Plain and Fancy: The Mourning Reign - Satisfaction Guaranteed (1966-67 us, awesome garage blues psych, 2013 edition)

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The Mourning Reign - Satisfaction Guaranteed (1966-67 us, awesome garage blues psych, 2013 edition)

If any event delineated the differences between the music of San Jose and what was happening in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, 50 miles to the north, it might have been the night that all the South Bay heavyweights played the Continental Ballroom in Santa Clara. "Everyone was there," recalls Steve Canali, rhythm guitarist for the Mourning Reign, of this Gathering of the Tribes: "the Watchband, the Count Five, the Syndicate of Sound." And what was the main event of the evening? Mantras recited by Allen Ginsberg? Acid-laced Kool-Aid ladled out by Ken Kesey? "Actually," smirks Canali, "they lined all the bands up on opposite sides of the wall, and we had a pie-throwing contest."

The Mourning Reign-whose classic line-up consisted of Canali, Jagger-esque vocalist Beau Maggi, Johnnie Bell on lead guitar, bassist Charlie Gardin and Beau's brother Craig Maggi on drums-did share one trait with their SF hippie brethren. "We all lived together," says Canali. "Craig's girlfriend found this old house in the middle of a fruit orchard on Alum Rock Avenue. We used the music to the Byrds" "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star' and made this great Super 8 film of the band, cutting up around the house, just like in A Hard Day's Night."

Canali soon took a leave of absence from the Reign-against the advice of his dad, John Canali, who managed and booked the band-to play topless joints in New Jersey with the Tribe, a Doors cover combo formed by singer Sonny Johnson, former leader of Canali's first band the House Pets. "People back east thought those songs were ours," Canali chuckles. When Canali rejoined the Reign-with Tom O'Bonsawin now in for Bell-he brought along Johnson to replace the recently drafted Beau Maggi.

It soon became evident the bloom was off the rose. Before long the band changed its name to Roadhouse and plunged headlong into the '70s. Not, however, before their legendary appearance at the Northern California Folk Rock Festival in 1968 alongside the Doors, the Airplane, Big Brother, Kaleidoscope, Eric Burdon and the Youngbloods. "The Mourning Reign never played a battle of the bands," muses Canali. "We were above that. We already knew we were on top."

by Jud Cost, Santa Clara, CA, 1998