Their glories were amended, their catalog extended, their indignities appended. Their 1st LP had included the classic title track, “Too Much To Dream,” and many other fine performances nestled among the usual filler. But after the lackluster sales of their masterpiece 2nd LP, Underground, their producer/agent/Svengali/Dr. Frankenstein, one David Hassinger, brought in yet another David (Axelrod) to write their new material. (Beware the Dave People. Most of them mean well, but some of them can hurt you.) David Axelrod had a religious-rock-opera fixation, and Hassinger gave him carte blanche to graft said fixation onto the Electric Prunes. Why anybody thought this was a good idea, we’ll never know. Hassinger had also been working with the Grateful Dead at this point, or trying to. He never thought to inflict Axelrod and the Dead upon each other. How do you think it feels, when all you can say is “if only...?”

Even though most of the original members remained involved for much of the next album, not all Prunes are created equal. Mass In F Minor was followed by Release of an Oath, both being rock versions of Judeo-Christian religious ceremonies. Axelrod then left for a solo career in which he shook the bones of William Blake, pre-empting Ian Anderson but not preventing him. Diamond Dave Hassinger then picked yet another peck of pickled Prunes and issued something called Just Good Old Rock and Roll, best summarized by Lester Bangs: “a crashing bore.” To wit, before we rewind to the good stuff--the final three LPs consisted mostly of, well, pretty much the end-product you would expect from bad prunes.

Beyond this, I’ll not mention them any further; our only concern is with a prune that is true. Ah, but there will be a new album, or so it is written. Reprise keeps threatening to bring out the definitive Prunes retrospective, hopefully this year, with not only the blessing of the band but their active involvement as well. Along with the rare singles, the possibility of live tracks and the infamous Vox Wah-Wah Pedals ad (“make your guitar sound like a sitar!”), the weaker-sounding material has been remixed to 90s standards by the band members, not in some misguided attempt to sound woefully “contemporary” but to finally present the band as they always meant themselves to sound. We’re also promised a few never-before-heard outtakes. Some of these were never even completed in the 60s, and will feature guitar overdubs done just last year. Whether or not the “new” stuff will live up to the legend is irrelevent, on the same level as with the recent Virtual Reality Beatles tracks--it can’t possibly be the same, but at least there’s something more in existence.

In their prime, though, the Prunes were as fine an acid-punk concoction as was to be found in this great land of ours in that mythic year 1966. I wonder what “Too Much To Dream” sounded like coming out of the radio and inflicting itself on some 5-year-old kid such as myself who unfortunately had no access to psychedelics (unless you count an OD of Nitrous Oxide in the dentist’s chair, but he only had elevator tunes so ’twas a far cry from a rave); I imagine it must have seemed like, “I dunno--Halloween music?”

Their guitarist, one Ken Williams, was incredibly innovative; he and the Prunes displayed more range in those two LPs than garage bands have been traditionally allowed, before or since--while there were a few silly slow songs on which he wasn’t allowed to shine at full capacity, the exception was the moody, ruminating “I,” worthy of Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane at his navel-gazing best. At the other end of the spectrum was a cover of “About A Quarter To Nine” from the musical 42nd Street. While there is no law against garage bands recording show tunes, this Prunes track must be entered for consideration should one ever be enacted. On the one hand, Williams got off some kool jazz guitar licks, and the drummer, one Preston Ritter, finally had a chance to use his brushes. (More drummers should.) But then those ricky-ticky Victrola horns enter the picture. (“Vonderful, vonderful! Dot vas Earl Bostic balling duh Lennon Sisters...!”) Since Hassinger controlled the song selection as well as everything else, most such horrors can be laid at the feet of dorky Dave; all of the latter ones as well.

Even in the worst of times, True Prune couldn’t help but shine through--even on something like “Onie” (a ballad that sounded like an outtake from the JFK era) you could hear that guitarist gurgling a little vibrato in the background, if only to maintain his self-respect. Hell, I always liked “Onie” anyway--it’s addressed to a little girl who wants to be all-grown-up and hang out with those nasty rock and roll pruneboys. In the sweetest, tenderest, most dulcet tones imaginable they advise her to wait until she is a grownup before she starts trying to act like one. (I’m still waiting for the Marilyn Manson cover version.) Ah, and the name--“Onie!” Is that pure Americana or what? It practically screams Mayberry RFD; she must have been Opie’s long-lost cousin. I dunno, I’m a softie at heart and once in awhile a tune like that feels very comforting--they’re the closest anyone in 1966 was capable of to being a death-metal band (except for the Velvet Underground themselves), yet here they were, demonstrating for anyone who cared to know that their hearts really were in the right place after all.

But since they were the closest anyone in 1966 was capable of to being a death-metal band (except for the Velvets themselves), such glimmers of humanity were few and far between. It was a matter of social necessity that whatever sentimentality they allowed themselves be balanced by something like “Toonerville Trolley,” wherein they all but laugh in wistful old Daddy’s face, mocking his nostalgia for those clean-living amusements that had so gladdened his heart as a child (“Tootin’ on a licorice stick/That was how he got his kicks!”), unable to contain the glee as they cackled, “Dad, what happened to the Toonerville Trolley?” Yeah, the same Dad who most likely paid for the amplifiers and drove them to and from the gigs, and if he’s still around is massively amused now that they have kids of their own.

But since it was, after all, 1966, Lester Bangs hadn’t even coined the phrase “punk rock” yet, he was too busy playing in one of these bands himself. Nothing had yet been intellectualized, codified, or stratified--in fact, the Prunes even proclaimed in the June, 1967 issue of Hit Parader that “we are not psychedelic.” Hah! All the good bands used to say that--the Pink Floyd continually insisted “we’re just a pop band!” to the British press, lots of other acid bands told the trade papers at every opportunity that they were “not psychedelic.” If they hadn’t been making it all up as they went along you’d swear it was written into their bylaws of professional conduct. It’s unfortunate, too--it may have been an in-joke at the time but it set up an unhealthy precedent that continues to this day.

But there may be more than a glimmer of truth there--they may have been luridly psychedelic, but they weren’t self-conscious about it. The Prunes weren’t about being “a garage punk band,” a “psychedelic band,” they weren’t about anything except playing out and doing drugs and making records and getting laid. And the one who made it all happen was the aforementioned guitar Prune, Mr. Williams. There’s no denying the power of the vocal Prune and the bass-player Prune and this or that drummer Prune as well, but it was he alone who elevated them all into the timeless realm of the true hoodoo gurus--the best of his work was downright visionary for either that year or this. If one could scoop him up in a time machine and plop him down (guitar and amp intact) in the middle of a Sonic Youth gig, it would be the Youth (who are more than old enough to have been influenced by the Prunes back in their own sonic young-adulthood) who would find themselves needing to play catch-up.

Just like Jimi. Seriously. Hendrix once told Ken Williams that his work with the Prunes had been a crucial influence. The world of difference between Jimi’s early 1966 tapes and the guitar work on his first album can’t be explained merely in terms of chemical adventuring--Jimi lived that year with his ears open to everything he could find. So if you think the Prunes and their many innovations can be laughed off merely as strobelight-and-Nehru-jacket pop trash, best swept under the rug except for one endlessly-anthologized nugget--go somewhere and tell it to Jimi.

Ken Williams was the horse, and they were the riders--but still, the Electric Prunes were a band. There’s even a radio session from Stockholm (why is it that so many great FM boots come from Stockholm? I couldn’t even begin to list them all) to prove it--this was no mere collection of noble savages fronting for a bunch of session dudes (unlike most such bands, the session musicians entered the picture later on, along with a handful of rosary beads--adding insult to injury, no?), these were four musicians functioning as one glorious unit, if only for a year or two.

Funniest true story I ever heard about them: they were opening on a triple bill in a ballroom in San Francisco and got chumped out of a soundcheck. SanFran, needless to say, wasn’t their kind of town. Their road manager had a hissy-fit, thrashing his cape to and fro, building to a crescendo as he screamed that “the Prunes don’t have to take this shit!!!”

They didn’t survive the Summer of Love, although they jolly well should have. If only they could have, our national folklore would have been the richer for it. Their final B-side, “You Never Had It Better” pointed the way to an illustrious future in the heavy metal realm (which is where what few of these bands that did survive ended up), proto-heavy yet as wild as ever. If only, if only...the mind sighs regretfully at the thought of a luded-out army of 16-year-old leather boys with fists pumping the air, chanting over and over for “Da PROONZ! Da PROONZ!! Da PROONZ!!!...” They’ll never know what they missed.