One Hit No More, No. 21: ? and the Mysterians, "I Need Somebody" Ain't Chopped Liver (Dammit)

A Mysterian. Oh, hell yeah.

The Hit

If you’ve ever wondered how far back “69” goes as a dirty word, I can confirm 1966 at a minimum. ? and The Mysterians toyed with calling their hit “69 Tears” but, even at 15, lead guitarist Bobby Balderrama knew wouldn’t touch a name like that. Fortunately, the same guy who came up with it (Robert Martinez, OG Mysterian and drummer) had the bright, marketable idea of flipping the numbers in the same conversation, thus “96 Tears.”

If you’ve listened to enough oldies radio, you know this one; if you’re a fan of garage, or even punk, you know it: if nothing else, you know that keyboard riff because it’s probably been in 20 commercials by now. It barely has lyrics – “Too Many Teardrops,” which repeats like a broken man’s mantra, was its working title – so it’s mostly that loping (almost Motown?) rhythm staggering between a couple different musical passages and with that famous keyboard snippet tying it together. Add Question Mark’s (tonally) pitch-perfect delivery and you’ve got a hit.

The Rest of the Story

“Question Mark was an eccentric figure, publicly stating that his soul had originated from Mars and that he once walked on Earth with the dinosaurs.”

It’s hard to choose what’s more out there about ? and the Mysterians: Question Mark’s personality, or the fact that every Mysetrian who ever played in the band was the son of Mexican migrant workers (the auto factories, mostly), and in Bay City and/or Saginaw, Michigan. Those reading closely might have caught another notable detail – e.g., Balderrama was young when he started in the band. Frankie Rodriguez, the guy playing that famous keyboard hook, joined at the insanely young age of 13. They weren’t much older when they hit it big and toured…

Back to the beginning, the band started nameless and as a three-piece – one without a keyboardist. Robert Martinez, Larry Borjas (guitar), and wee Bobby Balderrama was the original line-up and they started covering surf music (e.g., The Ventures, Duane Eddy). As a bunch of Mexican-American kids in an area where they didn't come in bunches, they struggled to find venues that would let them play. As the band bumbled for a sound and an identity, they lifted "Mysterians" from a 1957 Japanese sci-fi movie. The first big step toward breaking out came when Question Mark, the band’s singer/talisman, came on board; Rudy Martinez (aka, Question Mark, aka, Robert’s younger brother) already had a reputation as a dancer, but it turned out he could sing – and with a surfeit of style. The rest of the band thought he sounded enough like Mick Jagger (huh) that they threw over the surf rock and started playing closer to the The Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

One Hit No More, No. 10: The Chantays Shoot the "Pipeline" (to Nowhere)

These were men either in, or just after, high school. #OldeTyme

I flirted with the idea of combining The Surfaris and The Chantays into one post, but opted against because dropping them into a bucket called “surf rock” felt like short-changing both bands. As it turns out, though, neither band did much beyond putting out two famous hits, both in the same year, and in a musical movement that everyone agrees got crushed under the British Invasion, and that few seemed to miss when it left. To contextualize that argument, I lifted this from the LA Times’ obituary from founding Chantay, Brian Carman:

“On his debut album in 1967, Jimi Hendrix promised his listeners that ‘you'll never hear surf music again.’”

Surf came and went, mostly within 1963, and Hendrix still felt like he had to crap on it four years later…

The Surfaris had “Wipe Out” (a brief history of the band and the song) and The Chantays had “Pipeline.” The differences don’t quite end there, but they don’t go much further either. Both bands formed in high school (The Chantays were a bit older, collectively), and wrapped up as going, creative concerns shortly after. Both came from southern California, both looked up to and borrowed from the same bands/artists – e.g., The Ventures, Dick Dale, and The Rhythm Rangers, whose line-up included Carman’s older brother, Steve (just for the record, the Orange County Register’s obit on Carman calls them The Rhythm Rockers). Carman and his friends formed The Chantays for the oldest reason people go into entertainment. As Bob Spickard, the other half of the band’s brain said, “Hey, these guys were making money and getting all the girls, so maybe we ought to think about that.”