{"id":7237,"date":"2025-09-04T15:12:46","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7237"},"modified":"2025-09-04T15:12:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:12:46","slug":"shindig-167-the-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7237","title":{"rendered":"Shindig! #167 \u2013 The Heard"},"content":{"rendered":"

With \u2018Exit 9\u2019, their none-more-garage blast of recorded greatness, east Texan garage band THE HEARD left their mark on the world, one that continues to reverberate 60 years later. <\/strong><\/p>\n

CHAIM O\u2019BRIEN-BLUMENTHAL<\/strong> hears about police busts, electric shocks and flushing toilets from guitarist Andy Clendene<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Fresh sounds and styles were in the air, and even psychedelia couldn\u2019t escape east Texas. \u201cWe all loved The 13th Floor Elevators and \u2018You\u2019re Gonna\u2019 Miss Me\u2019. It got a lot of play on the radio and Roky Erickson was big. But it was pretty strange stuff, the way they\u2019d play the jug, the amplification. Very different. I remember playing The Catacombs and they had this room; it was like going into a cave. With different coloured wax all over the place. They called it the psychedelic room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was the new directions in music that inspired The Heard to start writing their own material. Andy and his brother teamed up to pen a song; Andy writing the lyrics and melody, and Randy coming up with the guitar part. The result was the now classic \u2018Exit 9\u2019. As captured on The Heard\u2019s lone single, it\u2019s a sonic blast of brilliance, that\u2019s still reverberating all these years later, thanks to fandom from garage heads and covers from bands like The Chesterfield Kings. But how did it come about? \u201cWe recorded it in Robin Hood Brians studio, in Tyler. Basically, a home studio. He was classically trained, and a big gearhead. ZZ Top ended up recording there, as did The Five Americans.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe Heard booked a session in the evening, at like four or five o\u2019clock, in June \u201967. It was strange, because we\u2019d never really done the song before. In fact, I added the opening lines right there on the spot, because Robin said we needed an opening. We had our parts figured out, but this was our first time in a recording studio. I\u2019ll never forget Robin had put egg crates on the ceiling for acoustic baffles! So, we went in and in four or five hours, put the tracks down. And we brought our friend, guitarist Bugs Henderson with us for moral support. He\u2019s a renowned Texas blues musician, and we\u2019d worked at the same music shop with him. My brother actually offered for Bugs to solo on \u2018Exit 9\u2019. But he wouldn\u2019t have anything to do with that, telling us it was our song, we should do it.\u201d<\/p>\n