Brand new reissue of one of garage rock’n’roll’s best 45s ever. Boston’s Lyres issued this back in 1979 on Sounds Interesting, run by future Arf! Arf! label chief Erik Lindgren and Chip Lamey. The disc has always been a rare-to-find artefact in its original format, complete with the monochromatic paper picture cover, showing the band onstage when they opened for reunited Texas ’60s garage punks Kenny And The Kasuals.

For the benefit of those who don’t already know it, this is one mean and mighty double-sider and rates as one of this band’s crowning glories – of which there are many! From the fade-in ‘Don’t Give It Up Now’ is an unrelenting three minutes plus, propelled along by a great three-chord motif that holds you spellbound. ‘How Do You Know’ introduces their trademark use of chunky tremelo-powered guitar that shows up throughout their first (and greatest) LP On Fyre and beyond.

This line-up of the group included Rick Carmel on guitar, Paul Murphy on drums, Rick Coraccio on bass and Jeff Conolly on organ and lead vocals. Both songs have an autobiographical feel lyrically, alluding to the experiences of the recently broken-up DMZ group, who numbered Conolly (as Mono Mann), Murphy and Coraccio among their ranks, and were signed to Sire record. And in Jeff Conolly, Lyres had (and still have) a singer with a truly great voice; he can yell and scream with the best of them, or be pure heartfelt rock’n’roll with soul. (SHINDIG!)

Artistic licence alert: Pokemonojeff (Jeff Conolly) (who remastered the songs especially for this release to give it a punchier feel even than the original version) has played about with the lyrics for ‘Don’t Give It Up Now’ and ‘How Do You Know?’ as printed up on the insert, which at times bear no relation to what was sung on the actual record. So do be careful when you are singing along kids! I’m sure the original lyric to ‘Don’t Give It Up Now’ went something like: “my nose was in the air, my head was in the clouds but now they’re grey…”. These have been substituted for “my nose was into blow, my head was in the clouds and heroin was always gay”.

Well, we can forget that shit and just get on with cranking this sucker up, both sides mind, and when you’ve finished playing it, drop the needle at the start and repeat, repeat, repeat. Your life will surely be enriched by far with the whole experience. Let’s hope the girls are gonna dig it enough this time around. Don’t delay, buy, beg, borrow or steal for it today.

Track listing:

Don't Give It Up Now
How Do you Know?