The Mourning Dayze were a Wisconsin
garage band in the mid-'60s heavily influenced by
the Beatles and
the Byrds and this extremely brief (22 minutes) collection of the group's recordings from 1967 shows just how derivative they actually were.
"Man with the Thin Mind," which is probably the best track here, bubbles along on a speeded up
"Taxman" (via
the Beatles) progression while
"The Mourning Dayze" is clearly
the Byrds'
"I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" with a different set of lyrics. Likewise
"Moon That Gives No Sunlight" takes its melody and even the tone and feel of its lyrics from
Bob Dylan's
"Chimes of Freedom," and the arrangement is exactly the same as
the Byrds' version of the
Dylan song. All of this is a bit bothersome, but
the Mourning Dayze weren't doing anything that a thousand other local bands weren't also doing at the time, and copping from
the Beatles,
the Byrds,
the Rolling Stones,
the Kinks,
the Animals and
the Yardbirds is what gives the whole
garage band phenomenon of the '60s its signature feel and sound. Still, nothing here generates more than historical interest, and even the much lauded
"Fly My Paper Airplane" (included here in two versions), which has been cited as a lost
psychedelic classic, hardly lives up to its billing. Bands like this one were extremely valuable in their local communities, places where megastars like
the Beatles weren't likely to visit, but translated to a larger stage, well, the world already had
the Beatles and
the Byrds, and while imitation is flattery, it's still imitation, however nicely configured it might be. ~ Steve Leggett