Swamp Rats

Formed in McKeesport, PA, a small town near Pittsburgh, the Swamp Rats released a handful of garage rock singles in 1966-1967 that got some local airplay and sales, but never broke out into national visibility. At their most scorching, those singles were in some ways a little ahead of their time, linking the fury of mid-'60s garage rock with the heavier, fuzzier, more over the top and crazed pre-metal rock of late-'60s bands like the MC5 and the Stooges. Their attack was dense and almost bludgeoning, paced by some particularly bulging-eyed, throat-rending scream-singing, usually with Bob Hocko on lead vocals. Although they were skilled at imbuing garage band standards like "Louie Louie" and "Hey Joe" with individual stamps, a big part of their failure to make a larger impact was likely their shortage of original material, with covers comprising most of the songs they recorded. At least most of those covers were hardly run of the mill in either selection or execution, particularly an overhaul of "Psycho" that might have been even more intense than the Sonics' original, though they did occasionally tone down for quieter stuff, as on their version of the Beatles' "Here, There and Everywhere." For a band that only lasted about a year and a half, the Swamp Rats' story is a rather complicated one. They evolved out of the far poppier, though quite good, Pittsburgh-area band the Fantastic Deejays, who did half a dozen or so singles of their own, most of them in a far poppier British Invasion-indebted style than the Swamp Rats would adopt. The Fantastic Deejays split into two factions, one including drummer/singer Bob Hocko, the other with guitarist Dick Newton. Newton's band, formed under the auspices of Fantastic Deejays producer/manager Terry Lee (who also had a local radio...