ALMOST THERE | ISSUE SEVEN
Leave me alone
Sixties garage gems from my imaginary collection.
No. 3 The Jagged Edge, ‘Midnight to Six Man’.
The received wisdom is that mid-sixties US garage music came about as a direct result of the so-called ‘British invasion’ bands (the Stones, Beatles, Animals etc) that had crossed the Atlantic a couple of years before. Whilst not disputing this as a basic premise, I can’t help thinking the true picture’s a little more complex. Why? Well, for one thing the vast majority of the garage bands I’ve heard don’t sound anything like their cousins from the other side of the pond. And for another-
out of the literally thousands of garage tracks cut between 1965 and 1968 you’ll find very few covers of Brit-invasion standards.
A notable exception is the Jagged Edge’s version of Midnight to Six Man. This cover takes the original by the Pretty Things—a fine song without doubt—to a whole new level. As for the band itself, even by the standards of 60’s garage, where obscurity is the norm, information about the Jagged Edge is unusually scant- a situation not helped by the fact that there were a number of other groups around at the time using the same name. Indeed it was only quite recently established that ‘our’ Jagged Edge hailed from New York, rather than the Mid West, as had been previously thought.
Midnight to Six Man, with the excellent How Many Times as its flip, came out on Twirl Records in February 1966. It was to be the band’s only release.
Click on the Dansette to listen to
Midnight to Six Man