The Zoo - She Said She Said - Good Day Sunshine/ Where Have All The Good Times Gone

 

Two song Beatles medley (and Kinks cover) from Ohio garage rockers

Label: Parkway

Year of Release: 1967

One of the more finely observed aspects of "Spinal Tap" is the way the group went through so many name changes before settling on their sinister moniker. Digging up facts about obscure sixties groups comes with plenty of challenges already, but the fact so many of them struggled to settle on a working group name complicates matters further. 

Ohio's The Zoo were yet another one of those restless cases. Starting life as the Beau Denturies in 1964, they gigged around the local area and following a victory in a WAKR battle of the bands contest issued "Don't Quit Now" on the Encore label in 1966. 

Perhaps realising The Beau Denturies was a pretty awful name, they promptly changed it to The Yellow Pages to issue this track on Encore in March 1967. The directory company they'd named themselves after promptly objected, and it was shelved and subsequently released again under the name The Zoo in May the same year, this time on the Parkway label.

It's a curious attempt to wedge the last track on Side One of "Revolver" and the first track on Side Two together; the uneasy, disassociated "She Said She Said" and the bouncy "Good Day Sunshine". By rights, the two don't feel as if they should be existing in the same 45rpm space, but the group find a way of making it work, partly by virtue of taking the rubbery bounce of "Sunshine" and hardening it up somewhat with distorted buzzing chords, and taking the trippy darkness of "She Said" and adding some perk. 

Is it a worthwhile artistic endeavour? Good question. The liberties taken with the original arrangements are hardly radical, and there's probably no particular reason you'd need to reach for this record over the original "Revolver" tracks. Despite this, it's a cheery bit of work which predates The Beatles own "Abbey Road" device of meshing their work together in medley form (and Stars on 45, for that matter, but let's not go there).

The cover of The Kinks "Where Have All The Good Times Gone" on the flip is less interesting, taking the yearning of the original and stripping it back to a perfunctory jangle. 

The group consisted of Garland Aberegg, William Andrea, David Burnham, Bob Baird and Wayne Harriman. So far as I can tell, they carried on performing until 1969 before deciding to knock it on the head, and no singles were forthcoming after this one.

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