Mid-Atlantic Spotlight: The Bucaneer's - You're Never Gonna Love Me Anymore

Our last day of this Mid-Atlantic show-down and we're treating you to a real gem. It's the Bucaneer's's You're Never Gonna Love Me Anymore and it tells the tale in first-person about what happens when you cheat for the third time and everyone, especially your girl, knows it. The Bucaneer's were a Barrington, New Jersey outfit that drove to Philadelphia in '66 to record several originals of which our song and its flip, both written by guitarist/vocalist Ron Krause, saw sunlight on the Amigo label.

We are indebted to Garage Hangover for the pictures and info. You can find some more info there provided by the band's founder, guitarist and back-up vocalist Don Bevers.

Stay tuned as we tally the votes for this battle of the bands and report the results back to you.

Until then see you On The Flip-Side!

Mid-Atlantic Spotlight: The Tree - No Good Woman

More Mid-Atlantic battle of the garage bands. We go back to New Jersey with The Tree doing No Good Woman from 1967. I don't know too much about this record on the one-off Barvis Records label. So I'll let the record do all the talking for me today. 

Mid-Atlantic Spotlight: The Myddle Class - Don't Let Me Sleep Too Long / I Happen To Love You

The Myddle Class first came onto their local suburban New Jersey scene in 1964 as the King Bees but upgraded their name to avoid confusion with the King Bees releasing stuff on RCA Victor. Their first show under this new moniker was on December 11, 1965 in Summit, New Jersey. One of the opening acts for that show was a group playing its first live performance with its now core membership, The Velvet Underground. That's an auspicious start for our guys which consisted of Dave Palmer on vocals, Rick Philips on guitar, Danny Mansolino on Organ, Charles Larkey on bass and Michael Rosa on drums. Meanwhile, Al Aronowitz, New York Post columnist and band manager introduced the band to the songwriting team Jerry Goffin and Carole King who agree to write and produce for the Myddle Class. The bands first 45 was released on the short-lived Goffin-King label Tomorrow and features an excellent cover of Gates Of Eden as well as the brilliant folky original Free As The Wind.

Their next release on Tomorrow is our featured disc, released in June of '66. It opens on side A with the charging, barn-razing Don't Let Me Sleep Too Long. It's got screaming guitar work as well as some plain old screaming and gives the impression of the kind of raucous live performance for which they were known. The song is credited to the band, but it is well known that they copped it from The Blues Project's Wake Me, Shake Me while opening for them and even managed to get an earlier release than the original, itself taken from a traditional song. A later release on Buddha, while still crediting the band, gives arrangement credit to Al Kooper and The Blues Project. That's thoughtful.

The flip-side brings us to a Goffin-King song we flipsiders happen to really love, I Happen To Love You. The band was somewhat of a song tester for Goffin-King with some songs redirected to The Monkees, and one can easily imagine Micky Dolenz voice on this song. There are demos of Goin' Back and Pleasant Valley Sunday as well as others waiting for a well-deserved retrospective of The Myddle Class. The band only released one more single, also on Tomorrow. Charles Larkey married Carole King, Dave Palmer was an early vocalist for Steely Dan, and Rick Philips was senselessly murdered in 1969 by a jealous roommate.

You can also hear a version of I Happen To Love You by Them here.

See you on the Flip-Side!

Mid-Atlantic Spotlight: The Werp's - Love's A Fire.

We're back after a wonderful weekend with more Battle of the Bands for the The Mid-Atlantic Region.

Today we play a record by a band with the miserable name of The Werp's. Not sure why they have a possessive apostrophe in their name. The band hailed from Somerville, New Jersey and recorded only one record for WGW Records in 1967. That song is the catchy Love's A Fire.  But what we present to you today is not really that record. You see the one released was a much faster number with the guitar mixed way down, the organ mixed way up and some poppy horns scatting all over the song. It's okay, but the horns drive me crazy. So what we give you is an earlier unreleased take of Love's A Fire thanks to the hard work of Tim Warren from the Back From The Grave series. This version is a little slower, has the nice guitar hook at the beginning and gets a good non-Herb Alpert type mix. It also clocks in at a minute longer.

The song was written by J. Serenko and J. Matzko and recorded in New York city. Don't know too much more. Below is a YouTube link to the released version.

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

Mid-Atlantic Spotlight: Richard and The Young Lions - Open Up Your Door/Once Upon Your Smile

We move our regional Battle of the Garage Bands Battle a little further south. We started with New England where The Squires ran away with the not-so-friendly competition with their double sided gem, Going All The Way/Go Ahead. Then we dealt with New York and the winner of that region was The Blues Magoos with We Ain't Got Nothing Yet/Gotta Get Away. Today we turn our attention to the Mid-Atlantic region of these United States. For our purposes, that will incorporate the Mason-Dixon line states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and The District of Columbia. 

We start in Newark, New Jersey where we have the mighty cool looking Richard and The Young Lions. We've written about the band's third single and even included a bunch of cool photos. We turn our attention today to their debut single: Open Up Your Door b/w Once Upon Your Smile. The record was released on Phillips Records in July of 1966 and even got a rice-paper thin picture sleeve. Both sides were written by the songwriting team of Brown, Nader and Bloodworth who also get production credit. Those cats were associated with Detroit's Bob Crewe who was working with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels about the same time. That association meant the Young Lions record actually did okay in the Detroit and Buffalo markets, but not so much in New Jersey. Curious. 

Open Up Your Door is a great raver with Richard Tepp's gravely, snot-nosed voice leading the stomper of a song. I'm particularly fond of the balance between jangly guitar and fuzz guitar as well as the odd African drum sound that runs throughout (see the scan of the Flip-Side of the single).

The Flip-Side of Once Upon Your Smile doesn't get a lot of attention from garage fans but I love this song. Slow and brooding, Richard Tepp's vocals are in top form. The lyrics are clever and the horns are perfectly utilized. And then you get that really groovy bridge where the horns really shine. 

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

Richard and the Young Lions - You Can Make It

Richard and The Young Lions had attitude, dude. The Young Lions hailed from the lovely town of Newark, New Jersey and collectively were Richard Tepp, Bob Freedman, Marc Lees, Norm Cohen, Ricky Rackin, and Jerry Raff. Richard had some seriously long hair and the requisite snarl on his face to make a great front man. It didn't hurt that he could sing, too!

The Young Lions released three singles in their brief career, all on Philips Records. Today's song is, in our humble opinion, the best of their releases. The number is their swan song, You Can Make It, and it was released in March of 1967. This is the A-Side. In a rare public announcement that runs counter to the concept of this site, we warn you...do NOT Flip this record over. Ouch!

You Can Make It was comped on the legendary What A Way To Die record and is one of the standouts on that record. They even graced the cover of the record. That's how we learned of this band.

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

Dee Dee Warwick - Gotta Get A Hold Of Myself

From October of 1965, we have Dee Dee Warwick doing Gotta Get A Hold Of Myself on the Blue Rock label, a subsidiary of Mercury Records. Dee Dee, the younger sister to Dionne and the cousin of Whitney Houston, never attained the fame of her relatives, but, as this recording shows, the young lady from New Jersey could belt it out with the best of them. We flipsters really dig that recurring guitar riff that creeps into the brain like a musical worm. 

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