Fifty years after breakup, Milwaukee band the Baroques ready for rediscovery

The music world as we know it changed on May 26, 1967, with the release of one of rock history's most influential masterworks, the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

But this is a story about another admired, largely forgotten album that came out that fateful day — the lone, self-titled release by Milwaukee band the Baroques.

A wild curveball from Chicago's Chess Records — the historic home for blues greats like Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Etta James — "The Baroques" struggled to sell partly because of that ill-fated release date. The fact that one of its singles, the marijuana-insinuating "Mary Jane," was banned by some radio stations probably didn't help either.

But more than 50 years since the band's debut album, and sudden demise, the Baroques are still revered around the world by a cult fanbase of '60s psychedelic obsessives.

That following is poised to get a little bigger. "The Baroques" is set for re-release by two different reissue labels, the first dropping Friday. 

Sundazed has distributed 1,000 copies of a mono version on "electric tapioca yellow" vinyl to independent record shops for Record Store Day's annual Black Friday celebration. In Milwaukee, Acme Records, Bullseye Records, the Exclusive Company and Rushmor Records have copies.

Also in the works is a deluxe double vinyl and double CD stereo edition by Lion Productions, overseen by Baroques drummer Dean Nimmer, that will include a written history of the band, unpublished photos and eight to 10 never-before-released songs.

"It's the perfect record," said Jay Millar, head of Sundazed's Nashville office. "It takes elements of both garage and psych rock and is sort of the happy medium in between. It's just so strange, and it has the charm and lyrical angst that can only be found in youth." 

Formed in 1966 (originally as the Complete Unknowns), the Baroques took their name from the style of baroque art  that Nimmer studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The year it formed, Chess producer and talent scout Ralph Bass caught a rehearsal in the basement of a Milwaukee music store, and brought the band to Chess' Tar-Mar Studios less than two weeks later to record demos. 

"Marshall Chess was 26 at the time and had just taken over the business from his father Leonard," Nimmer told the Journal Sentinel this week. "He wanted to change some of the perspectives of Chess Records."

The resulting album was "one of the most interesting, odd and truly bizarre takes" on psychedelic rock of the time, said Vincent Tornatore, Lion's founder and owner.

The album's 12 tracks, mostly written by 18-year-old baritone Jay Borkenhagen, include the nightmarish "The Song Needs No Introduction," with a boy screaming for his mother and a demented take of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat;" and the cartoonish, groovy instrumental "Boop." The Nimmer-penned "In Silver Light," from a man who describes himself today as a "pseudo-poet" in the '60s, is about a monk freezing to death.

The band even persuaded Chess to make its own commercials — one was about "how every follicle of our hair would encircle an elephant 900 times," Nimmer said.

Not surprisingly, the Baroques polarized listeners. Nimmer saw one DJ at a show cover his ears and scream. Another in Ohio, protesting the "Mary Jane" ban, played album songs on air for six hours straight.

In Nimmer's eyes, Borkenhagen was a "genius," but he wouldn't meet Chess "halfway with anything."

Borkenhagen refused the label's suggestion it work with Minnie Riperton. The songs he wrote for a second album — including one recorded with a high school choir — were "really weird," Nimmer said, which for this band, is saying something.

Capitol Records offered to buy out the Baroques' contract, but Chess refused. "Eventually Marshall Chess wouldn't contact us anymore," Nimmer said.

Nimmer, a visual artist, professor, and author in the Boston area, lost contact with his bandmates. Lead guitarist Jacques Hutchison died in 2013. The Journal Sentinel couldn't locate bassist Rick Bieniewski, last known to be in New Mexico. Voicemails left for Borkenhagen, now in California, were not returned.

Since the album's release, Nimmer said he's contacted every year by fans from as far away as Greece, Australia and New Zealand.

"I didn't think 50 years later I'd still be talking about the band," Nimmer said. "It's definitely not everybody's cup of tea. But it really was creative at the time."

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