Paul Revere & the Raiders
Listen – Paul Revere & the Raiders – The Great Airplane Strike – MP3
Greetings all.
I hope the new week finds you well.
I was originally planning a new podcast for this Monday, but life kid of got in the way,and though I have the tracks recorded I was unable to sit down and get the mix together, so I’ll be going with a couple of single tracks this week and letting the mix drop at the beginning of next week.
In a brief aside, if you get chance scroll back a bit to the post I did about the Knight Riders garage classic ‘I’. In the few months since I wrote the piece – which is based around the fact that other than their name, the band’s identity was largely lost to time – friends, family, and eventually members of the band themselves have stopped by to comment. Something like this happened (to a lesser degree) a few years back at the old Blogger version of the Funky16Corners blog. I always dig when someone related to the track at hand – especially the recording artist- takes time to comment, but in this case I’m especially pleased since I was originally unable to discover much about the band, and the comments on the post have included info on the band members and reminiscences of their live performances. Very cool.
Today’s selection is a track by a band that is anything but anonymous, or at least was during their heyday when they were one of the most popular rock bands in America.
I was first exposed to Paul Revere & the Raiders via their 1971 hit ‘Indian Reservation’, which was all but inescapable if you were a kid with his ear glued to a transistor radio.
It would be a few more years before I started to pick up on their first wave of hits via oldies radio, and many more before I actually bought my first Raiders collection and really started digging them.
During the garage/mod days of the mid-80’s tracks like ‘Good Thing’, ‘Hungry’ and ‘Kicks’ were always in heavy rotation. Their appeal was obvious in that when the Raiders were at their peak they combined a hard, garagey edge with a solid pop sensibility.
Initially I just assumed that they were, like the other bands that my pals and I were rediscovering, like the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband, a long lost Sixties gem with a couple of big hits in heavy oldies rotation.
I had no idea.
Over the next few years, exposed as I was to the work of other collectors and rich storehouse of bootleg video, I discovered that Paul Revere and the Raiders were no one or two hit wonder act, but were at the height of their success hugely popular with a string of Top 40 hits that ran pretty steadily from 1965 to 1971. They were – especially lead singer Mark Lindsay – teen idols and a regular part of the Tiger Beat world that would in a few years embrace the likes of pop lightweights like Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy. For a while they were also TV stars, regulars (and for a period hosting) on Dick Clark’s ‘Where the Action Is’.
Unfortunately, as this more comprehensive picture of the Raiders came into focus their image, with the pseudo-Revolutionary War costumes and popstar clowning and their status as the idols of a nation of 13 year old girls started to take away some of the coolness of their music, and explained a lot about why they didn’t get much respect as a “serious” band.
This was of course ridiculous, because the more I listen to their music – especially after finding some of their original albums – the more I come to the conclusion that Paul Revere and the Raiders were an exceptionally capable rock band, and that their fusion of garage fuzz and pop hooks (aided by Lindsay’s excellent vocals) was some of the best music of the era.
Their place in history is largely problematic because they persisted in their commercial tomfoolery well past the point where rockers started to take themselves seriously (even the Monkees got to flex their progressive/artistic side) and as a result had just about zero underground cred in an era where almost nothing was more important for a rock band. No matter that a huge percentage of “serious” bands specialized in self-indulgent music that was in the long run largely forgettable.
The Raiders committed what was in the late-60’s the ultimate artistic sin of staying AM when many of their contemporaries (and most newer bands) had gone FM.
What I’m here to say, is that the time is long since due for a reconsideration of the Raiders as a band who maintained an unpretentious approach to making quality sounds in an era where pretention was running amuck.
‘The Great Airplane Strike’ is a perfect example of the kind of stuff they were capable of. Listen to this record, and then go into your crates and pull out an album by a ‘heavier’ band like Moby Grape and play them side by side. If you remove the spectre of the Raiders as pop-TV clowns, there’s not that much separating the two.
As always, I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week.
Peace
Larry
Iron Leg 
Being a 60s enthusiast who never got beyond CBS-FM specials growing up, a number of bands always fell into the trap you describe. There are some bands like the Grassroots, who never appeared to exist in any context, outside of a string of hits that would sometimes crop up on the radio.
I associate the Raiders with the Shondells, as they had distinctly different eras of hits, which (probably for contractual reasons) always meant no compilation would contain all the songs I wanted.
I just want to say I really enjoy your blogs. I was telling my brother what treasure troves of music lurk in the blogosphere these days. I was introduced to funky16 in the great Metafilter rush a while back, but iron leg is more my speed. I was blown away when I came across your image at the fantagraphics booth at the comic con a couple of weeks ago.
Keep up the good work and shine some light on Spanky and Our Gang or the Association at some point if they’ve somehow escaped your attention as they’re two of the deeper overlooked talents of the 60s IMHO.
And bonus! This song is one of the few out there that sounds great as an mp3 file. (Maybe it’s that AM radio thing…) Turn it up loud.
I would argue that, single for single, the Raiders’ 60s output matched up very favorably with the Stones. The Stones made superior albums, obviously — though Midnight Ride,Spirit of ’67, and Revolution are all pretty great — but the Raiders were far better than their teenybop pop reputation. Of course, singing an anti-drug song (“Kicks”) didn’t exactly boost their hipness…
This is a coincidence! I happened to be watching an episode of Batman the other day and the Raiders were on. they played at Penguin’s Gotham Mayor campaign. Very amusing.
When I saw the hint from Funky 16 corners about the fuzzed out Raiders song, I was sure it was going to be “Steppin Out”. What a nice surprise to find one of their lesser known songs here. I still have their Greatest Hits album that I got when I was in ummmm… probably Jr High and have always liked this song a lot!
The Raiders at Geauga Lake Park one summer night in ’66 or ’67 (w/Sonny & Cher, Shangri Las, more) rocked harder than the Stones or the Beatles in ’66 in Cleveland. Don’t believe all you read about rock) If you ever dug “Ooh Pooh a Doo” from Mark Lindsay, you know what I mean, forget Mick Jagger’s twerp vocals, and George, Paul and John never did steps on top of their Vox amps…It’s Just Like Me…euclidcreek
If you ever run across a copy of “Powder Blue Mercedes Queen” be sure to give it a listen (if you haven’t already). I had a friend who ran a pirate radio station out of his garage back in the 70’s and that song was in heavy rotation! I was surprised when I found out it was the Raiders!
Hey! Found a YouTube video:
Too bad I’m blocked up here at the office and can’t see it.
Great Blog (I just found it from Funky16)! Keep up the great work!
Big Raiders fan…always been but the lyrics from The Great Airplane Strike still bugs me to this day. “The janitor come running in, so scared his face was white” Obviously it was the 60’s but it brings to mind a Stepin Fetchit character. I’m sure people will say I’m being too sensitive, but as an African American Raiders fan, I would have thought the Raiders would have had the insight to not be so stereotypical. It was the 60’s after all and I guess they’re audience wasn’t black, so no harm, no foul.
Sorry, change “they’re” to” their” on my post