Thee Midniters – In Thee Midnite Hour
Thee Midniters were best-known as kings of East Los Angeles rock in the ’60s, but this collection of uptempo material will hopefully change that: They should be recognized as one of the era’s great garage bands, period. Lead singer Little Willie G has always been known for his crotch-grinding makeout ballads, but on this succession of nonstop rockers, he shrieks and screams to raise the roof. Lead guitarist George Dominguez plays cement-grinder lines on the six-minute version of “Land Of A Thousand Dances”, lays the fuzztone on thick as a Yardbird on the original “Jump, Jive And Harmonize”, and bites like only the nastiest blues-rockers could on song after song. With Ron Figueroa adding organ coloration and Larry Rendon (tenor sax) and Romeo Prado (trombone) making up garageland’s only power horn section, these guys could put the Stones on alert (lifting their arrangement of “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” and pulverizing “Empty Heart”). Their sole hit, the strutting instrumental “Whittier Boulevard”, was so power-packed that they recycled it twice to create both an instrumental and a vocal version without diluting the impact. Whether echoing Van Morrison and Them on “Gloria” or pounding out great originals such as the organ rave-up “Looking Out A Window” and the hellacious instrumental “Thee Midnite Feeling”, they were as raunchy, horny, cacophonous and abandoned as you could ever ask of a band.