Rough rockers whose music was every bit as grungy as the album cover would lead you to believe. Their music was mostly heavy blues rock with thundering blues harp and extremely gravel-voiced no-nonsense singing and dirty-sounding rhythm guitars.
They did cover three well-known songs on the album, but changed them around (different tempos, rhythms, etc.) The best songs are the upbeat originals, but all of it is good.
This is in many ways what real rock'n roll should be — honest, rough and slightly pissed off.
The album, though being issued on the small Lizard label, may be not so obscure, but the band surely is.
The group was led by a very unique guitarist, singer, arranger, Bob Desnoyers, and named after a small town somewhere out in the back country near San Diego, there is almost no information available on this outfit. They were: Bob Desnoyers, Steve Williams, Ron Armstrong and John Fergus.
The band received enough airplay and sales to reach 93 in Billboard’s top selling albums. The album is well know among collectors today.
BOB DESNOYERS TELLS THE STORY
"In early October, 1968, the musical concept for a band was firm in my mind.
I had to have the right kind of bass player to get started. Had to be snaky and ballsy.
I went into the old College Inn in San Diego one night and saw JOHN FERGUS, a great singer and bass player.
We talked briefly and we both knew "it was on". John knew a drummer from a San Diego band called the "MISFITS" who wasn't playing at the time and John and I jointly recruited RON ARMSTRONG.
The original name of the band was the JAMUL CITY MARCHING AND FUNK BAND. That got shortened to the JAMUL CITY FUNK BAND.
After only a week or two of rehearsal we got a gig from Frankie Bertolino at the old Hacienda at University Ave. and Euclid St. A singer of blues and one helluva harp player named STEVE WILLIAMS sat in with us quite often.
We played there for about six weeks and moved to a club in National City that eventually became the PLEASURE CLUB.
STEVE added so much to what we were doing that on New Years Eve 1968/'69 he became a part of the band.
That turned out to be the final touch for what I had heard in my head before a note was ever played in the beginning. It took 8 months flat for us to be signed to a label. The label suggested shortening the name to JAMUL and that was the way that happened.
We tried recording the album by layering it but the magic wasn't there. We came back to San Diego for a couple of weeks then went up and recorded the album live in two days.
There was some over-dubbing done but not much. We always felt the mix could have had less echo and more
of the harmonies coming through but we didn't have any control over the final mix.
All in all, it didn't turn out too bad"...
