Psychotic Reaction by The Count Five

Psychotic Reaction, the one and only album by San Jose's Count Five, came out on Double Shot Records in October 1966 for the oldest reason in the business: the single was a hit. With the title song climbing to number five on the Billboard Hot 100, label bosses Hal Winn and Joe Hooven leaned on the band to get a whole LP in the can, and the boys knocked out eleven tracks in a hurry.

John "Sean" Byrne, who sang lead and played rhythm guitar, wrote most of the words, and to fill out the set they tossed in two Who numbers, "My Generation" and "Out in the Street". It's all fuzz and nerve: John "Mouse" Michalski's lead guitar and Roy Chaney's bass tearing into the Yardbirds-inspired rave-up of the title track, Kenn Ellner blowing harp and shaking tambourine, Craig "Butch" Atkinson pounding it flat. Onstage they wore Dracula capes, and the record has the same teenage theatrical menace.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.