Kerry Nuggets

In high school, John "Entwistle" Kerry played bass for a band called The Electras. If you're curious to hear what they sound like, someone's posted an MP3 of excerpts from their sole, self-released album here. They've basically got a surf-rock sound, or as close to a surf-rock sound as you can get while recording in New England.

Skeleton Closet has more details:

A quick web search finds this description on a 60s garage band web site: "All of their recordings are now hot property -- their best known song 'Dirty Ol' Man' was written and produced by Warren Kendrick, The Litter's producer. This is a superb example of mid-sixties punk with excellent snotty vocals and chainsaw guitar and became a local hit selling 5500 copies."

Unfortunately, that was a different band. The same web site says of Kerry's outfit, "ALBUM: 1 THE ELECTRAS (No label ELT-201) 1962 -- Not to be confused with the Minnesota bunch, this private press album was the work of a prep-rock band from St. Pauls academy in Concord, New Hampshire." Another member of Kerry's band, "Rambling Jack Radcliffe", says that the group played "tea dances during the school term and parties during vacations." OK, not quite the same RAWK excitement. They were however organized enough to copyright the name first, forcing the better reputed garage band to change its moniker to "Twas Brillig" when they signed to a major label.

The Kerry campaign hasn't been as quick when it comes to domain names. Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported:

Indianapolis native Kerry Edwards is feeling pretty good today about his decision to immortalize his name on the Web six years ago.

On Tuesday morning, shortly after Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) announced that Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) would be his 2004 running mate, the 34-year-old bail bondsman and owner of www.kerryedwards.com said he took down the picture of his child that graced the Web site and put up a for-sale sign….

Other obvious choices for a campaign Web site -- KerryEdwards04.com, KerryEdwards2004.com, KerryEdwards-2004.com and KerryEdwards2004.net -- have already been registered, according to publicly available Internet records.

Think of it as Twas Brillig's revenge. Serves that slithy tove right.

Comments

[mac]

Entertaining.

One point about domain name rent: that kind of thing is what gives state-sponsored pseudo-capitalism a bad name. The kind of thing that gets Lawrence Lessig PO'ed. Someone tries to hold you up for ransome with that kind of thing, the right thing to do is start your own DNS service...

[Black Francis]

They've basically got a surf-rock sound, or as close to a surf-rock sound as you can get while recording in New England.

What's that supposed to mean?

[Jesse Walker]

That New England isn't very close to Southern California.

[Sarnath]

For shame! The name Entwistle caught my eye, but it was just another article about Kerry.

[Neil Block]

Kerry: nothing but gyre and gimble in the wabe. And all mimsy was Edwards!

[s,m. koppelman]

You know, fellow New Englanders Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers played Harvard socials in their day and managed to, um, rock out pretty handily at them as documented on the bootlegs commercially released a few years back on "Precise Modern Lovers Order".

Anyway, let's not forget that the Stones were very much preppies, as were the fancy-haired Sen. Kerry's fellow elite private-school grads the Beastie Boys. So.

[Matthew]

Well, you know that Edwards is going to sue them for pain and suffering, and Kerry's simply going to commandeer their teenaged children into national service. I hope they'll fight the good fight.

[Bill]

Kerry really is more of a frumious bandersnatch. If you ask me.

[joe]

Man, (and by "man," I want to make sure you realize that I'm including women, too) I love, (truly love in my heart) that dirty (maybe not as dirty as it once was, but still not what one would call clean) water (and other liquid, oceanic materials). Ah, Boston you're my home.

- John Kerry as mid-60s punk