STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (3)
By:
October 8, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of proto-punk records from the Sixties (1964–1973, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn. Also check out our proto-punk playlist (a work in progress) at Spotify.
? AND THE MYSTERIANS | “96 TEARS” | 1966
“96 Tears,” by ? and the Mysterians, is one scary-ass record. Its doomsaying organ, played by Mysterian Felix Rodriguez, keeps shapeshifting from a stalking, stabbing beat to a delirious lick played on what sounds like spook-house calliope. Halfway through the record leaps to gloomy minor key, and Rudy “Question Mark” Martinez sneers a threat to the lover who’s broken his heart and then laughed at him too: “When the sun comes up, I’ll be on top. You’ll be right down there, looking up!”
It’s both a total coincidence and totally perfect that “96 Tears” was a #1 pop hit the week of Halloween in 1966. I was only four years old at the time and don’t recall it making an impression on me. But when I was in high school a decade later, my local AOR behemoth, Kansas City, Missouri’s KY102, would sometimes drop “96 Tears” into a set alongside regulars like the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac, Styx and REO Speedwagon. In that company, “96 Tears” always startled.
I’d begun encountering the term “punk rock” in magazines around the same time. But as even KY didn’t play the Sex Pistols or the Clash, I heard about punk way before I actually heard any. For many midwestern rock kids in the late 1970s, punk remained a rumor. We grasped punk, in a strictly musical sense, only vaguely. Yet we somehow grasped that it was aligned with a sneering rebellion and we wanted in. The bands that my friends and I first identified as punks were ones we’d soon learn to refile either as nerdy New Wavers, like The Cars or Talking Heads, or as… Well, let’s call them mouthy urban bohemians: Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, Tonio K, even Springsteen in his dirty Darkness on the Edge of Town mode. The ancient-to-me “96 Tears” felt like it fit right in with all those new sounds. Several years later, when I read critic Dave Marsh describing a Mysterians concert (in a 1971 issue of Creem, collected in Fortunate Son: The Best of Dave Marsh) as “a landmark exposition of punk rock,” I may well have shouted: “Thank you!”
Beyond being proto, “96 Tears” has proven prescient. Send it to art school, along with Question Mark’s sunglasses and grungy mop top, and you help fashion both the unmistakably proto-punk Velvet Underground and the for-real punk of The Ramones. As Marsh later asked, “Could ‘96 Tears’ be the first post-modern rock record?”
Let yourself stop categorizing for a second, though, and “96 Tears” is still singular, still terrifying. “You’re gonna cry 96 tears,” a mocking Question Mark intones over and over, like a curse: No future for you but tears.
STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mandy Keifetz on The Trashmen’s SURFIN’ BIRD | Nicholas Rombes on Yoko Ono’s MOVE ON FAST | David Cantwell on ? and the Mysterians’ 96 TEARS | James Parker on The Modern Lovers’ SHE CRACKED | Lynn Peril on The Pleasure Seekers’ WHAT A WAY TO DIE | Lucy Sante on The Count Five’s PSYCHOTIC REACTION | Jonathan Lethem on The Monkees’ YOUR AUNTIE GRIZELDA | Adam McGovern on ELP’s BRAIN SALAD SURGERY | Mimi Lipson on The Shaggs’ MY PAL FOOT FOOT | Eric Weisbard on Frances Faye’s FRANCES AND HER FRIENDS | Annie Zaleski on Suzi Quatro’s CAN THE CAN | Carl Wilson on The Ugly Ducklings’ NOTHIN’ | Josh Glenn on Gillian Hill’s TUT, TUT, TUT, TUT… | Mike Watt on The Stooges’ SHAKE APPEAL | Peter Doyle on The Underdogs’ SITTING IN THE RAIN | Stephanie Burt on Pauline Oliveros’s III | Marc Weidenbaum on Ornette Coleman’s WE NOW INTERRUPT FOR A COMMERCIAL | Anthony Miller on Eno’s NEEDLES IN THE CAMEL’S EYE | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sonics’ STRYCHNINE | David Smay on The New York Dolls’ HUMAN BEING | Michael Grasso on the 13th Floor Elevators’ YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME | Holly Interlandi on Death’s ROCK’N’ROLL VICTIM | Elina Shatkin on Bobby Fuller’s I FOUGHT THE LAW | Brian Berger on The Mothers of Invention’s WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? | Peggy Nelson on The Kingsmen’s LOUIE LOUIE.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!