The Driving Stupid

The Driving Stupid put out only a solitary 45, coupling “The Reality of (Air) Fried Borsk” with “Horror Asparagus Stories,” on the KR imprint; the record sank without trace upon its 1966 release. Roughly a decade and a half afterward, both sides surfaced on the garage-rock anthology Pebbles, Vol. 3, an appearance that unexpectedly conferred lasting cult esteem far exceeding the group’s actual output. The performances have since been hailed as the pinnacle of dim-witted psychedelic garage rock, marked by exaggerated, juvenile, and deliberately ludicrous humor. Certain listeners embrace the “so stupid it’s brilliant” viewpoint, while others dismiss the single as hopelessly inept and witless; such polarized reactions have nevertheless sustained the band’s niche reputation.

Three college students and longtime New Jersey companions formed the Driving Stupid on the East Coast. Treating the venture more as an escapade than a career move, they motored from New Jersey to Hollywood in the summer of 1966 hoping to break into the major leagues, pausing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to cut a set of demos. A recording contract materialized, yielding a full album’s worth of material in Hollywood, yet the LP remained shelved after the 45’s commercial failure. Like the single, these unreleased recordings fused ramshackle garage rock with tongue-in-cheek absurd lyrics, evoking the soundtrack a neighborhood band might supply for a low-budget horror-science-fiction quickie. At summer’s end in 1966 most members abandoned Hollywood to resume their studies. In 2002 Sundazed assembled the original single together with seventeen previously unheard tracks from those sessions onto the album Horror Asparagus Stories.