The Deltrons

“I Found My Baby in Bad Axe” b/w “Tonya”

Deltron Records

I was originally hipped to these songs by the IMPORTANT “Big Itch Vol. Six” compilation. Released under the Mr. Manicotti imprint (which may or may not be the avenue for illicit releases coming from the Norton Records world), each and every volume of this series is essential in a unique way. Exploito instrumentals, the insanely raw and lascivious, incompetence par excellence, previously unknown (to me, at least) Peruvian garage of the Los Saicos variety…shit “Volume Six” is banging all the way through.

Being vaguely aware that there’s a city somewhere in Michigan called Bad Axe I’d rightly assumed this record was from my home state when I first heard it about twenty years ago. When I started to get deeper into collecting originals of things from comps, this was vaguely in the back of my mind as something I would love to get my mitts on. And seriously…three, four, five different times this bastard slipped through my fingers. The copy I’m holding now showed up on eBay about two weeks back and I bid on it out of pure spite, pissed it’d been nearly a decade of trying to obtain this not-insanely-rare record. I overpaid through the nose and slightly regret it.

(side note: the Deltrons did NOT write “Bad Axe” and Arthur Godfrey actually sang a version on his show back in the 1950’s)

(side note: i LOVE the name the Deltrons, sounds so mysterious and powerful and I have absolutely no idea what it means)

But the songs are solidly amateur. While properly remembering “Bad Axe” with the too-high-in-the-mix vocals and their outta tune tilt, ham-fisted drum fills and space-filling guitars, I’d completely blanked on “Tonya.” Upon a relisten, it’s downright shocking to hear a song mention “Her name is Tanya, she’s really cool, the day I win her, I’ll blow up the school” this day and age. But for a bunch of teenagers in rural Michigan in the 1960’s…it’s just charming.