{"id":31851,"date":"2026-07-24T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=31851"},"modified":"2026-07-24T08:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:58:19","slug":"album-review-the-trip-never-too-late-for-the-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/24\/album-review-the-trip-never-too-late-for-the-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Trip \u2013 Never Too Late for\u2026 The Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I\u2019m a pushover for a musical act with an interesting back story. Of course, having a fascinating and\/or compelling tale is no substitute for good music; to hit the sweet spot one needs both. And in the idiom of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll \u2013 a field strewn with near-misses, there exist relatively few of such. One of them, though, is The Trip, a late \u201870s \u2013 to early \u201880s quartet out of the Bay Area. The Trip\u2019s story \u2013 comparatively brief as it was \u2013 includes connections to the Flamin\u2019 Groovies, 415 Record<\/a>s and celebrated music journalist Jeff Tamarkin.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not here today to get into those details. Interested parties can (and should) closely peruse the gatefold booklet inserted in vinyl copies of N<\/i>e<\/i>ver <\/i>T<\/i>oo Late for…The Trip<\/i>, a newly-released collection of tracks the band cut in Queens, New York in 1983-ish.<\/p>\n

I will point out that even if the band name doesn\u2019t strike familiar, aficionados of power pop, garage revival and similar rock substyles may have heard at least one track by the band. That song would be \u201cStick Like Glue,\u201d a number included on Battle of the Garages, Vol. 2: America\u2019s Psychedelic Underground<\/i>, a 1984 comp. It also appeared a decade later on a CD comp from the same label (Voxx), on a disc noted — confusingly enough — as Part 1<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The trashy sonic values so essential to \u201860s garage\/protopunk are very much in evidence on \u201cStick Like Glue.\u201d Not quite the lowest-of lo-fi (that honor goes to the Green Fuz<\/a>), \u201cStick Like Glue\u201d is nonetheless gloriously free of production nuance. Recorded in lead singer Tom Neale\u2019s basement, it\u2019s in monaural, for goodness sake. And Don Ciccone\u2019s unhinged guitar solo is a thing of ramshackle beauty.<\/p>\n

\u201cStick Like Glue\u201d only shows one side of The Trip\u2019s artistry, however. The seven songs that round out this LP offer up some jangle (\u201cLittle Girl,\u201d not the Syndicate of Sound\u2019s tune), sinister fuzztone rock (\u201cMove\u201d), and the requisite hypnotic combo organ (the album\u2019s sorta-title track, \u201cNever Too Late for Linda\u201d). All will be held in high esteem by those well acquainted with garage rock and its related forms. Others may shrug and wonder what the fuss is about; it\u2019s their loss.<\/p>\n

Perhaps amusingly (and– okay \u2013 perhaps not), the signature organ that dominates \u201cNever Too Late for Linda\u201d is in fact uncredited on this LP. As listed, the personnel includes only guitarists Tom Neale and Don Ciccone, bassist Steve Balestra and Victor Gentile on drums. But hey: somebody\u2019s<\/i> playing that Farfisa-or-whatever.<\/p>\n

Side Two opens with \u201cSo Goodbye Baby,\u201d a catchy bit of jangle pop, and the closest The Trip come (here, anyway) to Byrdsy folk-rock. Like many of the songs on this disc, \u201cThe Love That\u2019s in Your Eyes\u201d has a familiar feel, a kind of have-I-heard-this-before vibe. But not too<\/em> familiar, not in any plagiaristic sort of way. \u201cI Wanna Make you Mine\u201d has similarly solid pop values, still maintaining the garage aesthetic.<\/p>\n

The closest The Trip come to ripping off another artist is on the intro to \u201cToo Many Times.\u201d The song\u2019s riff and beat are suspiciously close the \u201cTicket to Ride\u201d by a Liverpool combo of some note. But the song overall is original, in fact closer in spirit to what Brian Jonestown Massacre might sound like if they were a bit more well-adjusted.<\/p>\n

In a fair world, The Trip would have made inroads during the Paisley Underground era. But that scene was largely centered in and around L.A., and this band was based a few hundred miles north in San Francisco. The band did have some impressive champions in their corner, including Tamarkin (who reviewed \u2018em in Goldmine<\/i>) and Bomp Records\u2019 Greg Shaw. Fast-forwarding to present day, Flamin\u2019 Groovies\u2019 Cyril Jordan penned a brief but knowing and heartfelt liner note mini-essay extolling the virtues of The Trip.<\/p>\n

None of that earned the band much in the way of success 40-odd years ago, so The Trip might have been relegated to near-forgotten status. That would have been an injustice, and as the title of this welcome record telegraphs, it\u2019s never too late to appreciate The Trip. The time, dear friends, is now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a pushover for a musical act with an interesting back story. Of course, having a fascinating and\/or compelling tale is no substitute for good music; to hit the sweet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,49,62,65,73],"tags":[5981],"class_list":["post-31851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-garage","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-the-trip","cat-33-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31851"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32017,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31851\/revisions\/32017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}