Sixties German Beat/Pop/Psychedelic: The Blackbirds - No Destination 1968 (2005 Longhair Records) Flac & mp3@320

One of the few '60s Belgian rock groups of note, the Blackbirds were among the most curious of the numerous sullen bands to emerge from the low countries (principally Holland) during that era. Their arrangements were in some respects rooted in the organ-dominated combos of the British Invasion/beat music era, following the mold of the Animals or, more arcanely, the moody Dutch group Les Baroques. The choked, slightly psychedelic texture of the organ had a more cathedral-like feel than the ones employed by the Animals or Les Baroques, though, looking forward in some ways to the approach characteristic of psychedelic and progressive rock.

Lyrically the Blackbirds were odd birds, delivering brooding and morose sentiments in a groping and occasionally half-sardonic, half-cheery fashion, indicating perhaps that their grasp of the actual meaning of the English words they sang was less than perfect. Melodically they also seemed indebted to the church, as their tunes and harmonies had a pious, almost hymnal tone.

British Invasion and R&B influences can still be detected on their 1968 debut album, though on their second and final effort (from 1971), they were moving in a more avowedly prog rock direction with greater emphasis on pseudo-classical arrangements and extended instrumental sections. As of the late '90s, these guys were still unknown even in hardcore '60s/psychedelic/progressive collector's circles; they're a cult group waiting to happen.(Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com)

Mr Unterberger write the Blackbirds were a BELGIAN band. Folks believe me they were a german band. And the whole review is just antic. Here is a short bio by progarchives.com:

Blackbirds biography
THE BLACKBIRDS were originally formed in south-west Germany and they released their first album "No Destination" on UK-Label Saga in 1968.
THE BLACKBIRDS consists of psychedelic beat/pop music with a touch of the Mothers of Invention type satire (Something Different) and some progressive touches. Strong vocals by singer and guitar player Werner Breinig and some interesting Hammond organ work by Hubert Koop are characteristic of the group's music which proves a great talent of specific song writing. The German label OPP released 5 tracks of this first album on the "Snake in the Grass" album later on. 2nd album "A Touch Of Music", originally released in 1971 on German Label OPP with a complete new line-up - with the exception of singer and guitar player Werner Breinig who now played violin and flute as well- and a complete new style of music. They adopted a nice, poetic and classical (not symphonic) influenced progressive style with long tracks. There was also room for some more powerful passages inbetween, characteristic for the early seventies progressive music we all have learned to love (Dag Erik Asbjornsen, Cosmic Dreams At Play).
Unfortunately, THE BLACKBIRDS were disbanded after these two album.
Both original THE BLACKBIRDS albums are very rare but thanks to German Label Long Hair, both albums are reissued with some bonus tracks.(progarchives.com)

If you don't know the album give it a try
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Psychedelic Pop 1968: Ellie Pop - Ellie Pop 1968 (2005 World Psychedelia Ltd.Records) Flac & mp3@320

Some rock collectors/fans consider Ellie Pop’s only album a mid 60’s classic. The sound is straight out of 1966/early 1967 (though this album was released in 1968-) with strong Beatles influenced melodies and harmonies. Other comparisons that come to mind are a guitar oriented Association (with more balls!) or the Merry-Go-Round, on their less trippy, Beatles inspired material.
There are no psychedelic freakouts, distorted vocals or backward guitar solos on this record. It’s a straight up power pop/pop record, with the occasional odd time signature and plenty of good song arrangements. The production is not as pristine as say the Left Banke’s debut, so the playing and the record itself sound rough or crude at times.

The songs reward with repeated listenings though, and the Fab Four injected Whatcha Gonna Do is a personal favorite (those Yeah Yeah Yeah’s are straight out of the early Beatles songbook). Oh! My Friend has a vibe similar to Rubber Soul’s downbeat folk-rock numbers, sad and moody but a worthy song nonetheless. Can’t Be Love is also very good, with some strange twists and turns and excellent thick guitar riffs that hum like a Mustang engine.

No Thanks Mr. Mann is as psychedelic as this record gets, a classic 60’s character sketch with some superb harmonizing and frantic guitar playing toward the end. While the Beatles comparisons are inevitable, this record is still original and very solid. It’s definitely near the top of the heap of Mainstream (record label) releases.(therisingstorm.net)

 Nearly the complete album is influenced by my all time favourite band and it works pretty well. Very fine album.
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At Request: Sagittarius - The Blue Marble 1969 (2008 Sundazed DigiPack + 4 Bonus Tracks) Flac & mp3

Although it only reached number 70 in the national charts, Sagittarius' 1967 single "My World Fell Down" is one of the great experimental psychedelic pop gems of the era. Sounding very much like a lost Beach Boys classic from the "Good Vibrations"/SMiLE era, the record had beautiful California pop harmonies, exquisite symphonic orchestration, and a downright avant-garde middle section of carnival and bullfight noises.

It was perhaps too weird to become the Top 40 smash it deserved to be, but in any case, Sagittarius would have had a difficult time launching a successful career, as the group didn't really exist. It was a studio project of noted producer Gary Usher, who wrote several great Beach Boys songs with Brian Wilson and produced classic albums by the Byrds.

Usher made the recordings that came out under the Sagittarius name in his spare time, with help from such prominent friends as Beach Boy Bruce Johnston and Glen Campbell (who sings lead on the "My World Fell Down" single).

The most important of Usher's associates, however, was fellow songwriter/producer/singer Curt Boettcher, who has a cult following of his own for the sunshiny California pop with a touch of psychedelia that he produced during the era, especially as part of the Millennium. Boettcher wrote and sang much of the material that ended up on Sagittarius' 1968 Columbia album, Present Tense.

Unlike the "My World Fell Down" single (included on the LP in a brutally edited version), the album wasn't reminiscent of the Beach Boys at their best and most progressive. It was California good-time pop with a mild dab of psychedelia, relentlessly and sometimes annoyingly cheerful, although immaculately crafted and produced, particularly in the layered harmony vocals. Not as commercial as the Association (with whom Boettcher also worked), it still had a lot more in common with the Turtles and the Mamas & the Papas than Pet Sounds or the Byrds.

Although it only sold in the neighborhood of 40,000 to 50,000 copies, the record has a cult following, and has been reissued several times, usually with numerous bonus tracks (Richie Unterberger allmusic.com)

It was the second album by Boettcher/Usher project Sagittarius and in my ears it is a very good album way better as a lot of contemporaries. Surely it is not that strong as the first album ''Present Tense'' but it is one of the better psychedelic pop albums of the late sixties.
Enjoy it
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Psychedelic Pop: The Mystery Trend - So Glad I Found You 1966-67 (1999 Big Beat Records) Flac & mp3@320

The Mystery Trend's name has proved appropriate in defining their fate. They were a band that lots of rock music scholars have heard of -- mentioned in lots of essays about San Francisco in the mid-'60s -- but never heard. Even the Charlatans, another Bay Area band that barely made it out of the starting gate where records were concerned, are better known, by virtue of their music having bounced in and out of print from various sources over the past 34 years. The Mystery Trend never recorded much professionally, and a lot of what they did was in the realm of works-in-progress, rather than finished pieces of music.
The group's other big problem was that their sound wasn't too much in sync with the music most people associate with mid-'60s San Francisco. They started out doing R&B based dance music, then gravitated toward the Beatles, the Kinks, the Zombies, and Bob Dylan, but they never really sounded like any other band. In contrast to the Charlatans, the Grateful Dead, and the Jefferson Airplane, they preferred tight song structures.

For all of their associations with San Francisco in the '60s, the Mystery Trend had their roots in old-style rock & roll, R&B, and dance music. Ron Nagle hailed from the city by the bay and was a serious R&B enthusiast, especially where Ray Charles was concerned -- he played the piano and was heavily influenced by everything that he heard in Charles' early-'60s sound. While studying at San Francisco State College in the early '60s, he hooked up with Larry Bennett, who shared the same interests. Nagle -- who'd majored in art -- was teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute when the British Invasion hit America, and while he was serious enough about R&B to keep the Beatles at arm's length, he did see an opportunity. The British rock & roll boom restored rock bands to their rightful place at the center of music, and jump-started some long-held ambitions that he and Bennett shared about forming a band. They hooked up with students Bob Cuff (guitar), Mike Daly (bass) and John Luby (drums), and after jamming a couple of times on songs like "Woolly Bully," the group became the Terrazzo Brothers (named for an Italian masonry style), with Bennett as lead singer.
After about a year, a lineup change took place, as Mike Daly became their manager, Larry Bennett made a lateral move to take over on bass, and Larry West came aboard on lead guitar while Bob Cuff stayed on rhythm.

By that time they were writing their own material together as a group effort, and coming up with some unusual and very fresh ideas.
And there was the name change. "The Terrazzo Brothers" didn't seem to be doing anything for them, and then the bandmembers misunderstood the line about the "Mystery Tramp" in Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone": the result was the Mystery Trend.
They had a special sound and a following, at least locally. The Mystery Trend were the first band to play the Matrix Club after the original Jefferson Airplane, and regularly gigged with the Great Society. They also joined the Airplane in Bill Graham's first effort at rock music promotion, the Mime Troup Benefit. Along with the Airplane, the Great Society, and the Charlatans, the Mystery Trend seemed to be on the cutting edge of what music was about in San Francisco.
Part of their secret was the sheer range of influences within the lineup, and their ability to pull them together. Bennett was an unbelievably good singer for an unsigned band, and had formidable intuitive skill in handling a song. Nagle and Cuff were master rock & rollers, and Nagle, in particular, could analyze practically any song on the radio and break down what was happening in it, and why a line, lick or riff worked, or why they didn't.

West was a serious beat, and a folk musician with prodigious guitar skills which meshed perfectly with Cuff's rhythm playing. And Luby was a very solid drummer, holding it all together no matter where their songs took them.
If anything, the Mystery Trend more resembled the small group units that grew out of the big-band era that Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington, among others, participated in. Those small groups, made up of top soloists and true virtuosi, had lots of room for the members to maneuver and express themselves, but were also highly disciplined. Some of the Mystery Trend's music sounded ripe for jamming, with soaring guitar solos and rippling keyboard parts, and folk-like melodies that lent themselves to experimentation, but they limited their experimentation to clean, precise three-minute-plus structures, without ever leaving the listener feeling cheated. Listening to the Mystery Trend's best work, amid the odd beats and time signatures, strange key changes and modulations, and harmonies filled with the unexpected, was, indeed, like listening to the very best of the big bands, playing the guts out of a piece in three-and-a-half minutes.

It was too good to last, and it didn't last long. West exited in early 1966 in grand style, smashing his guitar on-stage in the midst of a duel with the Great Society's Darby Slick at a show in Sausalito. He nearly joined the Great Society, while the Mystery Trend continued with Bob Cuff playing what lead guitar was required on record. Eventually he left, and was succeeded by John Gregory, a very talented lead player; by that time, however, the Mystery Trend's days were numbered.
The San Francisco music scene was exploding. The Beau Brummels had already scored hits on the Autumn label, a ton of other acts were getting recorded on one-off singles and, in some instances, getting local airplay; the Jefferson Airplane and the Great Society had done album-length releases, and the Grateful Dead and even the Charlatans were getting scouted by high-powered recording outfits; and late in 1966 the best thing that the Great Society had going for it, Grace Slick, had linked up with the Airplane.
It was happening for every act of any note except, that is, the Mystery Trend. They'd gotten one barely representative single, "Johnny Was a Good Boy" b/w "House on the Hill" out on Verve Records through Frank Werber, the manager of the Kingston Trio, and Trident Productions, who were riding high at around that time with the work of the We Five. Werber did try hard with the group but their sound, spellbinding as it was on-stage, seemed impossible to capture adequately on record -- they covered songs by the Who and did R&B standards, and worked on a ton of originals, all to no avail. The group stuck to its own way of making music, which wasn't much like the We Five, but also avoided the kind of long, aimless jams that were becoming the rule among their Bay Area colleagues. The Mystery Trend didn't sound like anyone else, and somehow they never nailed down a second single, much less an album.

By 1968, it was over. Nagle returned to studio art, which he'd never stopped entirely, and became a successful ceramic artist, and later wrote some songs for the Tubes and Barbra Streisand, among others. Apart from Larry Bennett, who passed on in the '90s, the others (including Larry West) remained in music. The Mystery Trend passed into history and the true depths of tantalizing obscurity -- their name was alluring when coupled with their obscurity, and the fact that they seemed to rate mentions in any serious books or articles about San Francisco's music roots. Nothing apart from the rare copies of that old Verve single, which told us virtually nothing about the band, was around to hear, however. In 1999, a comprehensive collection of the best surviving tracks by the Mystery Trend were released by Ace Records on its Big Beat imprint(allmusic.com)

Great psychedelic pop from the mid sixties. It's a pity that the band not reached more attention. They are really a lost band of the sixties.
Enjoy
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At Request John Fred & His Playboy Band - (With Glasses) The Very Best Of John Fred 1964 - 1969 - The Jewel & Paula Recordings (2001 Demon Westside) Flac & mp3@320

John Fred wrote the song "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)" partly as a parody/tribute to the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and partly as a commentary on the short-lived fad of young women wearing huge sunglasses that obscured the fact they weren't all that good looking. While Fred and his band originally considered the song a throwaway, it ended up being far and away their biggest hit, and their only single to make its way to the Top Ten (even knocking the Fab Four's "Hello Goodbye" off the top of the charts). On the basis of that single, John Fred earned a reputation as a goofy pop act that he was never able to shake, but the Louisiana-bred singer was actually a fine blue-eyed soul shouter who cut a handful of regional hits in the Deep South and earned up to $1,250 a night (in 1965 dollars) on the frat house circuit before "Judy in Disguise" spoiled his R&B cred forever.

With Glasses: The Very Best of John Fred and His Playboy Band is an excellent collection that delivers 28 solid tracks from Fred's back catalog and offers a representative sampling of his early soul-influenced singles and his later forays into psychedelic-tinged pop that followed the success of "Judy in Disguise." Cuts like "Love Comes in Time," "Doin' the Best I Can," and "Make You Love Me" show Fred was a potent white soul singer who could give Eddie Brigati and Box Tops-era Alex Chilton a run for their money, and his Playboys were a top-notch show band with an excellent horn section. Fred's post-"Judy in Disguise" work was a good bit more polished and sometimes more adventurous than it needed to be, but "Sad Story" showed he hadn't lost his blues chops, "Little Dum Dum" is a tough bit of pop psychedelia with a vicious guitar solo, and "Agnes English" is a slyly wary tale of a mysterious proto-hippie.

John Fred was a great rock and soul singer who may not have been as hip as he hoped to be, but was a lot hipper than you probably expect, and With Glasses is an excellent summary of his golden half-decade.(allmusic.com)

 This is a very fine collection of John Fred and from ''Agnes English'' and ''Permanently Stated'' (my favourite albums and surely his best works) alone are 12 tracks here.
Have fun
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The Beach Boys - The Beach Boys Today PT-SHM 1965 Mono (2014 Universal Japan, Marketed & Distributed)

Brian Wilson's retirement from performing to concentrate on studio recording and production reaped immediate dividends with Today!, the first Beach Boys album that is strong almost from start to finish. "Dance, Dance, Dance" and "Do You Wanna Dance" were upbeat hits with Spector-influenced arrangements, but Wilson began to deal with more sophisticated themes on another smash 45, "When I Grow Up," on which these eternal teenagers looked forward to the advancing years with fear and uncertainty.

Surf/hot rod/beach themes were permanently retired in favor of late-adolescent, early-adult romance on this album, which included such decent outings in this vein as "She Knows Me Too Well," "Kiss Me Baby," and "In the Back of My Mind." The true gem is "Please Let Me Wonder," one of the group's most delicate mid-'60s works, with heartbreaking melodies and harmonies.

Be aware that the version of "Help Me, Rhonda" found here is an inferior, earlier, and slower rendition; the familiar hit single take was included on their next album, Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!). [Today!/Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), a Capitol two-fer CD, combines this and Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) onto one disc, adding alternate takes of "Dance, Dance, Dance," "I'm So Young," and "Let Him Run Wild," as well as a previously unreleased studio version of "Graduation Day." Most significantly, it also adds the non-LP single from late 1965, "The Little Girl I Once Knew," which looked forward to Pet Sounds in its studio experimentation and lyrical themes.](Richie Unterberger, allmusic.com)

From all albums the Beach Boys released before Pet Sounds this is probably the strongest.
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The Shades Of Blue - A Golden Classics Edition (1997 Collectables) Flac & mp3

The Domingos formed while in junior high in 1961. The lineup consisted of Nick Marinelli (lead), Bob Kerr (baritone), Ernie Dernai (first tenor), and Dan Guise (baritone). All lived in Livonia, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Bitten by the Motown sound and the predominance of R&B emanating from Detroit radio stations, they fashioned themselves after the top acts and began doing talent shows and dances. They gigged without recording for five years. Marinelli started college, Guise disappeared, and Kerr and Dernai also started college, but at a distant university, and the group was limited to singing on weekends. They befriended members of the Reflections ("Just Like Romeo and Juliet"), also from Livonia, who encouraged them to audition for Ed Wingate's Golden World/Ric Tic Records, where they recorded. Linda Steinberg, who attended the same college as Marinelli, took Guise's place and soon became Mrs. Bob Kerr.

The last thing Ed Wingate wanted to see was another blue-eyed soul group. He had already signed and released records by Flaming Ember and the Reflections. The Reflections in particular had given him headaches. The Reflections disliked the way they were being recorded and their producers, mainly Bob Hamilton, and his brother Freddie Gorman (Originals), who insisted on heavy falsetto usage on their recordings, which they hated. Still, Wingate allowed the Shades of Blue to hang around and cut demos. One day while woodshedding on a song Edwin Starr had started in the military, they came up with a finished "Oh How Happy." Young and naïve, they knew little about songwriting credits, so the only name listed is Charles Hatcher, Edwin Starr's birth name; this became a sore point later. While Wingate wanted no part of them, independent producer John Rhys was there when the guys were working with Starr and liked the song and the group.

And why not? They harmonized like birds, and could doo wop down. Rhys is credited with renaming them the Shades of Blue, and taking their master to Impact Records. Rhys also worked with the Newbeats. The Shades of Blue were all in college when "Oh How Happy" shot up the charts, cracking the Top 20 and nesting at number 12 pop in 1966. They quickly assembled management and a band, and hit the road for a year, appearing on Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars and at other venues. On off days they recorded their first and only album for Impact, the self-titled Happiness Is the Shades of Blue. Subsequent releases charted but not very high. "Lonely Summer," written by Edwin Starr, had all the charm of "Happy" but stalled at number 72; and "Happiness," composed by John Rhys, slotted six rungs lower at number 78.

As for the LP, the two cuts were written by Edwin Starr and Rhys wrote a handful, including his most famous "He Got the Whole World in His Hands"; the Shades of Blue
composed one selection, "Night." While they made money on the road, they didn't see any royalties and felt cheated after talking with other artists. So, by 1969, approximately three years after they started recording, they called it quits. Most of the members still live in the Detroit area, working in various occupations.(allmusic)

Hope you have fun
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Sixties Beat/Pop From Germany: The Petards - A Deeper Blue 1968 Lp (Europa Records) Flac & mp3

The band was founded in 1966 by brothers Horst and Klaus Ebert. Hans Jürgen Schreiber (drums) left the band in june of'67 and for him came Arno Dittrich, at the time then one of the best drummers in Germany, in the band. The band won an important battle of the bands competition by radio and tv station SWF and after that they recorded the first album ''A Deeper Blue''. Their first two singles ''Golden Glass'' and ''Shoot Me Up To The Moon'' reached  the number one in different regional charts of Germany. 

To me the band is one of the best pop and beat bands from Germany of the time then.
Have fun
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Sixties Garage Pop: The Jujus - You Treat Me Bad "1965-1967" (2009 Cicadelic Records) Flac & mp3@320

Formed in Grand Rapids, MI in 1963 by a trio of Godwin High School students, the JuJus never recorded an album but released an impressive series of poorly recorded but wonderfully energetic singles on local labels, including the ragged and raw garage cult classic “You Treat Me Bad,” and if they weren’t exactly polished musicians, the band certainly understood what made the little girls scream.

Led by singer Ray Hammel and the throaty saxophone playing of Max Colley, Jr., the group played the state’s frat circuit, mixing in thinly disguised R&B licks with a dose of folk-rock, British Invasion echoes, and, later, a nice splash of psychedelia, sounding a bit like the Beau Brummels crossed with the early Kinks. “You Treat Me Bad” got a lot of play on the regional radio stations, but the band was no more by 1967. This set collects all of the group’s singles and adds in a live track and a handful of unissued sides to make a complete history of this fun little band.

Highlights include two versions of “You Treat Me Bad,” the breezy “There She Goes,” “Hey Little Girl” (in two versions), “Do You Understand Me” (which borrows the main riff from the Rolling Stones' “The Last Time” and somehow gets away with it), the impressive “Sometime or Other,” and the delightful “If You Really Love Me,” which may have been the band’s melodic peak and certainly deserved some airplay.

Countless garage bands like the JuJus sprang up in the mid- to late '60s, and most of those never did more than play a handful of gigs and left behind nothing but stacks of yellowed handbills in someone’s attic or basement, but the JuJus left behind at least 23 fun tracks of local garage band history, all of which is collected here.

Wonderful band from the US with great garage pop from the middle of the sixties.
Have fun
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Sixties Garage Pop/Bubblegum By The Five Americans - Western Union (1989 Sundazed) Flac & mp3@320

In 1966-1967, this Dallas group enjoyed some modest national success with the number five hit "Western Union," as well as a few other Top 40 entries, "I See the Light," "Zip Code," and "Sound of Love." Dominated by high bubbling organ lines and clean harmony vocals, the group favored high-energy pop/rock far more than British Invasion or R&B-inspired sounds, although a bit of garage/frat rock raunch could be detected in their stomping rhythms -- and their guitar-dominated tracks offered something else again, the harmonies and texture of "The Train" (which was very nearly their debut single) recalling the punchier work of Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers from the same period. Recording prolifically throughout the last half of the '60s (often with ex-rockabilly star Dale Hawkins as producer) and writing much of their own material, they were ultimately too lightweight and bubblegum-ish to measure up to either the era's better pop/rock or garage bands. Their 1966 hit "I See the Light" is their toughest and best performance.

Though they officially hailed from Dallas, the Five Americans had their origins in Oklahoma. Mike Rabon grew up in Hugo, the county seat of Choctaw County, in southeastern Oklahoma, founded in 1902 (and named after Victor Hugo, the novelist), 25 miles north of Paris, Texas, and 15 miles west of Fort Towson, site of the last Confederate surrender of the Civil War. He became interested in playing the guitar when he was eight years old, and saved up to buy a homemade instrument at a local pawn shop. He got a start on a few chords learned from his grandmother and quickly got the hang of the instrument. When rock & roll broke nationally, he was swept right in, and became a big fan of Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, and later added singers such as Frankie Ford to his list of influences.

He joined a local high-school band called the Rhythm Rebels, who played mostly instrumentals and whose gigs included some local radio appearances. While Rabon was honing his guitar skills and learning what he could from the playing of Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore, et al., John Durrill, who was a few years older, was living Bartlesville, OK -- near the Kansas border, originally part of Indian Territory, and the birthplace of Phillips Petroleum -- and already learning a lot by listening to Jerry Lee Lewis, whose playing inspired him to dress up his already freewheeling approach to the piano even more flamboyantly. Durrill entered Southeastern Oklahoma State College in the early '60s as an English major, and played frat parties and the like in his spare time. It was at one such event, playing for Sigma Tau Gamma, that he crossed paths with Rabon, who had started attending the school in 1962.
By that time, Rabon had in his mind the idea of putting together a group, and he approached Durrill. The others -- Norman Ezell (guitar), Johnny Coble (drums), and Jim Grant (maracas and later bass) -- fell into place quickly. The quintet, named the Mutineers, had a repertory built on the music of Duane Eddy and Bo Diddley, and played events around campus, including a regular Monday night gig at the student union. They were good enough to take a chance on recording, cutting their debut in Dallas in 1963 with "Jackin' Around," an instrumental that got some play on their college station. The British Invasion caused them to add some Beatles numbers to their set list and change their look slightly, as well as emphasize their singing a little bit more. Durrill also added a Wurlitzer electric piano -- purchased by Rabon's father, Smiley (who had also financed their first recording sessions) -- to their sound, though the big change came later, when he acquired a Vox organ, which became part of the group's signature sound when the band started recording.

By the summer of 1964, they felt ready to try competing in Dallas, but Coble backed out at the last minute, and they recruited drummer Jimmy Wright on a couple of hours' notice. The bandmembers spent a few weeks crashing at the pad of Durrill's girlfriend, and picked up their first serious gig -- appropriately enough, for a band called the Mutineers -- at a club called The Pirates' Nook, where they bumped an established band out of their spot there, mostly with their stage antics. They did well enough so that they decided to stick it out for a while longer, past the end of the summer. The Mutineers were booked into a club called Lou Ann's, where they chanced to be heard by John Abdnor, Jr., whose multimillionaire father owned a record label. He invited them to audition, and they were duly signed up to his Abnak label. The latter also involved a name change, and that was how the Five Americans got their new name, at Abdnor's insistence.
Their first single, "I See the Light," cut in late 1965 in Dallas, showed just how powerful a performing unit they'd become in the previous year, their instrumental attack resembling the best elements of such much-vaunted British bands as the Yardbirds and the Nashville Teens, with Durrill's singing supported by Rabon and Ezell. The single, which was leased to the HBR label -- a unit of Hanna-Barbera Studios, the cartoon producers -- reached number 26 nationally, and the group got the go-ahead to work on a debut LP. Equally important, the licensing deal got the Five Americans a trip to Los Angeles to meet the executives of the national label. That in itself was highly instructive to five Oklahoma boys who hadn't been anywhere more sophisticated than Dallas -- where their "long hair" (not nearly to the shoulders) made them "freaks" -- and their musical ambitions as well as the quintet's visual presentation advanced by leaps and bounds across early 1966, even as they made the rounds of venues such as the Whisky a Go Go and various TV music showcases such as Shivaree and The Woody Woodbury Show, turning into a national-level act in a matter of weeks. Oddly enough, at the time of its release, the band and its label hadn't been certain of "I See the Light"'s appeal, especially as its other side, "The Train," had some merit of its own.
Not too many bands coming off the college circuit by scarcely a year could have led with that kind of strength. There were similarly high expectations for their follow-up single, "Evol -- Not Love," a harmony-based rocker that seemed to carry them to the next step. Alas, it didn't do nearly as well, essentially dying in the womb in Dallas, owing to a local business-related "political" dispute involving Abdnor. But their next single, "Western Union," soared from the moment it reached the public, reaching the Top Ten. It also marked the beginning of Dale Hawkins, the guitarist/singer/composer of "Susie Q" fame, working as their producer. This should have been the beginning of a new phase in the group's history, and a leap in their fortunes and prospects, but differences with Abdnor and the limitations inherent in not being signed to a major label combined to sap whatever momentum the song generated. This was all especially tragic, as the Five Americans were generating music that was not only superb AM bubblegum pop, but also credible garage rock on occasion, and excellent pop/rock overall, with killer harmonies and excellent playing, filled with the kinds of hooks that most bands would kill for on their records.

Indeed, there are moments on "Now That It's Over" and "If I Could" where their mix of nicely woven harmonies and clean, sophisticated playing recall the work of the Beatles or the Searchers. "Sound of Love" and "Zip Code" -- issued in 1967 -- charted far lower than the records that had preceded them, despite hooks and harmonies that made them eminently hummable and memorable (especially "Zip Code"). They were doing work of at least the caliber of the Monkees without the Screen Gems publishing/arranging/producing factory backing them up, and if some of it was a bit derivative -- "Sympathy" did seem to recall the Beatles' "You Like Me Too Much" at times -- the music was presented with enough fresh twists to easily justify the purchase and the listening time.
The differences with Abdnor were worsening, however, and the members felt he was now compromising the music and any chance for growth by his insistence that they continue to record in Dallas. By 1968 Durrill and Ezell were both gone, replaced by Lenny Goldsmith and Bobby Rambo. The group continued on through 1969, but by then even their name was starting to sound quaintly out of date amid the burgeoning influence of the counterculture; they could probably have gone on indefinitely in Dallas, but their chances for national exposure were receding by the week. Among their last efforts was a double LP (credited to "Michael Rabon & the Five Americans"), before the remaining members went their separate ways. The band has mostly been remembered across the decades for its two biggest hits, "Western Union" and "I See the Light." In the 21st century, however, Sundazed Records reissued a big chunk of their catalog, giving the Five Americans their biggest exposure in decades, and revealing an astonishingly fine legacy, far beyond their best-known hits and all well worth hearing.(allmusic)

Around four months ago i posted already an album by the Americans called''Western Union'' and it's also released by Sundazed. But they are different. This is a collection of songs from 1965 till 1969 while the other record is a release of the Western Union album from 1967 with bonus track.
Enjoy it
            Frank    Flac p1  &  Flac p2         mp3@320