livius drusus
09-09-2004, 10:26 PM
Meet the Electras (http://www.salon.com/ent/wire/2004/09/08/album/index.html) (for the Buick, not the Greek chick, you pervs).
The seven members (with help from their parents) put together about $1,000 to produce their one album in 1961. In a basement music room with a single microphone, the teen rockers ripped through covers including "Summertime Blues" and "Ya Ya."
The songs tend to sound like surf music with an overlay of boogie-woogie piano. Most tracks are instrumentals. Careful listeners can pick out the steady thump of Kerry's bass -- nothing fancy, though the liner notes credit him as the "producer of a pulsating rhythm." (The same notes also call the diplomat's son a resident of Oslo, Norway.)
"Frankly, I think he and I were probably the best musicians in the band," said Electras pianist Jack Radcliffe, now a Boston-area newspaper editor who still performs as "Ragtime" Jack. "Although his beat wasn't great for a bass player."
The seven members (with help from their parents) put together about $1,000 to produce their one album in 1961. In a basement music room with a single microphone, the teen rockers ripped through covers including "Summertime Blues" and "Ya Ya."
The songs tend to sound like surf music with an overlay of boogie-woogie piano. Most tracks are instrumentals. Careful listeners can pick out the steady thump of Kerry's bass -- nothing fancy, though the liner notes credit him as the "producer of a pulsating rhythm." (The same notes also call the diplomat's son a resident of Oslo, Norway.)
"Frankly, I think he and I were probably the best musicians in the band," said Electras pianist Jack Radcliffe, now a Boston-area newspaper editor who still performs as "Ragtime" Jack. "Although his beat wasn't great for a bass player."