New York garage-psych band The Druids Of Stonehenge on the Joe Franklin Show 1968.

Vocalist Dave Budge, guitarists Carl Hauser and Bill Tracy, bassist Tom Workman and drummer Steve Tindall came together in 1965 as r&b ravers The Druids. In 1968 they went psychedelic and changed their name to The Druids Of Stonehenge. This clip of the band on the Joe Franklin Show has to be one of the weirdest of the 1000s of weird moments on Franklin’s loveably nutty TV program. Franklin, who knew alot about music and film pre-dating the sixties, was comically clueless when it came to rock and roll, as evidenced by his inept attempt to be “with it’ in this wonderfully warped video.

The Druids Of Stonehenge had a good rep for their live performances at New York nightclubs like Ondine’s and Cheetah, but this performance on the Franklin Show is pretty dreadful. Their take on Billy Holiday’s ‘God Bless The Child’ borders on the sacrilegious, but the arrangement, a total rip of ‘Paint It Black’, is the kind of wackiness that makes rock and roll the unruly mess I love.