Ugly Things magazine, for many, could seem as unwelcomingly obscure as a bad acid trip. There’s no easy entry for some into an annual periodical which devotes a ten-page feature to the ‘60s freakbeat band Wimple Winch, and then leaves you hanging because that’s only Part One. Wimple Winch’s reputation is based on three singles, released within an eight-month span of time 45 years ago.
The other way to look at this, of course, is to praise such obsessive scholarship to the tangerine-colored skies. Bands such as Wimple Winch seldom got the coverage they deserved, and the most popular bands mentioned in Ugly Things were chronicled in their heyday only by fan mags such as 16 and Tiger Beat. A lot of wild stories never got told. Ugly Things pulls musicians out of decades of hibernation and grills them about the specifics of things which the artists, given the tenor of the ‘60s, have no right even to remember.
Twice in this issue, it’s mentioned how unfair it is that Paul Revere & the Raiders haven’t been seriously considered for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the presumption being that the band’s tricorner hats and other Revolutionary War comically undercut their otherwise superbly rocking manner. I am in full agreement—if Jimi Hendrix could dress the way he sometimes did, the Raiders (whose ruffled shirts and piped jackets weren’t that different than Stones and Beatles uniforms of the time) have nothing to be ashamed of. But the greater argument is the attention Ugly Things gives to the Raiders in the final years of the band’s time with Columbia Records, when the band rebounded from a dive into obscurity by delivering “Indian Reservation” (the biggest selling single in the label’s history, its sales record not to be broken until Michael Jackson a decade later), then back into obscurity due to Columbia’s disinterest.
Massive international hit records such as “Indian Reservation” aside, Ugly Things is more about also-rans and alternate histories than it is about the victors. The new issue chronicles an underappreciated Raiders era, but also profiles Brotherhood, a band formed by several defectors from The Raiders. It also has an unconnected article on Don Fardon of The Sorrows, who happened to have the bigger European hit with “Indian Reservation.”
Some intentional, many not, coincidences of time, place and sound swirl about every issue of Ugly Things. The magazine uncorks a spirit that I could use more often than once a year. Luckily, when I’m done reading this phone book of a freak beat periodical, there’s always its soundtrack—all those cool old records they write about—to rediscover.