Born to Be Wild

Back in the ‘60s when Hollywood producers of teensploitation B-movies wanted to reflect the hip psychedelic music of the time, they all too often employed Los Angeles studio hacks to record watered-down go-go jams with square-sounding surf guitars up front. It’s hard to tell if Kim Fowley was trying to make fun of this phenomenon with 1968’s Born to Be Wild or if he was just attempting to record more legitimately cool instrumentals to be used in random biker, hot-rod or surf-gang movies. Either way, he succeeded. A cover of the Steppenwolf classic opens with a solid horn section and dirty, distorted electric guitars backing up a lead Hammond organ. The results sound more like Kent-label mod-jazz than anything else. Fowley and company keep the Doors’ “Hello I Love You” pretty close to the original (but with an actual bass guitar), while their take on Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men” becomes an eerie- sounding affair trimmed with Phantom of the Opera-sounding organ and loads of reverb.