a few throw away tracks such as the Prologue, Hot Dog Man and Turned On. These songs are a little too self indulgent with sped up vocals, lengthy commentary, backward tapes, phased guitars and just plain stupidness. The rest of the lot fairs much better though and even with the above mistakes this album still rates as a prime slice of acid punk.

I Can’t Believe follows the silly intro on side one and is nine and a half minutes of fuzz guitar soloing and howling courtesy of Little Phil. Somehow it all works and the psychedelic versions of Plenty of Trouble, 60 Second Swinger and So Much work well too. Plenty of Trouble sounds like a devil chant with shakers and wicked vocals from Phil. The classic 60 Second Swinger is transformed into a hard, bluesy garage shuffle with some Itchycoo Park-like organ and a fake live intro. Most essential though are Anything But Lies and So Much. Anything But Lies is characterized by distorted, angry vocals and jackhammer riffs while So Much has great stinging acid guitar and is psych punk perfection. The Square Root of Two is a good, forgotten album that should not be missed by garage psych fans.

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“So Much (1967 Version)”