The Sonics play LA at the Roxy Aug. 15 Photo By: Merri L. Sutton
60s cult band, The Sonics, crank up the rock and roll at The Roxy on Fri, Aug. 15, playing beloved songs such as “Witch,” “Psycho,” “Strychnine” and of course, “Have Love Will Travel.”
Reforming in 2007 after nearly 40 years, the group sounds like it didn’t miss a beat, with three of its founding members in tow.
“If we’d been playing the last 40 years and gotten very accomplished on our instruments, we probably couldn’t go back and try to play basic, simple, hard rock and roll like we did before,” guitarist, Larry Parypa said.
Appearing at Ink-N-Iron Festival in 2009, the group performed with great energy and purpose as if they were teenagers.
“I’m sure there are still lots of people who think, ‘geez, there’s a band called The Sonics, coming to town. They’re all approaching, or are 70 years old and they’re claiming they can still play rock and roll. Give me a break!’” Parypa chuckled.
Original singer, Gerry Rosalie, has a very distinctive style of singing and screaming, sounding almost hysterical at times, which was and is a huge part of their sound.
“When we first got together, everybody in the band, without discussing it, seemed to agree that we’re just going to play as hard as we can, make it as rock and roll as we can possibly do it,” Parypa explained.
“Gerry would get real excited and start screaming and everything. And then it became what we did.
“We had very loud drums, and back in those days we didn’t have monitors, they probably hadn’t been invented, yet. The drummer wasn’t mic’d and nobody had microphones in front of their speakers. In order to have loud drums, you had to play real loud.
“So you have a drummer playing real loud, I had to play my guitar even louder to get over him, and I wanted that distortion sound. At that time there weren’t any pedals out there that gave you distortion, and Gerry was screaming. Everything just kind of flowed from that.”
With numerous technological advances such as monitors since they used to play live, there were some new things to get used to once they started up again.
“When we played our first engagement in 40 years in New York, that was one of the things that just freaked us out. Monitors? What is all of this sound coming from our feet and it’s squealing?” Parypa laughed.
“We’ve gotten used to all that now. We have the same problems everyone else does, trying to hear each other on stage, balance and all that stuff. But it’s fun!”
The same holds true for recording. Their first two albums sounded raw and full at the same time. A lot of that can be attributed to only have 2 tracks and then 4 tracks to record on.
However, the group recently finished recording a new album of straight ahead, rock and roll songs, which they tried to record the way they did before, as live as possible without getting too technical.
“I would never have guessed, ever, that I’d be doing this again. I should be in a rest home or something,” Parypa mused.
“Instead we’re travelling all over the place playing rock and roll with young people. It’s weird.”