Koala

A New York outfit issued a lone album that drew scant notice upon arrival yet later commanded steep prices among collectors hunting for elusive garage psych artifacts. Bob Wyld and Art Polhemus, the producers and managers behind the Blues Magoos, discovered the group and secured them a deal with Capital Records. The label chose to bill the band as Australian, a ploy that had already propelled another New York act, the Strangeloves, into the Top 40 in 1965 with “I Want Candy.”

The ensemble’s first and only single, “Don’t You Know What I Mean?” backed with “Scattered Children’s Toys,” surfaced in 1968 and went nowhere on the charts, yet the musicians continued into the studio to complete a debut LP. Wyld and Polhemus handled production, and the self-titled record appeared the following year. The Koala fuses the Who’s frantic rhythms and Stones-style garage rock with riotous psych leads and venomous, proto-punk vocals.

Despite the strong showing, the unit dissolved soon after the album reached stores, and the release vanished from view. Rediscovery arrived in the 1990s as original copies climbed in value among devotees of long-lost, high-energy garage psych-punk; the Fallout label eventually issued a bootleg CD edition in 2006.