Vintage Vinyl Tucson

This week: The Sot Weed Factor

"Bald Headed Woman" b/w "Say it is not So"

Original Sound OS76, September 1967

"They'd get really drunk and I saw them get in fist fights on stage," said The Dearly Beloved's Tom Walker about The Sot Weed Factor. Even though the blues-based Yardbirds and Kinks-inspired band were rough around the edges, they were unhappy with the crude cavernous sound at Tucson's Copper State Recording Studio.

Through shows at Hollywood clubs opening for the likes of The Doors, The Arrows, and Iron Butterfly, the group was signed to Original Sound with producer Brian Ross (The Music Machine) and recorded their sole 45, "Bald Headed Woman" b/w "Say It Is Not So" in Los Angeles, which did well in a few scattered cities, including their hometown of Tucson where it peaked at No. 16 on the Oct. 21, 1967 KTKT chart, right behind Linda Ronstadt's first hit with her band The Stone Poney's, the Michael Nesmith-penned "Different Drum." The group returned to Tucson and had trouble convincing people that they were the band being played on the radio! At the age of nine, while visiting my godparents who lived off of Sixth Street, I wandered over to Jerry's Records where there was a box of the Sot Weed 45 and purchased one for, I think, 25 cents. I still have that record. It's quite hammered.

Lee Joseph grew up in Tucson. He's a DJ (Luxuriamusic.com), marketer of cool shit (Reverberations Media) and founder/CEO of internationally respected Dionysus Records, an indie that has long specialized in releasing super-rare music, and more. He came of age in the first wave of Tucson punk rock and is an expert on Tucson music. He's been collecting Tucson 45s for more than 30 years and now lives in California. Vintage Vinyl is a new, recurring addition to the Tucson Weekly.