“Colored Balls Falling”—Love (Arthur Lee)

“Dreaming”—Blondie (Debbie Harry and Chris Stein)

“Look Sharp”—Joe Jackson (Joe Jackson)

“The World We Knew (Over and Over)”—Frank Sinatra (Bert Kaempfert, Herbert Rehbein, and Carl Sigman)

“Find It”—The Carrie Nations (Stu Philips and Lynn Carey)

“I’m Insane”—Joe Cuba (Louie Ramirez)

“Who Are You”—The Who (Pete Townshend)

“We’d Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover”—Annie, Original Broadway Cast (Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse)

“The Garden of Earthly Delights”—The United States of America (Dorothy Moskowitz, Joseph Byrd, and Ed Bogas)

“Voices Green and Purple”—The Bees (Tom Willsie and Robert Wood)

“The Beat Goes On”—Sonny & Cher (Sonny Bono)

“Song for Sunshine”—Belle and Sebastian (Stuart Murdoch, Stevie Jackson, Sarah Martin, Richard Colburn, Bobby Kildea, Chris Geddes, and Mick Cooke)

“Twilight Zone”—The Manhattan Transfer (Bernard Herrmann, Jay Graydon, and Alan Paul)

“It’s Us Again”—Steve Lawrence & Edie Gormé (R. Ward)

“Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home”—Helen Merrill (Harold Arlen)

“Message II (Survival)”—Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five (Melvin Glover and Sylvia Robinson)

“Liar, Liar”—The Castaways (Dennis Craswell and James Donna)

“I’ll Be Back”—The Beatles (John Lennon and Paul McCartney)

“My Mirage”—Iron Butterfly (Doug Ingle)

“Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie”—Jay & The Techniques (Maurice Irby Jr.)

“Then She Remembers”—The Dream Syndicate (Steve Wynn)

“Lucifer Sam”—Pink Floyd (Syd Barrett)

“About the Weather”—Magazine (Barry Adamson, Howard Devoto, John Doyle, and Dave Formula)

“Green Fuz”—The Cramps (Randy Alvey and Leslie Dale)

“Grimly Forming”—The Salvation Army (Peter Van Gelder)

“A Question of Temperature”—Balloon Farm (Mike Appel, Ed Schnug, and Don Henny)

“Video Killed the Radio Star”—The Buggles (Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn, and Bruce Woolley)

“Mr. Soul”—Buffalo Springfield (Neil Young)

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World”—Tears for Fears (Chris Hughes, Roland Orzabal, and Ian Stanley)

“Southern Scandal”—Stan Kenton (Stan Kenton)

“The Battle of the Bands”—The Turtles (Jerry Douglas and Harry Nilsson)

“Hero Takes a Fall”—The Bangles (Susanna Hoffs and Vicki Peterson)

“Shaman’s Blues”—The Doors (Jim Morrison)

“Time Has Come Today”—The Chambers Brothers (Joseph Chambers and Willie Chambers)

“Everything and More”—Dolly Mixture (Rachel Bor, Hester Smith, and Debsey Wykes)

“My Best Friend”—Jefferson Airplane (Skip Spence)

LINER NOTES FOR THE DAILY TELEGRAPH’S DEL CYD

When people speak of “the Paisley Underground” they are usually referring to a handful of talented groups that helped reignite the spirit of the 1960s in a fresh punk and post-punk context: Salvation Army/Three O’Clock, Green on Red, the Long Ryders, Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade, the Last, the Unclaimed, and a handful of others. These bands left their mark, and they rightfully own the territory.

However the term itself is somewhat misleading because the Paisley Underground didn’t happen in a vacuum.

There was a citywide spirit of reclamation and rediscovery in those years that stretched beyond any one scene. It was as if everybody who loved music willfully stepped into a time machine to embark on a wild journey, touching ground in every past era of rock and roll, just to see what we could gather and preserve…what we could use.

A full-scale rockabilly and roots revival was in swing with Levi and the Rockats, the Blasters, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs, Los Lobos, and the reappearance of old-timers like Italianborn Rockin’ Ronny Weiser making the scene. The brilliantine was flowing, along with the taffeta and the unfiltered cigarettes.

Then you had the Gun Club fuel-injecting the blues in double-time and bringing Robert Johnson and John Coltrane to a whole new generation of hyped-up kids. The Mosrite surf guitar was also having something of a rebirth in those years, with the Cramps hitting their stride on Psychedelic Jungle and the Unknowns delivering their sublime one-of-a-kind surfabilly pop. When the Ventures appeared at Disneyland, rock and rollers from every corner of town descended on the park.

Then there were the devoted American mod/ska kids cruising to the On Klub or the Bullet in their fleet of Lambrettas and Vespas to see the Question, the Untouchables, early Fishbone, and others, decked out in parkas and buttons galore.

Then you had a slew of beatnik experimenters that were equally entrenched in the past, but perhaps wedded to no specific time—Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions, the Romans, the Tikis, and others too countless to number.

Just what sparked this deep spirit of revival—which stretched not only coast to coast but US to UK to Australia and beyond—is anybody’s guess and would probably require a degree in chaos theory to prove out. But the point is that the past was everywhere, from the clubs to the magazines to the used clothing shops along Melrose, spreading an infectious spirit right down to the high schools.

And that brings us to the Daily Telegraph.

You didn’t read about them in Bomp! or New York Rocker, but you should have. One talentless Music Connection hack had the unmitigated gall to call the band, “another fish in the fish-eyed-lensed procession of current L.A. groups fetishizing the ‹60s.” Well, rumor has it said writer (who shall remain nameless) is currently holding down a twenty-year-plus job in medical billing data entry, but that’s another story. The fact is that they were not just another group—they were that rare but almost mystical thing: kids with a vision.

My husband Lazar first discovered “the ’Graph” when he went to see his friend Bill “Balloon Man” Morrison performing his special brand of philosophical comedy at the Natural Fudge. Lazar came home that night in a state of high ecstasy, not chemically induced, insisting that he had “seen the future of rock and roll.” The very next day, their go-getter muse and de facto manager Cinnamon Persky called to invite us to see them perform—where else?—in somebody’s parents’ garage.

They were messy, they were green, they were half-shy, halfgrandiose, and, at times, they were out of tune and nearly unlistenable—and yet, these five high school boys were totally invested in the original spirit of rock ‘n’ roll like nobody we’d ever seen. What they lacked in skills they more than made up for with drive and passion, each member bringing the force of his unformed but special personality to the table.

Drummer Rey-Rey was a kind of muscle-bound mini-man with a boyish heart of gold and he hit those things hard. It really stood out. Bassist Jeff “Groony” Grunes was an angel disguised as a porcupine, as methodical as Rey was wild. Keyboardist Devon was the daydreamer—every band needs one. Sometimes, mid-song, you could see him slip into a kind of trance, lost in song. Guitarist Emil was the heartthrob, fleet-footed, winking, but totally consumed by his axe. And lead singer Mickey Sandoz was a true shapeshifter, a trickster fox, a joker who lived to turn the room upside-down.