Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Jango Song Of The Day-The Litter

Artist:The Litter
Song:Action Woman
Album:Pebbles Vol. 1: Original '60s Punk & Psych Classics





Like a lot of mid-60s garage bands, The Litter are probably more famous now than they ever were back in the 60s. Action Woman is their best known song mainly because of the Pebbles psychedelic comps. It's the lead track on this CD. But their music was mostly popular in their home base of Minneapolis and their records were never nationally distributed. The Litter came out of two Minneapolis bands The Victors and The Tabs. The other key figure was local record company owner and producer Warren Kendrick. Singer Denny Waite and bassist Jim Kane were in The Victors and Kendrick owned Scotty Records. Kendrick had his own band The Scotsmen. Other members were Bill Strandlof on guitar, Dan Rinaldi on guitar and Tom Murray on drums. Action Woman was their first single in 1967. It did well locally but The Litter never broke out of the regional market. Strandlof was responsible for the guitar solo but he left soon after and was replaced by Tom "Zippy" Caplan. And though Action Woman was written by Kendrick, most of their debut album had covers of British Invasion bands. By the time The Litter signed with ABC Records in 1969, Caplan and Waite left and they weren't the same band. They also appeared very briefly in Haskell Wexler's classic 1968 film Medium Cool. The Litter has reunited over the years including for this performance of Action Woman at The Mirage in Las Vegas 1990.

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