The Shadows of Knight were, as Lenny Kaye so aptly put it in the Nuggets liner notes, "almost too good to be true." An archetypal (but by no means pedestrian) american garage unit out of the suburbs of Chicago fronted by 'Wild Man' Jim Sohns and featuring the guitar slinging talents of Jerry McGeorge/Joe Kelly, the thumping bass of Warren Rogers and the kick-ass backbeat of Tom Schiffour.
After releasing their awesome blues-rockin' debut LP in 1966 (eponymously named after their first big hit, an adrenaline fueled cover of Van the Man's 'Gloria'), the group swiftly moved into a more psych/folk-rock oriented groove. This shift was cemented by the release of thier barn-stoming second LP 'Back Door Men'. In one 36 min album, the guys cover almost EVERY garage sub-genre with consistent success and inspiration; we're given a two hit salvo to open, with 'Bad Little Woman's farfisa/fuzz riffing setting the record's drugged-up, moody tone, reinforced with the psyched-out Bo-Diddley stomping of 'Gospel Zone' (complete with surely gospel inspired call and response backing vox!). So far, a pretty cool sound, not too far out but enough grit to get us up and movin'. 'The Behemoth' however, takes us off guard; 'East-West' raga guitar, tribal drumming, NO VOCALS?!! These boys are moving on from Chess Records that's for sure... 'Three For Love' follows, pretty groovy folk-pop, very Byrdsian in vibe, nice track but no match for its successor, an amped up (and evidently grassed up if ya know what I mean...) version of that old chestnut of Hendrix fame, 'Hey Joe'. This is psych-garage at its best, complete with McGuinn inspired 12-String explorations, wild drum/bass riffing and Sohns' proto-punk vocals shooting us to the moon in a haze of ecstacy...
It doesn't get better than this, and to be honest, neither does the rest of the album. Side two has the brill 'I'll Make You Sorry' and a cool R&B take on the Monkees' 'Tommorow's Gonna Be Another Day', but the other bluesy tunes (e.g Willie Dixon's 'Spoonful' and Jimmy Reed's 'Peepin' and Hidin') just can't compare to the delights found on the first side. Still, the Shadows deliver these tunes with conviction and a gutsy quality that very few groups of the time could replicate this side of the Stonesy/Animalsy/Them contingent. Perhaps this ain't the GREATEST garage album, but it sets the bar pretty damn high, we'll see how it compares to another Nuggets' group in the next episode of Dyl's Garage Hangout. Until then, adios and I'll see you Garage Lovers soon...
