Practical MIDI

As I was looking up the facts of a particular band, I noticed this the web site also included references to other bands that were related to this search and it got me to thinking about how bands change and musicians tend to job-hop, so to speak. Maybe they get bored doing what they’re doing and need a new challenge. I don’t know. But sooner or later they pop up again in some other configuration.

Case in point…The Classics IV, who achieved fame with songs like “Spooky,” “Stormy” and “Traces.” The band was popular during the last couple of years of the sixties decade and then disappeared, or so I thought. Turns out that three key figures from that band surfaced again in the form of “Atlantic Rhythm Section,” who made their mark with songs like “So Into You,” “Imaginary Lover” and (surprise) a re-make of “Spooky.” Personally I liked the re-make better if for no other reason than the guitar work.

All right, so some of the guys were able to extend their fame and put off the inevitable obscurity that surely awaited them around the corner. There were other bands that probably saw the light at the end of their fame tunnel and decided to disband and regroup and take another stab at it. Such was the case with a sixties band called The American Breed, who first caught our attention with songs like “Bend Me, Shape Me,” “Step Out of Your Mind” and “Green Light.” Their pop reign didn’t last longer than eight months and after disbanding, some of them re-emerged as Rufus, if only for one more memorable song—“Tell Me Something Good,” featuring Chaka Khan.”

When the sixties icons, The Animals found themselves out of favor and out of the limelight, Eric Burdon popped up again as a singer with the soul group, War. Zombies founder Rod Argent left his sixties band behind to form his seventies band, Argent. The Guess Who made several personnel changes and lead guitarist, Randy Bachman, eventually formed Bachman-Turner Overdrive. An early seventies, one-hit wonder band called Free moved on and became Bad Company, who had more than five times the number of charted hits as their predecessors.

Some hippies refuse to grow up. Such was the case with the flower-power band, Jefferson Airplane. After two or three so-called hits, they re-grouped and re-named the band Jefferson Starship, and eventually just Starship. Imagine Grace Slick still singing to the teens while she was in her sixties (she’s pushing seventy today).

Sixties instrumentalists, Booker T. and the MGs had many memorable hits but when they broke up, the guitarist and the bassist joined another up-and-coming group—The Blues Brothers. It also included Paul Schaefer, who moved on to a gig as musical director on The David Letterman Show.

Some bands that were big in their own rights, broke up and hand-picked the best of the bunch to form what later became known as “Super Groups.” Such was the case when The Byrds, The Hollies and Buffalo Springfield lost members to what eventually became Crosby, Stills and Nash. Another example of this would be Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream teaming up with Steve Winwood, formerly with the band, Traffic. They added Rick Gretch and became Blind Faith. Eric was always a little more antsy and moved on to yet another configuration, Derek and the Dominoes before dumping everyone else altogether and going solo. He had become the first performer to win grammys in three different groups.

Imagine a teenie-bopper type band like the McCoys (Hang On Sloopy) spawning a band like The Edgar Winter Group. Rick Derringer left The McCoys to join the albino musician and the difference in music styles was night and day. Similar to the case of Ed King, lead guitarist from The Strawberry Alarm Clock (Incense & Peppermints). He became a founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Hard to believe anyone with their foot in the musical door that was Santana would leave it when that group was at its height of popularity. Original organist, Greg Rollie and newly added guitarist, Neal Schon left Santana to form Journey and probably ended up out-selling their former band mates. Same thing happened with The Mugwumps (who?) They went nowhere as a group, but spawned two other groups called The Mamas & the Papas as well as The Lovin’ Spoonful. Good move, guys.

Two other musicians (Jeff Baxter and Michael McDonald) left the popular band, Steely Dan and moved on to join another mega-selling group called The Doobie Brothers. One-hit wonders, Vanilla Fudge lost two members who eventually teamed up with Jeff Beck to become Bogart, Beck & Appice. And let’s not forget those sixties rockers, The Yardbirds, who had several personnel changes before morphing into the seventies super group, Led Zepplin.

And last but not least, there’s a solo artist named Paul McCartney, who, as rumor has it, was once in a pretty successful band himself. The name of that band escapes me. Give me a minute. It’ll come to me.

©2008 Bill Bernico for CYBERMIDI.com Downwind Publications