The saga of the garage band, The Wonders, in the film, That Thing You Do, is remarkably similar to the real-life stories of the hundreds of garage bands in the 1960s, which, unlike the Wonders never had that hit record that made them stars for even a brief period of time.
A lot of these bands from the 1960s ended up being the training ground for people who ended up having a career in music, even if they weren’t rock stars. This is one of those stories.
From The Juveniles to The Express
The Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho were a very prolific breeding ground for rock and roll bands in the mid-1960s.
The Pacific Northwest of the 1960s was very prolific for bands trying to make it big. The Kingsmen helped kick off the rock and roll stakes with their recording of “Louie, Louie.” This song became the one that nearly every band had to have in their set list. Paul Revere and The Raiders, from Idaho, did their version of “Louie, Louie” and started having regional and national chart hits in the lower reaches of the Top 100.
One band came up from Oklahoma for a management deal. The Juveniles from Norman, Oklahoma got signed to Jerden, which also recorded early tracks by Paul Revere and The Raiders and local favorites, the raucous Sonics. As the Juveniles, they recorded a rollicking version of “Bo Diddley” for Jerden.
They quickly became ensconced within the Northwest scene. Their drummer Mike O’Neil said, “I was offered a chance to join the Kingsmen. I didn’t do it because they weren’t any good.”
The Travails of a Garage Band
But the shortly found out the travails of being a garage band in the 1960s. In a move not unlike the fictional Wonders discovering that they weren’t going to record their own material for their debut album, the Juveniles arrived at a gig and found that their name was changed. “We were pissed,” said O’Neil.
But, they were hardly the only 1960s garage band that had such things pulled on them.
They soldiered on, under the new name, The Express. “Wasting My Time” on the Piccadilly label is a good piece of 1960s punk. It starts, rather unusually with a fuzzed-out bass. “That was a last minute thing,” said O’Neil about the fuzzed-out bass, “I had never heard it before that.”
But, whether or not this was the first recorded fuzzed out base is almost immaterial. The record starts out with a pounding countdown by O’Neil. Then the fuzzed out base kicks in, followed by a circus-like riff on a Lowery organ. The lyrics, done in a half-shouted manner about a love gone wrong make this a fine example of 1960s punk.
But, these two records were almost all that were heard out of this group for the decade.
Life Since the 1960s Punk Era for Mike O’Neil
As the decade of the 1960s melted into the 1970s, the taste for this kind of music subsided. O’Neil says the group of musicians he was with was turning into something different, more of a slick, show-biz act. “I didn’t have any interest in being in a show band,” says O’Neill.
O’Neill started drifting east. Like some of the members of the fictional Wonders, O’Neil kept doing music He ended up in Nashville as the owner of recording studio and a regular at jam sessions.
O’Neill says he had no idea that people were interested in what he did all those years ago until he was approached by a record company that put out a compilation which included the Express’ record. “The record company, Ace Records, from England, wanted some pictures.”
Both records that O’Neil was on from the 1960s, by The Juveniles and The Express are available to listen to on Youtube. They still stand as good examples of American garage rock from the 1960s.
Though neither group ever yielded a hit for O’Neil and his band mates like the fictional Wonders did, O’Neil was able to make a living in music and can take some consolation in the fact that people still enjoy listening to what he did all those years ago.
Jon Pike - Pike is a Ph.D. in communication and writes about activism and popular culture topics for Suite101.
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