Catacombs flyer for a Six Pents and Shadows show, Thursday, April 7, 1966. Within a year, the Shadows would change their name to the Things. (This was one of several different "grand openings" of the Catacombs between December, 1965, and April, 1966.)
Although it seems incredible today, only a small percentage of Houston-area rock bands of the 1960s were able to release a record. The stacks of vinyl that one could compile would, at first glance, seem to ridicule any notion that the music scene was somehow negligent in this department -- Neal Ford and the Fanatics alone released 12 singles and a LP, and all other popular groups had at least one single. But this image is deceptive. The Houston Post estimated that there were several hundred groups operating in the city's Metropolitan area, to which one musician added that "it seems like thousands." The mind races contemplating the hundreds of great '60s songs that could have been.
On the other hand, we probably shouldn't make too big a deal out of this. We can safely assume that most groups that didn't produce a record were mediocre, had no original material, and viewed music-making as just another hobby, nothing so serious as to require the expense of studio time or getting real managers involved. Had they recorded, we would today probably have even more lame, unwanted versions of "Mister You're a Better Man Than I" than we already have.
This is definitely not the case with the Things, a highly competent local group who recorded four songs of original material at Andrus Productions in 1967 that went unissued until the 1980s. The reason for their songs' non-release is not known, but it ensured their total eclipse from popular memories of the '60s scene. Nobody I ever talked to remembered a group called "The Things." With one exception, their name does not appear in flyers or posters from the period. Their gigs are not listed (as so many others were) in the Houston Post's weekly Now Sounds calendar. They were not part of the in crowd that hung with the Fanatics, Sidewalks, Coastliners, and Countdown 5.
What little is known about the Things is that they were originally called the Shadows. A Houston booking agent still had one of their business cards in the 1990s (shown above). Most group business cards of this period list a variety of genres that the band could play ("rock - folk - rhythm and blues"), but the Shadows' card states simply that they play "rock & roll music." Their names are listed as Dave Turner, Greg Jones, Floyd Childers, Eddie Loudon, and Steve Owens. A sixth name, Joe Engle, has been marked out. As the Shadows, they were co-billed on a Catacombs flyer dated April 7, 1966, but this is the only time they are listed on any print ephemera for the best known of all Houston teen clubs.
In July, 1967, the Shadows -- now known as the Things, with a new member David Huffman, replacing one of the others -- booked time at Andrus Productions to record their only known session. This was the same month the Golden Dawn recorded their Power Plant album at Andrus, and just shortly before the Elevators would begin laying down tracks for Easter Everywhere in the same room (there was no "Studio B" at Andrus). To the bands, it was a chaotic but propitious period. The Sidewalks' "99th Floor" (another Andrus production) had hit #1 locally and was moving nationally. The Clique's "Splash 1" would soon be released from recent sessions and become a local hit. Could it go national? Fever Tree and the Coastliners were also recording there. It seemed like things were finally happening in Houston. The Things had every reason to believe that they would be part of this excitement when their records were released.
The most memorable track that the Things recorded that day was undoubtedly "In Your Soul." The relentless, martial two-chord beat, combined with some outstanding keyboard wizardry overcame the cliched refrain ("I can't love nobody but you..."). It's simply a great track that never gets old.
A fuzztoned lead guitar -- barely evident on "In Your Soul" -- strongly kicks off their next song, "I Don't Believe It." A different lead vocalist is used. Five instruments are clearly heard -- lead guitar, rhythm guitar, organ, bass, and drums. This track makes it evident that everyone in the band can play their instrument well, as some aggressive drum fills really move the song along, though once again it's somewhat marred by a hackneyed chorus ("Why do I love you the way that I do..."). The agile keyboardist once again takes the solo.
The group's vocal harmonies threaten to overpower the lead on the mix of "Another Girl Like You," their most commercial and radio-friendly track. The same vocalist used on "I Don't Believe It" returns. There is no proper guitar solo here, only a repeat of the introduction, and the organist is only briefly heard at the end of each refrain. But aggressive, driving drums continue to bolster the song and retain the driving intensity of the previous two songs.
Finally there was "Loveless Lover," featuring the return of the same lead vocalist as "In Your Soul." The weakest of the four songs, and mixed badly for the reissue, it features no solos, and brings in the addition of what sounds vaguely like a reed instrument (alto sax?). The drumming is frantic as usual.
Walt Andrus in his studio in 1970. (Photo by Roy Covey, printed in the Houston Post Tempo magazine, August 9, 1970.)
Had "In Your Soul" b/w either "I Don't Believe It" or "Another Girl Like You" been released as a single in 1967, it may not have gone anywhere (Top 40 airplay having nothing to do with a song's intrinsic merit), but would have since been regarded as one of the greatest Houston singles of the '60s. But the hoped-for release never came. The producer is unknown, but it was most likely Roy Ames, not the most reliable person on the Houston music scene. In a similar fashion, an album by Lightnin' Hopkins recorded by Ames in 1968 would not be released until 1975. Perhaps-- assuming Ames was the producer -- the songs were pitched to several labels but were rejected by all of them, and Ames had no interest in releasing it on his own label of the time, Cascade. Ames was mostly into R&B, and these songs are uncharacteristic for him. It may seem remarkable to us today that record companies would reject such commercial material, but once we consider that such excellent songs as Neal Ford's "Good Men," the Chapparels' "I Try So Hard," and the Coastliners' "My Kind of Girl" -- to name but three local examples -- were also rejected, it becomes less surprising. The business revolved around the often inscrutable whims of producers and salesmen.
***
There it stood until 1983. By this time, a small market had opened for what was confusingly called sixties "punk" as well as obscure psychedelic music, and into this fell the unlikely figure of Roy Ames. Ames had been an R&B producer (supervising albums by not only Hopkins but T-Bone Walker, Arnett Cobb, Clifton Chenier, and Juke-Boy Bonner), but had fallen on hard times and was in prison in the early 1980s. Ames' tapes were stored in the vault of ACA Studios, then located at its final commercial location on Westpark Drive in Houston. The exact sequence of events is now unclear, but Ames or his lawyer probably wrote to ACA president Bill Holford asking if he could find someone interested in reissuing his old tapes, as he would be released from prison soon and would need an income. One of Holford's employees, Andy Bradley, went through Ames's tapes and recognized a few things that may be of interest to Voxx Records' Greg Shaw (Bradley was familiar with Shaw's Pebbles reissues and Bomp magazine). The album that eventually resulted, given the highly misleading but salable title Acid Visions, was drawn from the few odds and ends Ames had (mostly Johnny Winter-related material, giving an overinflated impression of Winter's actual influence on the scene when included on the album), plus a few vinyl singles Ames had never heard of, missed by Pebbles and the Flashback series, such as the Stoics, Satori, and the Pandas -- loaned by Shaw, Peter Buesnel, Ronnie Bond, or David Shutt. Two Things songs ("In Your Soul" and "I Don't Believe It") appeared for the first time ever, in new rough stereo mixes, from the master tape (still a rarity in those days of needle-drops).
Transferring from the original master tape had obvious advantages, but there were also drawbacks. Most engineers in the 1980s working from '60s tapes could not help but hear them through contemporary tastes, and mixed them accordingly, with no thought whatsoever given to how the original engineer or band "would have" theoretically mixed them 20 years before (the underlying assumption being that any '60s mix -- since the technology was so old compared to the '80s -- was de facto "bad"). This resulted in many reissues sounding quite different from what '60s fans expected to hear, and this approach continues to persist among some labels to this day. The Things tape is a prime example of this tendency. Had the songs been mixed by Andrus in 1967, the drums would have been much lower, the backing vocals much higher; the inverse mixing reflects 1980s attitudes, not '60s ones. (The exception is "Another Girl Like You," where the backing vocals overpower the lead in parts.) They would have also been mixed down to mono for release. The ACA transfers use stereo mixes, which may not not have been too objectionable had the channel losses clearly audible in "Another Girl Like You" been fixed.
News of the release of the long-dormant tape apparently did not filter to the members of the Things themselves, as reissues and compilations often did. In the 36 years since Acid Visions was first released, no member of the Things is known to have come forward, and for all I know, the members are still unaware that their '67 session has been publicly known and loved by '60s fans for over a generation now. Someone named Floyd Mason Childers, born in Houston in 1949, died at age 31 in 1980. Is it possible that this person was the same Floyd Childers who played with the Things?
***
In the 1990s, Roy Ames sold or leased the Acid Visions tapes to the Collectables label, who began a series of wretched compact disc reissues. Highly "digitally enhanced" versions of the Things' songs appear on these discs, and these versions -- still further ruined by computer remixing and speeding up -- are the basis of the versions heard today by thousands on YouTube. This is a shame. Below we have included the original vinyl pressings of all four songs, with no digital enhancement at all, only channel loss restoration on "Another Girl Like You."
"In Your Soul"
"I Don't Believe It"
"Another Girl Like You"(Channel losses in original 1988 transfer partially corrected by making the new digital transfer in mono and leveling. Some slight loss may still be audible in places.)
"Loveless Lover"
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