Great Lakes Spotlight: The Choir - It's Cold Outside/I'm Going Home

More Great Lakes region Battle of the Garage Bands.

Day 7 has us back in Ohio just outside of Cleveland where four mods from Mentor High School kicked out two great original songs in October of 1966. The original release was on the Canadian-American Records label. A few months later the record was picked up for national release by Roulette Records in the Spring of 1967.

The Choir (named The Mods until the recording session) was fronted by Dan Klawon and featured Jim Bonfanti, Dave Burke and Wally Bryson. The members swapped instruments and singing duties. Shortly after recording the double sided pop-gem Dan Klawon would leave the band. Ultimately the remaining members would join forces with another local kid, Eric Carmen, and morph into The Raspberries. But that's a story for another blog.

It's Cold Outside got the A-Side treatment. And why not? It's a wonderful pop number that shows a great sense of craftsmanship with Dan Klawon singing his own composition about unrequited love and other meteorological depressions. It's Cold Outside is a gentle, approachable song with a real sense of ability to be a hit. Much more so than are most of the songs that get play here. Simple guitar, light harmonies, a key change and a soaring chorus make this song a real hum-along number.

The Klawon composed I'm Going Home gets the highly coveted Flip-Side and hints at a rougher side of the band. The number was covered by The Chesterfield Kings for their debut album (see more about that here). Still no guitar lead, but the harmonica gives it a real nice edge. I'm not sure if that is Klawon singing lead on this one. Sounds more nasally to me. I'm thinking not. Let us know if you know.

As with most things Ohio, we first turned to www.buckeyebeat.com to get info on the band. While they didn't have much info, they did have this groovy picture. Thanks Buckeye Beat.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

Album: Here Are The Chesterfield Kings

Sometime in the fall of 1984, while spending a year in England, I was thumbing through a record store in Guilford, south of London, when to my astonishment I came across a copy of Here Are The Chesterfield Kings.  Having just been introduced to this album – and 60’s garage in general – by a friend back in the States, I knew this album was gold.  Isolated from my friend’s and my collection of records back home, I found myself studying this and a few other albums in my lonely little high-schooler bedroom.  The songs Little White Lies, Sixty Second Swinger and Come With Me got special attention.  They gave insight into this other kind of music - unruly, menacing vocals set to a raw pounding beat and inventive instrumentation.  Other songs such as You Better Look Now, Time to Kill or Outside Chance showed the more melodic side to the mid-‘60s music I craved to hear.  As a whole the music on this album was so charged that at times I literally couldn’t believe what I was hearing; and the album was so faithfully presented in the vein of a mid-‘60s era release, from the actual recordings to the picture of the band on the front of album, right down to the images and layout on the back of the album, that I must admit to not knowing for some time in which era this was initially recorded.  This just added to the allure.

The Chesterfield Kings formed in 1979 in Rochester, New York, and were one of the earliest ’60s revival bands as they rode that first crest that included The Lyres out of Boston and The Crawdaddys out of San Diego. In the next few years the Chesterfield Kings – Greg Prevost, Doug Meech, Rick Cona, Andy Babiuk and Orest Guran – released several singles and played locally, and all the while several influential garage-specific compilations – Pebbles and the Pebbles offshoot Highs In the Mid-Sixties - entered the mix. By the time of the Chesterfield King’s 1982 release of “Here Are”, ‘60s garage or otherwise ‘60s-inspired music had a foothold, albeit a distinctly underground foothold, on both coasts and the garage revival was well on its way.  While many of these early acts embraced the ‘60s garage ideal with a zeal, and some frankly nailed it – see The Unclaimed’s Primordial Ooze EP or The Tell-Tale Hearts' eponymous LP – if you wanted the blueprint at a granular level it was Here Are Chesterfield Kings.

Today we look not at Here Are but at the original versions of the songs behind the album.  The album is all covers, something I didn't really get only until recently, such was their ownership of the material. Although the ‘60s garage comps were hitting their stride by 1982, as of the date of release of this album as far as I can tell only one song on it had been comped.  In the pre-internet, pre eBay days, the general awareness and availability of some of these songs, let alone the actual wax, must have been pretty slim indeed, which makes this album all the more stunning.

Today - Side 1.  Stay tuned for Side 2 in the coming days. Enjoy!

The Sonics - The Hustler

The Rogues - You Better Look Now

The Turtles - Outside Chance

Painted Ship - Little White Lies

Zakary Thaks - Won't Come Back

The Choir - I'm Going Home

The Chocolate Watch Band - Expo 2000