Char Vinnedge, frontwoman of the Luv’d Ones and self-described “non-sleeper,” was one hard-working woman: in addition to doing lead guitar and lead vocals, she wrote all of the band’s songs, booked all of their gigs, designed their outfits, crafted their album artwork, repaired their equipment, and drove their tour van. In 1964, when The Beatles were busy working American teenyboppers into a frenzy and most of the women lucky enough to be on the other side of the stage barrier were singing songs by Phil Spector, Vinnedge bought a white Airline guitar off of her brother Vic, tuned it down a whole step, and decided to start a rock ‘n’ roll band. On her own terms.
The resulting group -- based out of her parents’ basement in Niles, Michigan and including her 13-year-old sister Chris on bass, Mary Gallagher on rhythm guitar, and Faith Orem on drums -- would never become as famous as Vinnedge believed they would. After four years of almost non-stop touring, opening for bands like The Turtles and The Buckinghams and flooring skeptical male audiences from New York to L.A., The Luv’d Ones fizzled out, turning down a dodgy record contract with Chicago’s Dunwich Records. They did, however, manage to leave behind some of darkest, most stunning, and most idiosyncratic music in 1960s garage. And that’s not just “girl garage.”
Though The Luv’d Ones’ early repertoire consisted mainly of old standards and Beatles covers, Char’s desire to establish her own creative voice quickly took precedence over what their record company, their audiences, and even the three other members of the group wanted to hear. Between driving the girls around, laundering their clothes, and bargaining with club owners, Char holed up in her parents’ basement to write songs, experiment with fuzz and feedback, and carve out a sound that she could call her own. “The reason I tuned my guitar down a full step was simple,” Char explained in an interview with Jud Cost and Bob Irwin. “I didn’t want to sound like anybody else.” Something that couldn’t have been too hard for Vinnedge, whose glacial, full-bodied alto was a good octave lower than most of her female contemporaries.
Truth Gotta Stand, released by Sundazed in 1999, brings together 23 singles, demos, and live recordings that the group recorded between 1964 and 1968. The recordings themselves are far from perfect, and the first nine songs or so -- ironically, the only songs that were ever actually released by their record company -- are perhaps most interesting as documents of the group’s struggle to discover their own voice. But as much as The Luv’d Ones might fit the mold of other unsung garage-girl heroes of the ‘60s (their classic lineup, their snappy baselines and twangy guitar hooks, their kicking, round-robin vocal refrains), Char’s conscientious songwriting elevates the compilation above and beyond a mere period piece. Though Char Vinnedge had clearly digested the rock idioms that were crystallizing at the time -- and that continue to dominate popular music to this day -- we get the sense that she was already bored with them, already looking for something more. Whether they are up-tempo and exuberant or plodding and overflowing with quiet despair, Char’s melodies always have something exquisitely counterintuitive about them, as though she spent hour upon hour in her underground studio trying to pin down simple combinations of notes that her listeners had never heard before.
“All the laws are written/ In some dusty old book/ Any fool who breaks that book/ Is gonna get kicked,” sings Char on “Portrait.” A risk that this blond, Midwestern Don Quixote was willing to take, even considering the structure of the song in which these lines appear: a single, repeated refrain, threaded with a constantly shifting series of instrumental baroque motifs, punctuated with guitar solos that send the song flying from tonic key to kingdom come. With an expressivity never set into default mode and a hearty helping of shredding on her Gibson SG, Char and the girls seemed to be fighting a four-woman war to prevent America’s ears from falling asleep.
* Previously unreleased
