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Woggles frontman Manfred Jones spins a story about opening for the Detroit Cobras at the Magic Stick two years ago. The band had a great set, and afterwards an enthusiastic fresh-faced kid came up to talk to them. The kid wanted to know when they were playing the Magic Stick again, and was shocked to find the band was from Atlanta. “You guys TOTALLY have the Detroit sound down!” said the kid. Jones gives a laugh, then says “So that’s the way it was; we’ve been playing ‘The Detroit Sound’ in Atlanta, but who knew?” Such claims irritate the Woggles to no end, since they’ve been plying their brand of primal rock’n’roll across the land for seventeen years now; a dense cocktail of garage, frat rock, surfy intros and the like. They started “our little adventure”(Jones’ term) back in 1987 in Athens, GA, when the members were all associated with the local college radio station down there. The
membership of the Woggles has gone through a few transitions. While
the rhythm section of Dan Electro on drums and Buzz Hagstrom on
bass has been in place since 1995, they lost guitarist Montague
due to complications related to diabetes last year, and band tapped
ex-Guadalacanal Diary Jeff Walls for string-slinger. Walls’
one-year anniversary with the band will be about the same time as
their Elbow Room show on the 23rd. “He gets rewarded with
more miles, less money,” Jones Snikers ”He knew the
job was dangerous when he took it.” Putting this into historical perspective, the Woggles began the year that R.E.M. put out Document. While Athens had been a starting point for many a jangly college pop band (e.g. the B-52’s, Let’s Active, and Guadalacanal Diary) the Woggles’ peers in the local music scene were much, much heavier, says Maynard. The Woggles’ sound and style didn’t exactly bowl over the locals—nobody could really handle or get a hold on what Jones and friends were doing. “They hated us...they really didn’t get us,” he says. The oft-heard critique was “a lame Cramps cover band,” which Jones points out speaks of the musical knowledge of the scenesters at the time. While members of the band enjoyed the Cramps’ work, “Nobody in the band used the Cramps as a gateway; more like the Lyres or the Flat Duo Jets, even the Fleshtones. Nobody disliked them, they just weren’t a focal point.” he says. Jones relates how they were playing shows with the ska-punk group The Pietasters a few years ago: The audience didn’t know how to take the band. “The sound was kinda punky, but it wasn’t hardcore, it wasn’t ska, and it wasn’t rockabilly...they just completely were stupefied--was it good? was it bad?” he says. Since
pop culture moves in odd ways and “garage rock” became
a hip thing two or three years ago, the Woggles found a few new
folks in the audience (though not always) and a lot confused reactions
from folks unfamiliar with their history. They’d play the
same towns they visited with the Pietasters and the same kids would
come out and tell the band that now they understood that “We’re
like the Hives,” Jones laughs bitterly, “or now they
know we’re like the White Stripes. They didn’t know
that then, but now they understand what we’re trying to do.
We’re not trying to do rock’n’roll, we’re
not trying to do the Woggles; what we’re trying to do is the
Hives...only earlier than the Hives were.” The Woggles tour through Michigan every year or two. Jones tells a story of playing at the late, great Gold Dollar Bar for the first time, when the band had to drive down Cass Corridor. They wondered if the bar was some sort of Mad Max outpost and saw odd people only described as “sand people; Tuskan Raiders” wandering around the steaming sewer lids. The band had a great show that night, though, playing with the Sirens, who still cover the band’s song “Push.” Despite the (unfortunate?) flavor-of-the-month status currently held by a rock sub-genre enjoyed for many years by the Woggles (and this writer), Jones confesses that the band hasn’t really been able to directly capitalize on the hype due to the limited resources of their New Jersey-based label, Telstar Records. A few more folks at the shows, perhaps, and a few more records sold through the website (www.thewoggles.com) would help. Also, the band has had some help and airtime from Little Steven, whose “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” show is syndicated nationwide on classic rock radio, heard around here on Sunday nights on 94.7 WCSX-FM. Even though the current hype will pass, Jones knows the band will continue, though they don’t exactly look forward to the day after the Culture Industry has moved on, and the new kids at the shows wonder why the Woggles still play “that passé music.” Give the kids a little while to learn. As Jones says, “great rock’nroll is timeless.” A2P The Woggles will be performing at the Elbow Room in Ypsilanti on Friday, July 23rd, with local rockers the Avatars and Los Coronados. Check www.ypsirocks.com for more info. They will play Small’s in Hamtramck the next night, Saturday July 24, also with the Avatars. www.smallsbardetroit.com for more info. Email Jeremy Salmon at getbent@annarborpaper.com
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