3 posts tagged “pop”

The Coctails were a favorite local band of mine back in the early 90s. Pretty much a group of guys with middling musical experience (at the outset) who bought a bunch of instruments at garage sales, taught themselves to play them, and turned out an impressive and eclectic body of work, ranging from waltzes to powerpop to experimental garage jazz. Add to that the self-manufactured merchandise (stuffed Coctail dolls were probably their most well-known product—that and free popcorn in Coctails logo bags handed out at the shows) and their Chinese fire drill method of playing ("There's no front man... It's all about fighting to be the back man!" they told me in an interview) and you've got a fun little group. They put on a great show too. The boys broke up in the mid-90s, then reformed a few times to promote their box set Pop Corn (I recommend it, but you might want to start with The Early Hi-Ball Years as a taster). Anyway, here's one of their songs, a bit of psychedlia called "Peel." The used to play this at length at the shows, and it freaked my way-out plastic happening, man.

The creepy critters shown above are the fancy-Dan Coctails action figures from Japan. If you have yen to burn, you can get them here.