‘Pain! Pain Is In My Heart . . .’

 by whiteray

I wonder how likely this story is in today’s music and radio world: 

Some local kids decide to form a band, and through hard work, a love of music and a little bit of radio luck, the band records some songs, has one or two of them pressed on a 45 (or burned on a CD these days, I guess) and the music finds its way onto the air and to the top of the local Top 40 stations’ playlists. 

It reads like the concept for a B-list movie, one that’s not truly awful but is nevertheless utterly predictable, its script packed to the gills with rough and ready clichés and with clueless lines like the earnest “Our record’s too good not to make it!” or the cynical “Freakin’ radio weasels! They say our freakin’ sound is out of date!” 

But during the years I was a radio listener – the late 1960s and early 1970s, in case you haven’t been paying attention – stories like that (although perhaps without the radio weasels) happened frequently, from the largest markets on the coasts to the smaller markets in the Midwest and South. In my exploration of music blogs over the years, I’ve often come across stories of still-beloved bands that had local hits with 45s and/or albums. 

In Minnesota, several local bands during the early rock era reached the local charts, delighting their cadres of fans in the Upper Midwest. One of those bands, the Trashmen, hit the national stage and saw their immortal record “Surfin’ Bird” spend two weeks at No. 4 on the Billboard chart as January turned into February in 1964. 

Another one of those local records played a part – how large, I’m not sure – in completing my metamorphosis to committed Top 40 listener. As I’ve likely mentioned before, it was during the last half of August 1969 when I really began to listen to Top 40 radio. Finding myself hanging around with St. Cloud Tech’s football team during the two weeks of summer practice, I realized that the radio – likely tuned to KDWB in the Twin Cities – was providing a pretty good soundtrack for my life, at least for that portion of it spent on the sidelines of a football field and in the locker room across the way. 

There were a lot of good records on the air. Here’s according to the website Oldiesloon, is the Top Ten on KDWB during the middle of August 1969: 

“Pain” by the Mystics
“It’s Getting Better” by Mama Cass
“Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones
“Sweet Caroline” “by Neil Diamond
“My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder
“Baby I Love You” by Andy Kim
“Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” by Kenny Rogers & the First Edition
“The Ballad of John & Yoko” by the Beatles
“Give Peace A Chance” by the Plastic Ono Band
“A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash 

Of those ten, and there are some great ones in there, the one that matters here this morning is “Pain,” the No. 1 record. The Mystics were a Twin Cities group (earlier called Michael’s Mystics), and the single was released nationally on the Metromedia label. According to Oldiesloon, “Pain” was in its second week at No. 1 on KDWB; the record had also been No. 1 for one week at WDGY, the Twin Cities’ other main Top 40 station of the time. 

And when “Pain” came on the air, there was something about it that made it stand out even in the elite company of hits from the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, the Beatles and the rest. The hard-charging horn-laced introduction is what grabbed me, I think. The tale told by the lyric is okay, but I think it was the horns. Whatever it was, almost every time “Pain” came on the radio that late summer and early fall, I’d stop what I was doing and just listen. It remained one of my favorite songs long after it fell down the charts and its airplay ended. 

Not that I did anything about it. If I’d been thinking at all, I would have headed out to Woolworth’s or Kresge’s or Musicland and gotten myself a copy of the record. I didn’t. 

But I was enamored enough of the record to pop for a ticket to a high school dance a couple weeks into the school year. The ticket cost all of fifty cents, I imagine. I had no plans of getting on the dance floor, nor did my pal Mike, who went with me. We’d be content to hang along the gym wall in the old Central School, listening to the tunes and watching the girls on the dance floor. We were there for one reason only: The band for the dance was the Mystics, and we wanted to hear “Pain.” And, of course, about two hours into the three-hour dance, the Mystics obliged. Satisfied, Mike and I made our ways home. 

It was, I think, the first time I’d heard a radio hit played live by the original band. And that memory is sweet. 

It was years before I ever heard the song again; in fact, it would be years before I even thought about “Pain” again. You know how life goes: Things happen and more things happen, and some of the things you thought you’d never forget end up pushed to the back on the shelves of memory, gathering dust until someday for some reason, something pushes one of those things to the front of the shelf, where it seems shiny and new again. 

It was the mid-1990s, so call it twenty-five years since I’d heard the Mystics’ single or maybe even thought about it. I was playing keyboards in a just-for-fun band in a Twin Cities suburb, and one of the guys who played in the band had played, if I recall correctly, in another well-known Twin Cities 1960s band, Danny’s Reasons. During a break one night, he was telling tales, and he mentioned the Mystics. 

“The Mystics?” I asked. “The guys who released ‘Pain’?” The very ones, Larry said. I hadn’t thought about “Pain” for years. The conversation wandered on as I made a mental note to check the singles bins at Cheapo’s every once in a while. And a couple of weeks later, when I saw a poster for a record show no more than eight blocks from my home, I made a note to head out on Saturday and see what I could find. 

Well, I found a copy of “Pain.” In its original Metromedia sleeve. For something like $100. The fellow obligingly pulled the 45 from the sleeve and put it on the turntable. I listened to the record for the first time in about twenty-five years, looked at the price tag on the plastic sleeve and shook my head. “Not this time,” I told the fellow regretfully. 

From then on, I’d check for the record sporadically at Cheapo’s and the other places where I bought my LPs. After I moved further south and east in Minneapolis in 1999, I had new places to check. No luck. And once the Texas Gal and I moved to St. Cloud in 2002, well, there were really no places to check except on-line stores. I took a look at discogs this morning. 

There are about ten copies offered, most of them on the Charlie label, where the track started. (A friend of mine in the Twin Cities, who generally knows about these things, says that Charlie might have been the Mystics’ own label.) After the record came out on Charlie, the folks at Metromedia picked it up, and there are a few of those offered at discogs, both regular blue label and deejay white label copies. The prices this morning range from $17 to almost $80. (Those are asking prices, of course; what actually gets spent is another thing.) 

But I don’t need those copies. On a January Saturday in 2003, the Texas Gal and I made one of our occasional trips to the small town of Pierz to stock up on bacon at Thielen Meats. On the way back, we came through the very small town of Royalton, on U.S. Highway 10 about twenty miles north of St. Cloud. An antique shop was doing business in what appeared to be an old bank building, so we pulled over and went in. 

I’m not sure what the Texas Gal looked at, but in the second room I entered, I found a tall rotating rack filled with 45s carefully put into paper and then plastic sleeves. I began digging. And about midway down the second side, I did a double-take: “Pain” by the Mystics on the Metromedia blue label. Eyebrows raised, I looked for the price, and I did another double-take: two dollars. 

Of course, the record came home with me. And a few years later, when the Texas Gal gave me a USB turntable for Christmas, “Pain” was the first record I pulled from the shelves to convert to an mp3. 

The video below the lyrics is from the Metromedia release; that’s how it sounded back in 1969 coming out of the speakers in the football locker room and in my bedroom at home. And it sounds as good today as it did in 1969. 

Pain! Burning in my heart!
I should have known from the very start
That you would leave me like this
And put me away from your tenderness

Oh, no! Don’t you put me away
From your tender kiss, from your tenderness
Oh! Oh, no! Don’t you put me away
From your tender kiss, from your lovin’ ways

But you, you’re my Number One!
And things have changed, and now you are gone.
Since you left, I can’t seem to find
No happiness or no peace of mind

Oh, no! Don’t you put me away
From your tender kiss, from your tenderness

Pain! Pain is in my heart!
But I should have known from the very start
That you, you would leave me like this
And put me away from your tenderness

Oh, no! Don’t you put me away
From your tender kiss, from your tenderness
Oh, no! Don’t you put me away
From your tender kiss, from your lovin’ ways