? AND THE MYSTERIANS

96 Tears/Action(reissues, 1966, ’67) ABKCO

Shades of ’66: enigmatic garage punkers return to vinyl. By Jim Wirth

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 8/10

OON April 2, 1968, Rudy ‘?’ Martinez was one of three men picked up by Michigan state police in a lay-by near the Zilwaukee Bridge, not far from his home town of Saginaw, the trio arrested for possession of “several tubes of glue and brown bags containing glue”. In the wrong place at the wrong time with very much the wrong drugs, the perma-shaded? And The Mysterians singer thus found himself about as far from the psychedelic action as he could have been, an improbable local success story recast as something of a laughing stock.

Naive, sci-fi crazy, Mexican-American youngsters from a bluecollar backwater two hours’ drive from Detroit,? And The Mysterians contrived to record the second-biggestselling US single of 1966 (outsold only by The Mamas & The Papas’ “California Dreamin’”) in a basic studio in Bay City, Michigan. A wounded rant with a killer keyboard sound, “96 Tears” sold a million, but the two albums the band released – now back on vinyl after a long spell in legal limbo – went largely unnoticed, with mismanagement, racism and more goings-on elsewhere helping to seal the band’s fate as a one-hit wonder. As? whoops presciently on”.