{"id":19089,"date":"2020-07-11T05:30:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-11T09:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=19089"},"modified":"2020-07-11T11:11:02","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T15:11:02","slug":"album-review-the-limits-garage-nuggets-65-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/11\/album-review-the-limits-garage-nuggets-65-68\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Limits \u2013 Garage Nuggets \u201865-\u201968"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s nice when an important figure in music says nice things about your<\/i> music. Even if that person is something of a cult figure like Alex Chilton, it counts. And apparently Chilton (Box Tops, Big Star) thought highly of the music made by an Allentown, Pennsylvania garage rock band called The Limits. Like so many other young groups of their era, The Limits never hit the big time. But they left behind a small volume of recorded material. Those songs have now been complied and released as Garage Nuggets \u201865-\u201968<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Right up front, the album\u2019s title tells interested parties a good bit about what they need to know. Garage rock? Check. A reference to Lenny Kaye\u2019s influential compilation? Check. The halcyon years of the subgenre? Check again.<\/p>\n

The collection features demos and more polished recordings, and showcases the band tackling the kind of material one would have found in the repertoire of most such bands of the era. Dale Hawkins\u2019 \u201cSuzie Q\u201d is a version that has nearly nothing to do with the arrangement CCR would use soon thereafter. And The Limits\u2019 reading of \u201cHitch Hike\u201d is the missing link between the original and The Velvets\u2019 \u201cHere She Comes Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

A reading of \u201cKing Bee\u201d is somewhat turgid, but the band clearly meant for it to be that way. Too bad there was a blanket covering the mic (well, that\u2019s what it sounds like).<\/p>\n

But The Limits\u2019 original material shows that they were a cut or three above most of their ilk. \u201cSay it Again\u201d is bouncy Merseybeat with winning harmonies, jangling guitars and pretty solid drumming. All in just over two minutes, which is exactly as it should be. There\u2019s a lick or two that seems lifted from \u201cA World Without Love,\u201d the pop hit Paul McCartney penned for his pals Peter and Gordon. But if you\u2019re gonna steal, steal form the best. (It\u2019s not stealing, really; just a lick.)<\/p>\n

A cover of \u201cYou\u2019ve Got to Hide Your Love Away\u201d demonstrates that The Limits had strong vocal harmony abilities. The guitar is nearly inaudible, but that \u201cfault\u201d serves to highlight just how impressive the vocals are. (It gets unnecessarily weird toward the end, but we\u2019ll overlook that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when the fidelity is poor \u2013 as on \u201cI\u2019m Alive\u201d \u2013 the energy and spirit comes through. And for what seems like a later recording (Stereo, with combo organ), \u201cHave Mercy\u201d shows a band with real potential. And perhaps it was their cover of \u201cThe Letter\u201d that impressed Chilton. It\u2019s quite good, following the Box Tops\u2019 arrangement. The vocalist leans into the song, Mick Jagger\/Keith Relf style, which after all is in the grand tradition of garage rock.<\/p>\n

In one of the set\u2019s live recordings, The Limits take Barrett Strong\u2019s \u201cMoney\u201d at breakneck speed, sounding more than a little like The Remains in the process. They demonstrate their rapport with the audience, all of whom seem to be digging it just fine. And they channel The Vagrants on their reading of the Otis Redding classic \u201cRespect,\u201d while adding some subtle shading of their own. The set closes with another live track, \u201cWipeout.\u201d The rapturous audiences calls the band back for an encore, and they deliver.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing life-changing here, but for listeners who want a sense of the immediacy that was garage rock, this collection nails it.<\/p>\n

NOTE: The Limits re-formed in the \u201880s with, it seems, mostly or all different people. A collection of material from that lineup will be the subject of my next review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s nice when an important figure in music says nice things about your music. Even if that person is something of a cult figure like Alex Chilton, it counts. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,33,49,62,65],"tags":[4245],"class_list":["post-19089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-garage","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-the-limits","cat-19-id","cat-33-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19089","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=19089"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19096,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19089\/revisions\/19096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}