The Blues Magoos

Biography

A Bronx-based quintet, denizens of the Greenwich Village club scene, and originally known by the tres psychedelic moniker the Bloos Magoos, the Blues Magoos made their mark in 1967 with a rousing, full-throttle, sub-literate, psychedelic garage rock single, "(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet." It wasn't a spacy, pretentious song, nor did it contain vague attempts at hippie-era mysticism, but was rather the kind of simple, direct, infectious rock & roll you could imagine five guys from the Bronx making. With a snotty lead vocal from keyboardist Ralph Scala and some wild-eyed guitar playing courtesy of then-16-year-old Emil "Peppy" Thielheim, America made the Magoos' debut single a Top Ten hit, sending it to number five in January 1967. With this impetus, the band used all the trappings of marketable psychedelia to promote their second album, Psychedelic Lollipop, which, despite the title's obvious pandering, was a fairly cool chunk of psych-garage rock. The album featured trebly, crappy-sounding guitars, a whiny Farfisa organ, yelled vocals, and a rhythm section that shelved nuance for thudding simplicity. But as the psychedelic era gave way to the hippie era's extended raga-rock proclivities, by 1969, the Magoos seemed anachronistic. Amazingly, they released a third album, with an equally absurd title, Electric Comic Book, that wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds. The original Magoos split up in 1969, but Thielheim couldn't resist beating a dead horse and led a mediocre blues-rock version of the band into 1972.