This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2020) |
Blotto was an American rock band from Albany, New York, known for mixing music and humor. They formed in 1978 from the Star Spangled Washboard Band, a comedy jug band whom The New York Times described as "reminiscent of collision between the Earl Scruggs Review and the Three Stooges." [1] Blotto's music combined new wave and soul/R&B with comedic themes. It began as a pick-up band in Saratoga Springs at a club then known as 17 Maple Ave. (later The Metro), with three Washboard Band alumni (who took the stage names Bowtie Blotto, Sergeant Blotto, and Broadway Blotto), plus a drummer and a bassist (Lee Harvey Blotto, and Cheese Blotto).
They were joined by Blanche Blotto, who contributed vocals and keyboards and inspired the band's drumhead lady logo. They began to amass a following and played in the New York City area at clubs such as The Ritz, SNAFU, Eighty-Eight, and My Father's Place. DJ Vin Scelsa of WNEW-FM picked up on their initial recording of "I Wanna Be A Lifeguard," which soon became the theme song of the Jones Beach Lifeguards. Their songs were played on the Dr. Demento Show, and they appeared on television's Uncle Floyd Show . They toured frequently and were popular primarily in the northeastern United States, especially among college students. [2]
After releasing two EPs on their own Blotto Records label, they produced an early music video for "I Wanna Be A Lifeguard" with video production students at SUNY Albany. The video was played on MTV's very first day on the air in 1981 and continued in frequent rotation. [3] This exposure helped the band produce their album Combo Akimbo, which was released with assistance from Peter Pan Records, as well as a "Video 45" on VHS from Sony with three videos of Blotto songs that also received wide exposure from airplay on MTV, including "Metalhead," with Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser from Blue Öyster Cult on lead guitar. Blotto worked with producer Bob Clearmountain on one song on the album. North Lake Sound Chief Engineer, Chris Cassone, produced and engineered the rest of Combo Akimbo. [4] Cassone was also working with Roeser at the time and suggested he hear the song with an homage Blotto had recorded, "Metalhead." Because of a one-time mistaken erasure of a guitar track, he was dubbed "Eberhard Blotto."
The group disbanded in 1984 with the players pursuing more profitable interests. Drummer Lee Harvey Blotto (Paul Rapp) graduated from Albany Law School, became an attorney specializing in intellectual property law, and continued to play with the band as "F. Lee Harvey Blotto" (a pun on the names of famous lawyer F. Lee Bailey and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald). Keyboardist and vocalist "Blanche Blotto" (Helena Binder) went on to direct plays and operas. [5]
All of Blotto's studio recordings (with one exception, the song "Bud ... Is After Us") were reissued on a 1994 compact disc compilation, Collected Works. In 1999, the band released Then More Than Ever, a CD comprising previously unreleased live concert recordings, excerpts from a 1982 appearance on the "BBC College Concert" radio series, and tracks recorded for the never-completed follow-up album to Combo Akimbo.
The band reunited for occasional concerts in the Albany area, including an appearance at the 2008 4th of July celebration at Empire State Plaza, and several shows in 2011 at local festivals. On August 6, 2015, the band opened for Blue Öyster Cult at an "Alive at Five" concert in Albany. [6]
Bassist "Cheese Blotto" (Keith Stephenson) died suddenly in October 1999 of cardiomyopathy brought on by a liver condition. [7] Founding member and lead vocalist Sergeant Blotto (real name Greg Haymes) died on April 10, 2019. [8]
In March 2020, Blotto was inducted into the Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Hall of Fame.
Group members went by pseudonyms on their recordings and in performance. [9] The members of the original lineup were:
In addition to their inclusion on the CD Collected Works, Blotto's cover version of Lou Christie's "Lightning Strikes" appears on the compilation LP Hudson Rock, and "Metalhead" appears on the compilation LP Metal For Breakfast.
Paul Daniel "Ace" Frehley is an American musician who was the original lead guitarist, occasional lead vocalist and founding member of the rock band Kiss. He invented the persona of The Spaceman and played with the group from its inception in 1973 until his departure in 1982. After leaving Kiss, Frehley formed his own band named Frehley's Comet and released two albums with the group. He subsequently embarked on a solo career, which was put on hold when he rejoined Kiss in 1996 for a highly successful reunion tour.
Black Oak Arkansas is an American Southern rock band named after the band's hometown of Black Oak, Arkansas. The band reached the height of its fame in the 1970s, charting ten albums. Their style is punctuated by multiple guitar players and the raspy voice and on-stage antics of vocalist Jim "Dandy" Mangrum.
Utopia was an American rock band formed in 1973 by Todd Rundgren. During its first three years, the group was a progressive rock band with a somewhat fluid membership known as Todd Rundgren's Utopia. Most of the members in this early incarnation also played on Rundgren's solo albums of the period up to 1975. By 1976, the group was known simply as Utopia and featured a stable quartet of Rundgren, Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell and John "Willie" Wilcox. This version of the group gradually abandoned progressive rock for more straightforward rock and pop.
A Long Day's Night is a live album by American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, recorded in Chicago, Illinois, on 21 June 2002. The title is a reference to the album being recorded during the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.
Donald Roeser, known professionally as Buck Dharma, is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the sole constant member of hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult since the group's formation in 1967. He wrote and sang vocals on several of the band's best-known hits, including "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", "Godzilla" and "Burnin' for You".
The Fuzztones are an American garage rock revival band formed in 1980.
Test Icicles were a short-lived rock band that formed in England in 2004, primarily influenced by post-hardcore, dance-punk and indie rock but containing musical elements from a variety of genres. The band was formed by Rory Attwell and Sam Mehran, who were later joined by Dev Hynes. Hynes and Mehran were both 18 years old at the time of the band's inception. The group has since become notable due to the later success of its members.
The Weasels are an American rock band based in Albany, New York and active since the mid-1980s. Throughout their history, the group's core writers and performers have been Doctor Fun and Roy Weäsell. The Weasels have released seven LPs and one EP of original material, along with an early career retrospective compilation, and have played approximately 40 concerts, though they have not performed live since October 2000. They have been compared in reviews to Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and Steely Dan, based on their melodic jazz and blues based music, elaborate arrangements, deployment of highly regarded session players, open-ended and suspended compositional style, exacting recording standards, and intelligent use of sardonic, sarcastic, historic, political, surrealist and scatological themes in their lyrics.
The Freeze is an American punk rock band from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, United States, formed by a group of teenagers in 1978. They released the first single, "I Hate Tourists" in 1980 and contributed eight songs, including the title track to the 1982 hardcore punk compilation This Is Boston, Not L.A.
Sun is an R&B, soul, disco, and funk band that was formed in the mid-1970s and recorded prolifically for Capitol Records from 1976 to 1984. The band was founded by Byron Byrd in Dayton, Ohio, in 1976. Additional members included Kym Yancey, Chris Jones, Gary King, John Wagner, Hollis Melson, and Shawn Sandridge.
Ariel were an Australian progressive rock band fronted by Mike Rudd and Bill Putt, who formed the band in 1973 after the breakup of their previous group Spectrum. The original Ariel line-up was Mike Rudd, Bill Putt (bass), Tim Gaze (guitar), John Mills (keyboards) and Nigel Macara (drums). Gaze and Macara were recruited from seminal Australian progressive rock band Tamam Shud. The band released three studio albums and two live albums between 1973 and 1977, during which there were several line-up changes, with Rudd and Putt the only permanent members. Other members of Ariel included guitarists Harvey James and Glyn Mason and keyboard player Tony Slavich.
The British space rock group Hawkwind have been active since 1969, but their earliest video release is Night Of The Hawk from their Earth Ritual Tour recorded at Ipswich on 9 March 1984. Since then, there have been numerous video releases covering the evolution of the band; some are professional broadcast shoots, others commercial, and a few are amateur.
Louis Paul Bankston, better known as King Louie Bankston, was an American rock and roll musician from New Orleans. Associated early on with garage punk, he abandoned the genre in 1998 and focused on Louisiana swamp pop, boogie woogie, boogie rock, and power pop. He was best known for his work in the Royal Pendletons, The Persuaders, The Exploding Hearts, and The King Louie One Man Band. Bankston toured Europe and the United States, since the early 1990s. He released 53 records in the vinyl format. Bankston later played music based out of Oakland, California. He lived in New Orleans, Portland, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee.
The Noseflutes were an unorthodox, late-eighties band based in Birmingham. They released three EPs and three albums, recorded four sessions for Radio 1's John Peel, and received generally favourable reviews from the contemporary music press. Their second album, Zib Zob and His Kib Kob, made The People newspaper's list of The 101 Most Awful Album Titles of All Time. During their existence they became "the house band for Birmingham".
1313 Mockingbird Lane is an American garage rock band whose name was inspired by the fictional address of the Munster Mansion in the 1964–1966 television series The Munsters. The group formed in the late 1980s in Albany, New York, touring extensively, and releasing at least nine different 45 rpm records, LP records, and CD recordings. The band had a full-page narrative dedicated to them in Timothy Gassen's book The Knights of Fuzz, about the garage rock and psychedelic music phenomenon of 1980–1995. Of thousands of bands covered in the book, Gassen listed 1313 Mockingbird Lane on his "all time Hot 100" list, which also included The Chesterfield Kings and the Flamin' Groovies.
"I Don't Wanna Get Drafted" is a 1980 single by American musician Frank Zappa. The song peaked at #103 US Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 and #68 on the Cash Box charts, but more successfully reached #3 in Sweden. The original single version has never been reissued on LP or CD.
Teaze is a Canadian hard rock band formed in Windsor, Ontario in 1974. The band released four studio albums and a live album recorded in Japan. The band reformed in 2019.
Tabou Combo is a Haitian compas band that was founded in 1968 in Pétion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince. The orchestra has performed throughout the world. Tabou Combo was the first Haitian band to perform in Japan, Ivory Coast, Senegal among others, and were named the "Official Panamanian Band" in Panama due to their popularity, while also becoming the first Caribbean band to have a number one single in the French Hit Parade. They dynamically sung their songs in both English, French, Spanish and in Haitian Creole. Tabou Combo refer to themselves as the "ambassadors of konpa."
Mutiny on the Bounty is a Luxembourgish alternative rock band from Esch-sur-Alzette.
Worlds Apart is the second and final album of the American rock band Blackjack. The album was met with nearly total indifference, sold poorly and Blackjack disbanded shortly after its release.