On the train, during a commute downtown, I was listening to Mike Rep and the Quotas. If that name doesn’t resonate with meaning, that’s alright. The group is/was something of a local and acquired taste.

Either way, the group, which specialized in moving between a Kinks conception of rock and out noise, worked during the seventies. And as any good Midwesterner, Rep had an opinion on Watergate, albeit distanced by freeway miles. “I Resign” takes on a first person narrative for the chorus while the rest of the track apes some sort of smart ass critique of the situation. Decent song, average if not pointed lyrics.

The point I’m gonna make is that while there were no doubt countless songs written about Nixon, perhaps the most amusing/listenable/engaging seem to come from seemingly obscure bands. So, Mike Rep? Who else?

Well, the Mysterious Minds. And how mysterious are they. So mysterious that no writting published in the vast tubes of the interewebs sports more than a paragraph about the group. Even with that, some sap went ahead and shelled out over three hundred dollars for the bands lone, privately pressed disc, entitled Mind Over Matter.

None of this matters as the band was clearly incapable of creating any sort of interest in its work during the time it existed. That might mean the music is worthless – and some of it is. The opening track, “It’s Real,” sounds like a poorly done ska track during the first minute and change. And while the horn lines are interesting, it’s not as a result of the players possessing some sort of magic, musical acuity. Instead, one of the band’s members built a contraption – kinda like Captured by Robots – which played a spate of horns at once. That might be the most interesting aspect to the band’s career apart from how much it’s recordings are sold for.

It’s not all throw away stuff, though, seeing as the band was unquestionably engaged with funky stuffs as well as psych musics. There’s more groove that trip here, but a pleasant balance is eventually struck by the time listeners wade through to the latter portion of the disc.

“Power of the Mind” is all swirling organ sounds and weird synth noises layered over a funky back beat while the vocalists drone on about this positive vibe and that good deed. The persistent off kilter nature to this track – and the whole disc – should impress some, but not to the point where folks need to drop hundreds of bucks.