Best song by The Sonics

keep on knockin?????

subjective list, which was probably a mistake

The Witch, then

some folks like water, some folks like wine

Well, Psycho and Louie Louie are both great but I think there are better covers of Louie Louie out there right? So Psycho, then.

the drum fill on "have love will travel" is the best thing they ever did.

Contains my favorite sax solo as well

Shot Down i think

I may rep for He's Waiting, time will tell.

The obvious choices? Boss Hoss v The Witch v Psycho. Still have to go with Psycho. Great band.

He's Waitin' without a doubt. I like the way he includes havin' fun amongst the list of crimes that his girl has committed and for which she deserves to have Satan set on her. The opening guitar line is laced menace and G Roslie does some screaming towards the end which matches anything he does elsewhere.

Boss Hoss close second, he almost sounds like he's going to cry so pleased is he that his car 'really moves'. Got a soft spot for Cinderella as well.

the drum fill on "have love will travel" is the best thing they ever did.

troo!!! i love pretty much everything the drummer does though, dude was amazing.

also voting for "he's waitin'" cause, fuck, what a song. and agreeing on "boss hoss" being a close second, too.

Strychnine, for purely nostalgic reasons, just edged Have Love Will Travel.

"He's Waiting." Though "Psycho" and the guitar break from "Louie" are huge, too.

I first heard the Sonics via a mixtape a friend's ex-BF had made her (said tape also introduced me to Huggy Bear (Her Jazz) and Comet Gain (The Kids At The Club) amongst others) - the song was He's Waitin' and it's always been my favourite - I love the lyrics - "Satan knows what you did" etc and as said above the screaming at the end is about the craziest Jerry Roslie ever got.

My only gripe about the recent reunion show was that they opened with that song and the sound was shit, the soundman only got it together after the first couple of songs.

They do the opening 3 seconds of songs better than any band in rock n roll... Psycho's drum roll into the "woah ba-a-by!" scream and right on into that lurching groove, the addams family-ish creepy bit off the top of Strychnine, the stuttering guitar licks with great little pauses at the beginning of Have Love and Shot Down. He's Waiting...

Voted Strychnine. Because it is good for what's a-ailin' yew.

The start of "the Witch" is so menacing, and so much fun.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

as much of a garage nerd i am, i find the sonics' oeuvre so underwhelming i'm tempted to out and call them overrated. as proto-punk as they may have been, and as awesome as they are, they were barely more than a cover band. everything they wrote is awesome, but fuck man there are like four original songs on their debut.

dunno why that even matters tbh, it was pretty common in the 60s to load albums with tons of covers.

Would've gone with "Cinderella," had I seen this on time.

yeah that's true, but i guess just the songs they're covering are so familiar that they just bore me at this point. and i'm pretty sure that even for a 60s band they were cover heavy. and the originals are so good, it's a shame there're so few of them.

well, agreed on the last point. also felt that way about the familiarity of the covers at first, but for some reason that's kinda fallen off over the years and i just love the way they stomp everything out.

do ya LAAAAAHV ME

Also note that their "Louie Louie" didn't really sound like any previous version (as far as I know) - they made it even simpler

Sure we did this before, and I voted "Boss Hoss". Baffled why anyone could be underwhelmed by the Sonics.

Covers are one of the thing that garage rock is all about. That's how you tell who's good.

I thought their Louie was a rip-off of the Wailers version - or is it vice versa?

I have an e.p., it's .... mmm... .alright...

It's called "Here are the Sonics" and it's either an indie label or a bootleg of some sort.

xpost - No, the Wailers basically played it with the standard I-IV-V change, while the Sonics' was more like I-III-IV (if I'm annotating that properly.) But they still might've borrowed that from another source I'm unaware of.

yeah, i was mixed up, i think that sonics louie arrangement is all theirs.

they made it even simpler

: )