The Mission, Continued

A couple of years ago, I wrote this post about a band called The Mission that I've seen pop up on a few obscure psych comps that were apparently sourced from a pretty rare 45 that isn't of the greatest quality.  Here are the YouTube links to those songs for reference:






I've been obsessed with these two songs for years.  I'd never heard anything quite like it.  Long story short (you can read my previous post for much more exposition on my years-long obsession and quest to figure out who these guys were) I figured out that it was Daryl Dragon of Captain & Tenille fame. Even more fun: That there were two more songs listed in the copyright filing for the two released songs.

I mentioned to my friend Mark Bowen what I'd found out and talked about the possibility of getting in touch with Mr. Dragon to ask about the other two songs listed in the copyright filing.  Mark suggested I get in touch with DJ Food, who produced the re-release of and was heavily involved in the album BFI from The Dragons, which it turns out is the same group who made up The Mission (plus a couple of musicians here and there and producers - the core group was still the Dragon brothers).  With the help of DJ Food - who had never heard of The Mission; even in his time dealing with the Dragons, it was never mentioned - we started making inquiries and then a mysterious LP under the name of Dennis Dragon appeared on Discogs. Dennis Dragon (who has his own interesting career, scoring a couple of surf films and later fronting the surf punk band the, er, Surf Punks, and was also an alumni along with Daryl of The Beach Boys in the 70s) suddenly had an album listed in Discogs as being released under the legendary ESP Disk'/West ‎label (which showed up, timing wise, it seemed, right when we inquired about The Mission, and which we found out was not actually part of their catalog and may have just been put there as a joke or fabrication) called "Me And My Brother," which had as its first side the songs recorded as The Mission along with not only the two additional songs I found in the copyright listing, but five (!!!!!), and the side B credited to Dennis alone as an apparently half hour long ambient tape loop piece, which would have put him ahead of even the likes of Brian Eno at the cutting edge of interesting, atmospheric analog synth and tape driven drones and atmospheres.  DJ Food gave me the email address of Dennis Dragon, so I emailed him.

My back and forth with Dennis was interesting to say the least.  I still have the emails; I hesitate to print any of it openly.  He was a very cool, interesting guy - one moment very wry and dryly humorous, the next, somewhat cantankerous.  Food was able to facilitate getting a copy of the LP - according to Dennis, only about 50 were in existence (though that is completely unverifiable - they were apparently pressed by Dennis, under a record label that, when I got in touch with them, had zero record of it having been pressed by them and had a completely different release with the catalog number Dennis had, which Food surmised meant Dennis, as a joke, put that label on this privately pressed record), and Dennis said he had the last one.  (Dennis - not sure if he was joking or not - was asking me to make him an offer on the LP; before I had to come up with a number, Food was able to get a copy of it from him for, I assume, no fee.)

DJ Food and I went back and forth for a while on what to do next.  The music is incredible, and it was pristine.  All that existed in the world was that 45, of which no good quality version seems to be available; I know mine is not great sound quality.  The lyrics - much of them comprised of a completely made up nonsense language, apparently Daryl's idea - were clear and able to be made out, such as they are.  The instruments are discernible.  It's AWESOME.  For a decade at least, I'd been listening to that 45.  Those two songs have turned up on multiple mixes over the years.  It was kind of glorious, and I had the idea of possibly releasing them in some form. Food was into the idea and broached the subject with Dennis. He got a negative response to say the least. (I later found out that Dennis had some very bad dealings with record companies and the idea of letting someone handle his music in that way, even something like this that he hadn't thought about in decades, was the opposite of appealing to him.) I had a rather tense exchange with him, and I backed off. I was thrilled to have this music, first and foremost, and to have solved the mystery of who this band was, and that solving it was kind of the most batshit thing - I expected it to be a handful of guys in a garage that cut a 45 in the late 60s and then went on to normal lives. I did not expect fucking Daryl Dragon from Captain & Tenille and The Dragons were the ones behind it.

Some time passed, and I thought about asking Dennis if he'd mind if I put the songs out there for other people to at least hear, because they're so amazing, I'd at least want to share them. Food was preoccupied with side B of the album, which was a half hour ambient track that, if it was recorded when Dennis said it was, would have put him ahead of Brian Eno. Food was a little skeptical and was preoccupied there. (I didn't care about that as much - it was a cool ambient track regardless of when it was actually made.)  I waited to broach the subject. One night, I got an email from Dennis in the middle of the night. It simply read, "Enjoying the tunes?" I replied in the extreme affirmative, and told him how much I loved the songs and thanked him for sending them to me and Food. He replied that it was his pleasure and he was happy to hear it.

Not long after, I heard from Mark that Dennis had killed himself, news which was eventually confirmed as it spread across Beach Boys fandom.

I didn't know him outside of our few interactions, but he was clearly a talented and cool, thoughtful guy. I was sorry to hear his demons got the best of him.  I hadn't known he was in pain.

That was a couple of years ago now. I'm still listening to these songs. The poorer sounding versions of the songs from the 45 are still on those psych comps, presumably still being heard, and no one outside of the three of us as at the time of this writing (as far as I know) knows their lineage or that there are more of them, and of such pristine quality.

And, of course, Daryl sadly passed in January of 2019.

I feel like, after all this time, I'm comfortable sharing these songs. I think they're insanely good (and just plain freaking insane - they made up their own language!) and deserve to be heard. In Dennis' (and now Daryl's) memory, I also want them to be shared. So, in all their wonderful, bizarre psychedelic garage fuzzed out glory, here is the entire recorded material of The Mission:

THE MISSION

Perhaps at some point I'll post the sort-of "album" that I made for Dennis with the input of DJ Food which also included rare songs by The Dragons et al. I'm not sure if I want to release the ambient track Dennis did, at least not as a part of this. Perhaps one day. DJ Food might still want to do something with that one, and I don't want to step on that. I hope whoever may find this entry finds this story as fascinating as I found it as I went along, and I sincerely hope this music gets enjoyed. I may promote it further on some blogs or other places where obscure psych enthusiasts reside. In the meantime, enjoy, and raise a glass to the Dragon brothers.

-Nick Daly
May, 2020

Holes In The Air

w/ The Heliocentrics, The Superimposers, Kaleidoscope, Broadcast, The Three Degrees, Lake Ruth, Gloria, Gwenno, The David, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Komeda, Belbury Poly, Beautify Junkyards, Vanishing Twin, Jacco Gardner, Tara King Th., Sean O'Hagan, Stereolab, Stringtronics, Sven Libaek, Doris, Chrysalis, Thomas Edisun's Electric Light Bulb Band, US 69, Hellions, Shawn Lee, ToiToiToi, Nobody, Keith Seatman, more