Try It LP

The Standells’ key albums for the Tower label (Dirty Water, Why Pick On Me, and Try It) perfectly bottled a rebellious wave of sound sweeping across Mid-1960’s teen clubs, radio playlists and record racks. Starting with the genre-defining, proto-punk smash “Dirty Water”, through a series of equally memorable underdog anthems (“Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White,” “Why Pick on Me”) and obscenities (the banned “Try It”), the Standells left an indelible mark on their era. Those three Tower albums are a veritable feast of three chord, fuzz-drenched, Vox Organ-driven “squares”-repellant. Built around the banned title track, Try It is a tale of two (LP) sides; one a cohesive step into super-charged ’67 Standells Soul, the other a bet-hedging exercise that compiles possibly the strongest material of the band’s career. Latter includes the classic Standells style, either at its most pulverizing (“Barracuda,” “Riot on Sunset Strip”) or now one foot into psychedelia (“All Fall Down,” “Did You Ever Have That Feeling”). It provides the perfect bookend to the Standells’ legendary Tower Records era albums.