The Wild Thymes – Reflections – RAMCO LPM 719 LP/CD

From the mind of Ritchie Hart (Charlie Gearheart), in late 1967, just as musical tastes were expanding on every hipster’s stereo on their milk crate shelf, we found The Wild Thymes and their mind-blowing music.  Incubated in late night hours of spec time in Studio A at Audio Recorders of Arizona, with engineer Tim Ramsey, and everyone bonded in a “Let’s try this” frame of mind.  With creative inspiration from Mike Condello, Bill Spooner (Warren S. Richardson) and Steve Forman, who would all have their own albums months later, using the same interchangeable group of free-thinking studio musicians.  This was a short lived “studio creation band,” that rarely played together in clubs, creating these amazing “pop-psyche-fuzz-garage rock” songs, written for the most part by Hart and guitarist Bob Knisley.

In 1966 Hart was fronting the faux Brit band Volume IV, then The Present Daze, who morphed into The Wild Thymes.  By the next year he was writing new songs for the first Goose Creek album, in a completely different direction for sure, and The Wild Thymes tapes were left to gather cosmic dust on a shelf at Audio Recorders.  Why this project was not released at the time is a mystery now, considering the high-quality music these lads laid down.  The music is stunning to hear after all these years.