THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,391) Zakary Thaks* — “Face to Face”
Yesterday, I featured an unreleased garage rock classic by Corpus Christi, Texas’s Liberty Bell, written by singer Chris Gerniottis. Today, I travel back in time to Gerniottis’s earlier band, the Corpus Christi garage rock legends Zakary Thaks, which he joined when he was 15! Here is the band’s biggest selling single — 6,000 or so copies sold! It is “one of the best Texas ’60s rockers” (liner notes to the CD comp Texas Reverberations), “smoking” with “mind-blowing fuzz guitar” (Richie Unterberger, https://www.allmusic.com/album/form-the-habit-mw0000657979, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/zakary-thaks-mn0000594426#biography), “sizzl[ing] insistently with rattlesnake fuzztone guitars” (Beverly Paterson, liner notes to the CD comp Zachary Thaks: Form the Habit), “as intense today as the day it was recorded” (liner notes to the CD comp Garage Beat ’66 Vol. 5: Readin’ Your Will!)
Chris Gerniottis recalls that:
‘Face to Face” was number one for a whole month in Corpus Christi, number one for three weeks in San Antonio and number one for two weeks in Austin. It was definitely our best-selling record, and it sold about 6000 copies. I’d say it was probably our best single. We were all real excited when we wrote that song and we loved playing it live.
liner notes to the CD comp Zachary Thaks: Form the Habit
ZK wins the All Music Guide triple crown, with Richie Unterberger, Mark Deming, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine all ecstatic about the band — and deservedly so!
Unterberger writes:
[T]he songwriting and musicianship [is] at a far higher level than most ’60s garage bands could boast, with just as much insouciant youthful energy. . . .
One of the best garage bands of the ’60s, and one of the best teenage rock groups of all time, Zakary Thaks released a half-dozen regionally distributed singles in 1966 and 1967; some were hits in their hometown of Corpus Christi, TX, but none were heard elsewhere . . . . Heavily indebted (as were so many bands) to R&B-influenced British heavyweights . . . the group added a thick dollop of Texas raunch to their fuzzy, distorted guitars and hell-bent energy. Most importantly, they were first-rate songwriters . . . Their 1967 singles found the group moving into psychedelic territory; some songs betrayed a Moby Grape influence, and some good melodic numbers were diluted by poppy arrangements . . . . Lead singer Chris Gerniottis [was] only 15 when Zakary Thaks began making records . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/album/form-the-habit-mw0000657979, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/zakary-thaks-mn0000594426#biography
Deming writes:
Texas produced more than its share of great garage rock bands during the mid-’60s, and one of the very best . . . were the Zakary Thaks, a Corpus Christi combo whose instrumental skill, songwriting acumen, and frantic energy belied their age — the five members of the group were all between the ages of 15 and 17 when they cut their blazing debut single, “Bad Girl,” which earned them a short-lived deal with Mercury Records . . . . [T]heir collected body of work is consistently strong and surprisingly eclectic, with the hot-wired garage attack of “Bad Girl” evolving into a sound that encompassed folk-rock, psychedelia, and pop without going stale along the way. . . . [A]a good as regionally released ’60s garage rock gets, with fine songs, strong and imaginative playing, and a passion that extended beyond simple teenage bravado . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/album/passage-to-india-mw0002066051
Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes:
[O]ne of the best unheralded American rock & roll outfits of the ’60s[, they] weren’t pioneers as much as fierce synthesizers who channeled every upheaval of the British Invasion into wily, inventive rock & roll. . . . [They had] a similar sense of sonic adventure and jangly melodicism [as the Yardbirds and the Kinks]. . . . develop[ing] quickly during their nearly four years together . . . . adept . . . in navigating the shifting fashions of the late ’60s . . . .This group of rampaging teenage Texans made passionate rock & roll that still sounds invigorating decades later . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/album/its-the-end-the-definitive-collection-mw0002801694
- * * *Who is Zakary Thaks?! Chris Gerniottis explains that “[s]omeone saw it somewhere in a magazine and it sounded different. And it also sounded English, which was perfect since we were all heavily into the whole British Invasion thing. (liner notes to the CD comp Zachary Thaks: Form the Habit)
Here they are live (though no “Face to Face”):
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