| 06/12/09 09:57 PM |
#83
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John Brophy (Brophy)
Tim, be careful what you ask for, cause this might take a while. Here's the local band scene that I remember.
Steve Carney and the Imperials. They were a little bit older than us, and set the standard locally for quite some time. Steve is still playing, and I saw him at a graduation party a couple of years ago. He's still a great showman and band leader. He is the type of musician that can listen to any song, memorize the lyrics, break down the chord structure, and teach everybody else in the band their respective parts.
Rex Cole and the Newports. You're right that they did a great job on Rolling Stones tunes. These guys were my personal favorites. They were also great on songs by the Animals. Rex also played saxophone and harmonica quite well.
There was a guy around named Norm Hilliker that had a pretty good band that played around town and down at the beach, but I can't remember the name for some reason. They played mostly "bubble gum" type music, like Tommy James and the Shondells.
I played in a band called the Nightwatchmen with Kev White, Joe Stadtmiller, Craig Denning, and Chris Ritter. Chris eventually left the band and was replaced by Tom Tucker, who became my troublemaking buddy. We played mostly Young Rascals, Paul Revere and the Raiders type of stuff.
My friend Mark Ginter was the lead singer of a band called the High Tides, with Ted Haskell, Mike Gullo, Dick Cronk, and I believe Doug Denning. Obviously from the name, they played mostly Rolling Stones music.
There was also a fellow named George Franchell who played organ and was the leader of group called the Royales. George was quite adept at learning to play almost anything by ear and would play lots of organ heavy music like Vanilla Fudge and Procul Harem.
There's more, but these are the main ones I remember. All of us played Allen Park dances and the Armory, and even at the old St. Joseph's church hall you so fondly remember. I really enjoyed playing in bands over the years, but in retrospect realize due to raging adolescent self conciousness I probably had the stage presence of a potted plant. I always admired the talent of many of these fellow musicians, but truly envied the guys like Rex Cole and Steve Carney that could naturally play to a crowd.
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