Bees

Emerging in October 1966 on Covina, California's Liverpool label, the Bees' "Voices Green and Purple" stands among the most eccentric one-off artifacts from the 1960s garage underground. Its verses followed a familiar two-chord pattern reminiscent of early Rolling Stones material, yet the track's hallucinatory edge arose from wildly ornate, unhinged lyrics and especially from the choruses, where melody vanished, percussion accelerated, and jagged guitars produced rising bursts of dissonance. Housed in a primitively illustrated picture sleeve that ranks among the era's most sought-after garage artifacts, the single achieved no commercial traction. Its profile rose only after appearing on Pebbles Vol. 3, eventually earning placement in the later Nuggets box set. These Bees bear no connection to the separate group that issued a pair of folk-rock 45s on Mira and Mirwood in 1965.