Keggs

1960s garage rock band from Garden City, Michigan.

"A band so hated in Detroit, they had to change their name after every show they played! The guitarist met with an evil demise: on his way to practice on his motorbike, he got hit by a truck and knocked into a metal rail which lopped his head off 'n' ended the Keggs' wicked career."

The Keggs: inept garage band from Westland, Michigan record two outta tune blasts at Be A Star Studios in a shady neighborhood in Detroit in the summer of '67. They come back two weeks later to pick up their records and find that the studio burned down in the riots. Yolanda Owens (listed as "producer" on the record but really she just lent the name of her label, Orbit, to the 7") had made a safety master and was still able to press the record. According to liner notes for the "Back From the Grave" compilation only 75 copies were made, but research indicates that 100 were made with the missing 25 supplied by Yolanda Owens to local radio DJ's for promotion. "Discovered" by compiler Tim Warren in 1984 (I believe in Los Angeles) he treks to Detroit and spends 2 days parked in front of the house of a former band member in hopes of turning up more copies. He gets two more copies, one of which is sold at the Paris Record show in 1986 to an Italian collector who I buy my copy off of in 2005. Total number of copies known to still exist is somewhere around 12. I paid $2561 for my copy in 2005 and a barely playable, cracked copy sold for $373 in 2009. This is, by far, the pinnacle of Detroit garage music. Bob