One day while browsing the web about old garage rock 45s, I stumbled across a band from Terre Haute, Indiana called The XL's. Being from Terre Haute myself, I looked into it further and found out that they only released two singles between 1966 and 1968. These records were selling for hundreds of dollars online and I was astonished that I'd never heard of them. Long ago Terre Haute had an impressive music scene due to a couple of its more famous residents, Burl Ives and Scatman Crothers. But recently, and by recently I mean the past 70 years or so, it has been pretty lame. In fact, the only things in recent memory that sort of put Terre Haute on the musical map are the birth of Motley Crue Guitarist Mick Mars in 1951 and the founding of the Kiss Army in 1975. Since both of those events were probably brought on by a little boredom and a lot of vodka, they don't really speak to Terre Haute's creativity.
As I learned more about The XL's, I discovered that they only pressed 1,000 singles and that those singles were recorded in the very neighborhood I grew up in. After that it was settled. I was going to find one. I assumed that these records couldn't have traveled far and there is an antique mall practically across the street from where the record was produced. After searching through about Six Hundred 45s, I found one. I paid the man $2 and I had my own piece of a Terre Haute legend that Terre Haute is pretty much unaware of.
After the jump is the song "Mary Jane" by The XL's and their original 1968 press release that appears to have been written by a drunk Danielle Steel. I also included an Onion article about the "Terre Haute Sound" for context.
It is also worth mentioning that Terre Haute has a "Musician's Hall of Fame" that has yet to induct Burl Ives, Scatman Crothers, Mick Mars, or The XL's.
