{"id":16452,"date":"2019-04-29T05:30:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T09:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16452"},"modified":"2019-03-21T08:36:05","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T12:36:05","slug":"album-review-chocolate-watchband-this-is-my-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/29\/album-review-chocolate-watchband-this-is-my-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Chocolate Watchband &#8212; This is My Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-16453\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/choc_watchband_voice.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/choc_watchband_voice.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/choc_watchband_voice-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/choc_watchband_voice-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Exemplars of 1960s psychedelic garage rock, San Jose, California\u2019s Chocolate Watchband nonetheless suffered greatly at the hands of the band\u2019s label and (to a lesser extent) producer. Over the course of the group\u2019s three albums of that era, not once did the members find themselves free to make an album that honestly reflected the band\u2019s sound. In fact many of the tunes on their records were written and performed completely without the group\u2019s involvement. Further complicating matters, some of the \u201cfake\u201d Watchband tracks\u2014like \u201cExpo 2000\u201d from the band\u2019s 1967 debut album <i>No Way Out<\/i>\u2014are excellent.<\/p>\n<p>The band\u2019s best lineup didn\u2019t even stay together through the \u201860s; frustrated with the machinations of the label, lead singer Dave Aguilar exited early. But the band\u2019s legacy has nonetheless endured, thanks to the quality of much of the music, songs that at their best captured the zeitgeist of the psychedelic and garage-rock scenes. Even though Aguilar didn\u2019t sing on \u201cLet\u2019s Talk About Girls,\u201d a track memorialized on the Lenny Kaye-compiled <i>Nuggets<\/i> various artists collection, the band\u2019s punky aesthetic still managed to shine through.<\/p>\n<p>The band\u2019s reputation and back story kept interest alive, though, and by 1999 the band\u2014with many key members\u2014was back in action. In 2012 the group released <i>Revolutions Reinvented<\/i>, a good-sounding collection of re-recordings of old Watchband classics. (That record was repackaged in 2015 as<i> I\u2019m Not Like Everybody Else<\/i>.)<\/p>\n<p>Moving away from recycling and toward proving that the band still has plenty to offer in terms of new material, <i>This is My Voice<\/i> features seven originals alongside covers of Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, the Seeds (whose keyboardist Daryl Hooper guests on two songs) and the Music Machine. Mostly from the pen of Aguilar, the new tunes fit right in alongside the covers; the band\u2019s snarling, musically muscular attack is every bit as potent now as it was on the band\u2019s ill-fated first go-around.<\/p>\n<p>You may also enjoy: my <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/14\/no-way-out-the-curious-case-of-the-chocolate-watchband-part-one\/\">interview with the band&#8217;s Dave Aguilar<\/a>, and another <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/08\/26\/the-chocolate-watchband-give-the-people-what-they-want-part-1\/\">interview with guitarist Tim Abbott<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exemplars of 1960s psychedelic garage rock, San Jose, California\u2019s Chocolate Watchband nonetheless suffered greatly at the hands of the band\u2019s label and (to a lesser extent) producer. Over the course [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,49,57,62,65],"tags":[516],"class_list":["post-16452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-garage","category-new-release","category-psych","category-rawk","category-review","tag-chocolate-watchband","cat-33-id","cat-49-id","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16454,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16452\/revisions\/16454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}