The mid-to-late 1960s were awash in regional bands hoping to become the next Beatles or Rolling Stones. Not all of them were good, but many—the Wailers from the Pacific Northwest, the Music Explosion from Ohio, the Barbarians from Mass., the Chocolate Watchband from Calif.—were doing interesting enough work to merit a larger amount of exposure than they received. Some of these groups ultimately enjoyed a latter-day career re-examination due to compilation releases like the seminal Nuggets, but most, like the Kitchen Cinq, a psychedelic rock group hailing from Amarillo, Texas, have been lost to history.
The Kitchen Cinq released just one full album, Everything but…the Kitchen Cinq, in 1967 and a fistful of singles for LFI and its distribution partner Decca before ultimately calling it a day in 1968. Assembled by Light in the Attic, this anthology of their work is like a survey of popular '60s rock and pop sounds. You can hear jangly traces of the Byrds on "If You Think…", the exquisite vocal harmonies of the Beach Boys on "Still in Love With You", the abrasive fuzzed out tones of the Yardbirds on "Solitary Man", the then-fashionable Eastern sounds on "Dying Daffodil Incident", and then there’s of course the near-obligatory cover of the Them garage rock anthem "Gloria". There’s even a dynamic, pushed-to-the-brink take on the Beatles’ "Run for Your Life". Heard without any background or context, it’d be difficult to tell whether the band was on the cutting edge or merely chasing trends, but they certainly had a keen ear for what was happening in the world around them.
The real strength of the Kitchen Cinq as a group lies not in songwriting but rather in the way they arrange and perform the music. Their voices intertwine and harmonize in a way that adds real weight to the chorus section of the songs, and those harmony parts, deployed to their fullest effect on "Figareux Figareux" and "You’ll Be Sorry Someday", distinguish the group’s general sound from any number of other '60s pop and rock bands. And while Mark Creamer is no Jeff Beck or Jimmy Page, his guitar work had style—the solos on "Need All the Help I Can Get" and "Searchin’" are particularly thrilling.
It’s easy to dismiss collections like this one as nicely packaged cash-grabs marketed to the musically curious in search for an obscure outfit to champion, but the Kitchen Cinq are one of those rare acts like Sixto Rodriguez or the Sonics who merit another look. Maybe they didn’t catch the breaks they needed when they needed them, maybe their label dropped the ball or didn’t push them hard enough to the tastemakers, or maybe, as band member Jim Parker has suggested, the scene in L.A. simply chewed them up and spit them out. The music on When the Rainbow Disappears deserves another chance to be heard.
