A rainy day, and the only show we’d been planning to attend got cancelled. (Fie, Deer Guild!) So we’re stuck home listening over and over to the greatest record ever made, “Yip” by the New Nation, recorded in 1968 just a few blocks down the street from our humble apartment.
“Yip” is one of the reasons we stuck around this town in the first place. We found it in a used record bin a thousand miles from here, seemingly a thousand years ago. The first time we spun it, it took our mind apart piece by piece. The singer’s cool, contrite, controlled, completely composed. Yet he has no language—he just says “Yip.” Behind him—we always assume this is the drummer, but it could be anybody, just a guy passing through the room—there’s a raucous unhinged yell from time to time. Could be excitement, but then why wouldn’t the singer be excited too? He’s not. Could be that the yowler just dropped some hot coffee on himself. Several times, whenever the next “verse” (lyrical cue: “Yip!”) commences.
The rest of the band take the middle road, but in the language of the young. They are organized, yet they are progressive. They want action, yet they want to keep the party going, now burn out quickly. They are steady, yet they rock. These aren’t ancient swing-jazz rhythms converted to the latest rock fad—it’s the base discourse, the core language for these kids. It’s a conversation that allows for the suave “Yip” on one end and the wild beast attacking on the other.
“Yip” is the sound of the ‘60s, and that indeed is what a vinyl anthology I later found it on was titled. None of the other songs on the LP sounded like the ‘60s at all. They sounded like the ‘50s retreaded or the ‘70s anticipated, but not in between. “Yip” was the juncture, that antic intersection.
Very little has been written down about The New Nation, and much of what has been turns out to be lies. The legends are fascinating—the jealous brawls, the pranks pulled by competing bands, the shows New Nation allegedly staged in clubs they’d been banned from.
Someday that book will be written. Perhaps we’ll write it ourselves. But that’s not the point this rainy day. The point is “Yip,” the perfect mid-‘60s studio garage chaos-amid-the-establishment anthem.
Fuck this whole essay, then. Words fail. Just think “Yip.”
Yip!