Spare Parts: The Night Owl Label
For an operation set in a small-town Southeastern Wisconsin, Cuca Records of Sauk City was especially prolific and diverse. Multiple Cuca imprints catered to different audiences. Its Night Owl sub-label, whose logo resembled that of a contemporaneous high-profile Midwestern supermarket chain, seemed to be the conduit for relatively harder rocking, more sophisticated teen-oriented fare.
Chicago’s reissue specialists, Numero Group, have issued an album by Night Owl’s most productive signing, Milwaukee’s The Wanderer’s Rest. But Spare Parts gathers enough less lengthily sustained runs of inspiration to justify its 17 tracks. As might figure, the ‘60s-early ‘70s bands with the best names recorded some of its most intriguing tracks. Madison’s Kiriae Crucible imagine The Doors on a path from a proto-punk garage to a hotel lounge, Janesville rowdies The Scarlet Henchmen tested the Cuca studio'’ limitations with backward masking and a fuzzy stomp indebted to The Electric Prunes.
Elsewhere collected among the Parts assembled here are sunshine pop giving The Association reasonable competition, folk rock nigh on par with any emanating from ether coast and more evidence how Midwesterners with aptitude and dreams enough translates the sounds of their day into original expressions. There should be enough remaining Parts for a second volume of similarly high quality and curiosity.
