“the Witch” by The Sonics

"The Witch" was the Sonics' first single, out in November 1964, and it also turned up on their debut album, Here Are the Sonics!!!. Gerry Roslie, the band's singer, wrote it, words and music, and he howls it like a man with his hair on fire.

This is garage rock at full boil, as frantic and heavy as anything cut in those years, a primal wallop from start to finish. It never broke nationally, but it didn't need to: it has been handed down as a cornerstone of what became punk rock, and it has shown up on compilation after compilation, most notably the 1998 reissue of Nuggets.

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