Under-Appreciated Rock Bands and Artists

The Outsiders American

THE OUTSIDERS (American Band)

The Outsiders was an American rock and roll band from Cleveland, Ohio, that was founded and led by guitarist Tom King. The band is best known for its Top 5 hit “Time Won’t Let Me” in early 1966, which peaked at No. 5 in the US, but the band also had three other Top 40 hit singles in 1966 and released a total of four albums in the mid-1960’s. Allmusic described the act’s style: “Part of the secret behind the Outsiders’ musical success lay in the group’s embellishments [with horns and strings], which slotted in perfectly with their basic three- or four-piece instrumental sound. . . . [H]owever bold and ambitious they got, one never lost the sense of a hard, solid band sound at the core.” (More from Wikipedia)

Greg Shaw put his faith in what he called “power-pop”: teenage pop music in the standard 3-minute format but backed up with a hard-edged punk rock aesthetic. Pete Townshend coined the term power pop in a 1967 interview to describe the music that his band the Who and Small Faces played; many of the Beatles’ mid-period singles are also in that style, such as “Paperback Writer” and “Day Tripper”. Among American bands, “Time Won’t Let Me” by the Outsiders and “Go All the Way” by the Raspberries are early power-pop hit songs.

(April 2010)

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The Index album is one of two LPs that I have gotten this year where the side listings are backwards, i.e., where Side 2 is on the left and Side 1 is on the right. The other is a live performance by another Dutch band, the Outsiders (not to be confused with the American band also called the Outsiders that hit with “Time Won’t Let Me”), called Afraid of the Dark. In that case, the sides were numbered correctly I guess; but Side 2 is essentially the same as the outstanding first side of their legendary first album, The Outsiders (even including the introduction to the band in the Dutch language), and the album just seems better when it is played with the second side first. This was a run-through rather than the blistering live tracks given on the first album, but that one hasn’t yet emerged from my recovery of the record albums from Katrina, so I am delighted to have this one available for playing.

(March 2011)

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This was the first post where I tried to talk about more than just the band itself. Many people might have wondered why Cleveland of all places was chosen to be the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so I presented my own theory: that it was (or at least should have been) due to the largely forgotten musical scene there in the 1960’s and 1970’s. More to the point, rock bands like the Raspberries, the Outsiders and the James Gang are certainly well known enough; but most people don’t know that Cleveland was their hometown. Another long-time fave of mine is the Cleveland punk band the Dead Boys and its frontman Stiv Bators, though they were only indirectly pertinent to this discussion.

(February 2012)

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I was first introduced to the raw 1960’s sounds of Dutch rock when I was fortunate enough to find a copy of a compilation album called Searching in the Wilderness in about 1987 in a fondly remembered basement-level New York record store called Underground Records in the Village. (There was at least one and maybe two other record stores in that same space over the years). Though much of the early output from Dutch bands was heavily influenced by Merseybeat sounds almost to the point of aping them, that was most definitely not true of two of the tracks on that album: “Chunk of Steel”, an early single by Golden Earring; and “For Another Man” by the Motions, which included the future bandleader of Shocking Blue, Robbie van Leeuwen. Wilderness was also my first introduction to other excellent Dutch bands, like the Outsiders (not the American band called the Outsiders that is best known for “Time Won’t Let Me”) and Cuby & the Blizzards.

(January 2013)

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For the most part, the bands on the Pebbles albums were completely unknown to practically everyone when they came out, but a few were virtually unknown songs by better known bands. The Pebbles, Volume 9 LP features a track by the Outsiders, to my mind a first-rate American band that had a big hit with “Time Won’t Let Me” and released several more singles, along with four albums. If memory serves, Greg Shaw oversaw a Collector’s Choice compilation (or something like that) of the Outsiders’ music – I assume for Capitol Records, since that is the label that originally released their music. I have all of their albums except Album #2; despite the boring album names, their stuff is really good.

(July 2013)

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Once I had that article written, I undertook an expansion of the article on the Outsiders, a better known Cleveland band that had a big hit with “Time Won’t Let Me”. Wikipedia had a little something on the band but only a few sentences – what is known in the Wikipedia world as a “stub”. This was my first long article for Wikipedia, and I also wrote up articles on their four albums (although I only own three of them, and even those three had gone through Katrina and weren’t available to me at the time); this article is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsiders_(American_band) .

I had ordered an retrospective album on a predecessor band to the Outsiders called the Starfires; as a matter of fact, the band still had that name when “Time Won’t Let Me” was first recorded.

(September 2013)

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Name changes are sometimes not up to you. As I wrote many years ago, when the Starfires came up with their signature song “Time Won’t Let Me”, Capitol Records told them to pick a new name, so they came up with the Outsiders. Later, Sonny Geraci and Tom King were each heading up a band called the Outsiders; when King legally won the rights to the name, Geraci’s band – which included Outsiders guitarist Walter Nims – changed their name to Climax and had an even bigger hit with a Nims song, “Precious and Few”.

(June 2014)

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In 1963, David White and John Madara were approached by a Cleveland girl group called the Secrets, who had secured a recording contract after playing at a gig with the Starfires (also of Cleveland and later evolving into the Outsiders). They used their influence to release a single in October 1963 on Philips Records, “The Boy Next Door” b/w “Learnin’ To Forget” that became a #18 hit. The Secrets released three other unsuccessful singles on Philips Records that each featured a David White/John Madara penned song. The “A” side on one single that is shown in Discogs, “Here He Comes Now!” b/w “Oh Donnie (He Ain’t Got No Money)” was co-written by legendary “Philly soul” producer Leon Huff, who also worked with past UARA Mikki.

(August 2015)

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The Cleveland music scene has long fascinated me; rock bands from the future home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included the Choir, the Outsiders, the James Gang, and the punk rock band the Dead Boys. I had picked up a more comprehensive album of songs by the Choir, called Choir Practice, and also an album of material by the Starfires, the predecessor band to the Outsiders who still had that name when they were trying to line up the release of their major hit song “Time Won't Let Me”. More recently, many years after locating their other three albums, I finally found a copy of Album #2, considered by most rock critics to be the best album by the Outsiders.

I wrote up several Wikipedia articles on this music, including the Choir and the Starfires; and I greatly expanded the article on the Outsiders and came up with articles on their albums as well. Another Wikipedia article (much of whose content has been deleted, I was distressed to find out just now) was on the compilation album of music made by Dead Boys frontman Stiv Bators for Bomp! Records, called L.A. L.A., which includes a cover version of the song by the Choir, “It’s Cold Outside”.

(December 2017)

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Over the next several years, I wrote up numerous articles for Wikipedia, mostly on other 1960’s garage rock and psychedelic rock bands and nearly all of the albums in the Pebbles series. In all, I started over 100 articles and made contributions to Wikipedia that number more than 2,500. Most of these rock bands are quite obscure to most people, but some are not: The Outsiders had a major hit with “Time Won’t Let Me” that still gets a lot of radio play. The same is true of Stone Poneys, Linda Ronstadt’s first rock band who scored with “Different Drum”. Both of these bands had only a few sentences – what is called a “stub” on Wikipedia – so I fleshed out their stories and also wrote up an article on all of their albums.

(Year 5 Review)

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But I likely will keep putting out what I call the “Story of the Month” (I have my web pages broken down into short “Items” and longer “Stories” on whomever or whatever I am talking about) that I uncover as I load up the web site. These Stories are on well known (well, better known anyway) songs and albums and rock bands and other topics that are not of the Under Appreciated variety. I started those last year and meant to list the ones in my year-end post last time but forgot, so here is that list from the past two years:

December 2013 – The Standells

January 2014 – (skipped)

February 2014 – Hasil Adkins

March 2014 – Bobby Darin

April 2014 – Nuggets

May 2014 – The Nerves

June 2014 – The Outsiders (American band)

July 2014 – The Million Dollar Quartet

August 2014 – Scientific Proof of the Existence of God

September 2014 – The Piltdown Man and Brontosaurus

October 2014 – Walter/Wendy Carlos

November 2014 – The Trashmen