Garage Rock Masterpiece

The LP (yes, vinyl) is out of print, but customers on sites like Amazon still rave about The Beguiled's Blue Dirge album. You can listen to snippets on sites like Amazon, but the record is out of stock and hard to find. There's often one on half.com.

Michael Ball was lead guitarist and apparently the heart of the punk band. The recap of his and the band's demise is on Subterranean Records:

The group's 2nd LP (and, unfortunately their last, as lead guitarist and majorly great cat Mike Ball was killed by a drunk driving asshole in Sept 1994). This ain't no happy-lala-retro garage, baby! Hot-wire a few used stooge riffs thru a massive reverb tank, mash & distill in a swamp, toss in the charred remains of the Scientists & Cheater Slicks, whip & blend in 200 litres of mescal, and top it off with the brains of Henry Lee Lucas. The result: one evil garage headache!

and at Djangos:

Spawned by the '77 generation of New York City gutter punks -and even farther back to Michigan's MC5 and Stooges, members of The Beguiled wanted to keep the spirit of sleazy rock and roll alive upon the 1988 release of their first LP Gone Away. After a two year hiatus of each member traveling around the world separately, they returned in 1990 and released a 7" on Estrus Records three years later. Tragically, after their second album Blue Dirge came out in 1994, guitarist Mike Ball was killed by a drunk driver and unfortunately ending The Beguiled prematurely. ~ Mike DaRonco, All Music Guide