Now where were they from, exactly?

We were amused to find some accounts on the internet suggesting that Sonobeat recorded The Thingies in a hotel room. This is actually a twisted but unrelated account of how the band came to Texas from Florida, en route to San Francisco, stopping to visit band member Phil Weaver’s family in Waco, Texas, where The Thingies remained for several weeks. The Waco motel where they stayed also provided the band with rehearsal space. Eventually, of course, the band made its way to Austin, 100 miles south of Waco, where they were engaged almost immediately as The Matchbox nightclub’s house band, a lucky break as The Matchbox was just transitioning from folk and blues to rock when The Thingies arrived on the Austin scene. The Thingies’ Sonobeat sessions were recorded during off-hours at Swinger’s Club in north Austin, the same venue Sonobeat used to record its first single, by the Sweetarts, a few months earlier. The Thingies overdubbed vocals about a week later in a session starting at midnight at the KAZZ-FM. studios (where Sonobeat producer Rim Kelley worked as a deejay) in the Perry Brooks Building in downtown Austin. Nope, no hotel room.

Mass Confusion, the “A” side of The Thingies Sonobeat single, is a self-fulfilling song about... what else... confusion, penned by bandmates Gordon Marcellus and Larry Miller. The “B” side, Rainy Sunday Morning, by group members Phil Weaver and Bob Cole, is a disfunctionally reflective song that easily could have been written and recorded by Jim Morrison and the Doors. The Thingies’ Sonobeat sessions also yielded instrumental masters for original tunes I Died, Mrs. Baker, Richard’s Song, and an untitled jazz rock tune, none of which were ever completed with vocal overdubs. Before they had titles, Mass Confusion and Rainy Sunday Morning were referred to on the instrumental master tape boxes as Psyche-rock. The finished tracks for The Thingies’ single sat for a few months while Sonobeat sorted out whether its singles by The Conqueroo and Shiva’s Headband would be released ahead of The Thingies. All three bands recorded with Sonobeat in the same general time frame. While sorting out the release schedule, Sonobeat co-founder Bill Josey Sr. had a test pressing – perhaps as few as five copies with blank white labels – manufactured to check the sonic quality on vinyl before ordering the commercial press run. The Thingies’ single finally made it out a week after The Conqueroo’s I’ve Got Time was released, in April 1968 (the Shiva’s Headband single ended up shelved and never released). The Thingies release delay didn’t seem to have any negative impact: Mass Confusion was well received critically and got local and regional radio airplay although neither Billboard nor Cash Box magazines reviewed it.

With The Thingies single, Sonobeat shifted lacquer mastering and vinyl pressing from Houston Records in Houston, Texas, to Sidney J. Wakefield & Company’s high-end manufacturing plant in Phoenix, Arizona. The move was designed to improve the fidelity and reproduction quality of Sonobeat’s stereo 45 RPM singles. However, because Sonobeat had not used Wakefield before, it had Austin Custom Records cut the lacquer masters, adding a slight amount of reverb (Austin Custom Records had an excellent reverb chamber) during the process. Because Austin Custom Records added reverb to the lacquer masters and not to the master tape recordings, our sound bites below are “dry”.

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The Thingies – perhaps by design – was a band shrouded in mystery. Was the unit from Florida or Kansas? Did it move on from Austin to San Francisco, or did it break up before leaving Austin? Are the lyrics “love sadly dying” in Mass Confusion references to LSD? Wherever the band came from, it made quite an impression on the Austin music scene during barely a six month period, playing gig after gig at Austin’s legendary The Vulcan Gas CompanyThe Vulcan was Austin’s first successful hippie music hall, opening in 1967 in an old warehouse at 316 Congress Avenue and closing in 1970. Its better known successor was Armadillo World Headquarters., The Matchbox, and other local nightclubs and music venues alongside Johnny Winter, The 13th Floor Elevators, The Conqueroo, and most every other leading Central Texas progressive and psychedelic rock band. The Thingies even performed at the Afro Club, traditionally a blues, jazz, and R&B venue in east Austin. In actuality, the group was from Topeka, Kansas (except for Phil Weaver, who was from Waco, Texas), spent summer 1967 playing in Miami, Florida, and broke up in Austin, never making it to California. The break-up occurred just before Sonobeat released the band’s single in spring ’68, which is why the remaining Thingies tracks were never completed.

After The Thingies broke up, bassist Larry Miller, originally from Abilene, Texas, relocated to Hollywood, Florida, where he started an art school and gallery and headlined several rockabilly bands, including his last, the Rockabilly Rockets, before succumbing in 2017 at age 74 to heart failure. Lead vocalist Phil Weaver returned to his hometown, Waco, Texas, attended Baylor University, and turned his career to social work; he succumbed to liver failure in 2014. Drummer Gordon Marcellus succumbed to cancer in 2004.

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