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The Rondels |
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Girl which they recorded and it was released on Brunswick 55152. It did well in Boston but more importantly from that we became great friends. As we both had the same dreams about having successful recording careers, we spent many hours writing and recording and we would often travel to New York together and shop our demos around – although at that point we never had any luck in getting a deal. We did, however, meet a New York producer named "Bugs" Bower on one trip and he showed some real interest in the sound of our band. He basically told me to stay in touch and let him know if we recorded anything new. We would soon get his attention again.
Rhythm Rockers fan club card 1960 "The 3 D's and The Rhythm Rockers did many record hops together, and when they heard us play our new song called Madness we talked about recording it and putting it out on their own new label, Square Records. They had just released their own song titled Squeeze on the label and it was really doing well locally. We went into Ace Recording studio in Boston which was owned by the Yakus brothers. Herb Yakus engineered Madness along with the vocal B-side Oh, Oh, Honey written by Nicky Latteo. |
"Madness did well in Boston and most of New England. That's Eddie Grispi at the beginning with the sinister laugh and The 3 D's doing the handclaps and all the screams. We actually recorded Madness Chapter Two during the same session, but it was never released. "I do remember that both Jimmy and I played through Silvertone Amps for that record. He played a Danelectro guitar and I played on a Silvertone guitar. Nicky's amp was a Gibson and he played a Gretsch, but I remember we did not use bass on the tracks. We did many record hops promoting the disc throughout the area with the biggest DJs of the time, Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg and Joe Smith, but we were unfortunately unable to get on TV's Boston Ballroom which was hosted by DJ Bob Clayton because he felt that the record was too wild for his audience." it certainly is a raw and wild sound too, something like a de-twanged Duane Eddy meets Link Wray with lots of reverberating power chords and a deep toned lead guitar. There was also a brief drum feature from Eddie and the end of the track was climaxed with Ray's hoarse-throated sax solo, making it a very exciting slab of '50s-styled rock instrumental. Madness made enough noise to become a modest regional hit but was sadly unable to convert to the all-important national breakthrough that they needed. Lennie explained how some changes were soon affecting the band "Nicky left because he needed to get a full time job to earn money as he was |
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Article written by Dave Burke of Pipeline Magazine www.pipelinemag.co.uk |
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