Go back to 96 Tears!
What's New? Band Biography and History Band Personnel and Discography
Discs, Records, and Reviews The Availability Factor Hear the Music Now
Lyrics and Music My Interview with ? Article Archive
 
 

CD front cover
CD back cover


? and the Mysterians : 96 Tears Forever - The Dallas Reunion
Label : DanceTeria (Licensed from ROIR - Reachout International Records Inc.)
Cat. Num. : DANCD 032
Year of Rel. : Mid-Eighties (1985?)
Total Time : 54:31
Read a review of this CD.
Read the liner notes.

Tracks :
1 Don't Tease Me 7:24
2 Smokes ?:??
3 Love Me Baby 3:09
4 Ten o'clock 3:11
5 You're Tellin' Me Lies 3:40
6 I Need Somebody 2:59
7 Girl (You Captivate Me) 2:32
8 Make You Mine 2:55
9 Do Something To Me 4:41
10 Got To 4:02
11 Midnight Hour 4:16
12 96 Tears 8:57
13 I Can't Get Enough of You Baby 3:15
14 I'll Be Back 3:30

Additional Comments -
  • The 1985 year of release is just a guess based on the fact that this disc was recorded at the 1984 Dallas, Texas reunion concert of ? and the Mysterians.
  • The CD lists the songs by letters of the alphabet instead of numbers. It lists songs (a-n), which would mean there should be fourteen songs - there's not, read on. This should explain the numbering I have chosen to use at the top of the tracks table above.
  • "Smokes," song number two (or 'b') is not tracked on the disc. It is on the disc, it just begins immediately after "Don't Tease Me" and the two are tracked as one 7 minute song. So in actuality, there are 14 songs on the disc, but only 13 are tracked. Make sense?
Reviews of the CD 96 Tears Forever - 1984 Dallas Reunion :


While the production is not as good as the Merlin release, this CD is still worth having. ? talks a lot in between songs and sounds quite well vocally. The cover lacks imagination, and is hard to read, and the cd tracking information is incorrect. Aside from the production errors, the sound quality is great. There are some rough edits between songs at times, but nothing is cut off or lost. My only complaint - that wonderful Vox/Farfisa organ sound from the original album has been replaced by what sounds like a circus calliope! This is a shock at first, and hard to get used to - but by the third song it gets lost in the shuffle. I think this album would be ten times better if they had used a decent sounding organ (B3, Vox, etc.). The long version of "96 Tears" is met with a loud round of applause, and keeps interest all the way through. Final thoughts : get it, you'll need it one day to have a complete collection and it's pretty darn good for an eighties reunion anyway!
Liner notes from the 96 Tears Forever - Dallas Reunion CD.
Sweaty summer of '66 and the buzz around those honky-tonk car towns north of the Motor City is this crazy Tex-Mex quartet, who'd come north with the bean pickers and stuck around to play rock and roll of dizzying simplicity and half-hallucinatory raunchiness. They stomped out riffs that picked up where "La Bamba" and "She's About A Mover" left off, a droning thrasher's two-step that mingled threat and desperation, frustration and merciless cries for revenge, the mirror images of our own teenage lust. The lead singer, a skinny badass, punk enough to wear wraparound shades day and night, had the nerve to call himself Question Mark and leave it at that. He slithered all through the set, a James Brown nightmare years before Iggy Pop had the same idea.

The climax of the evening came when the beer had just about oozed through your pores in the hopelessly muggy warmth of the teen club dance hall. Frank Rodriguez kicked his organ into overdrive and Question Mark would get a firm grip on his microphone and sneer : "Too many teardrops...for one heart...to be cryin'!"

It was a chant that summarized the dangerous passions of that crowd of sixteen and seventeen year old kids, half of them crushed up against the stage and half milling about in the back in an all-night hopeless cruise. The songs spat out were nasty, sarcastic putdowns and yearning eruptions of pure hormonal need, stuff like "I Need Somebody" and "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" and "Girl You Captivate Me," which he really did sing as "Girl You Masturbate Me." They said what needed to be said and left felt but unspoken the mystery behind it all, the complications we feared would never unravel.

Nineteen summers later, listening to ? and the original gang romp and stomp all over a Dallas stage, the music makes more sense, in a way. You can hear it as a progenitor of punk and as the inheritor of Tex-Mex tradition, an atomic age version of sounds that have rung through the Southwest for centuries. But at the core of it all is what's not expressed but only suggested : the final, ineffable paradoxes of rock & roll and life itself. Which is a way of saying that ? and the Mysterians still live up to their name.

DAVE MARSH


You are the one that I came to sing to, to be with on this night. You are the one that I sacrifice everything for, for to be with you, that's what it's all about. From the moment I'm on stage until the moment I leave, you are the most important person to me. You may have read about me, seen my photograph, played my records and even seen me perform before, and even though we may never meet, you will always be a part of my life. So whenever I sing a song it will be for you and remember that I will always be thinking of you. There has been a special bond throughout the years, that has kept us together just waiting for this special occasion to happen, to come alive, to be born, so that we may share with the world the moments that we had together on this special night. This is our first live album and after eighteen years, this is also the first time we have regrouped to perform. A lot has happened to us throughout the years and so much more is yet to come and whether we continue to perform as the original ? and the Mysterians, I shall always enjoy performing and singing my songs to you, that I may always leave a message of hope, love and understanding.

You are the one that has made this all possible. Whether it be in a song or when I'm performing, I shall always give to you all that I can give, for to make you happy is what I love doing the best.

Until we meet again, may God bless you and may you always be able to give to others the love that you give to us. From one heart to another, thank you once again for having us come to Dallas and being with us at The Arcadia Theater.

Always,

Question Mark

96 Tears Forever!?