Born in Clairton, PA., The Arondies formed in late 1962/early 1963. With a hand from local DJ Terry Lee, they struck a hit in 1965 with the perfect instrumental "69". An endless cycle of shows, personal appearances, and shrieking girls followed. Beautiful vocal ballads like "All My Love" became favorites on the many dances they appeared at. This was, briefly, Pittsburgh’s version of Beatlemania.
Get Hip, in collaboration with band member Bill Scully, located and remastered most of the mastertapes for the tracks on this album.
Where mastertapes were impossible to locate, original acetates and mint copies of the singles replaced them. The result is a deluxe bonafide collection with amazing sound and a 12-page booklet packed with photos and momentos of their history along with an extensive detailed story of the band, original labels info, etc.
If you dug the recent reissues of the Sonics and Wailers you will surely love this album! From the revved-up opening track "Step Move Jump Slide", the latin-inspired "Mexico Tex" to teen garage nuggets with a distinctive guitar twang and genuine teenager spirit!
Pittsburgh was one of the last towns to succumb to the British invasion of the early 1960s, thanks to an R&B soul and a garage-rock scene that provided the region with a hard hat alternative to what the Brits were throwing down.
One of those bands was Clairton's Arondies. Guitarist Jim Pavlack and drummer Bill Scully starting playing and singing together in the early '60s. Gary Pittman joined up as a singer and bass player.
By the end of 1962, they had a solid rock & roll trio heavily into R&B. They formed the Arondies and began to book gigs, doing shows by late 1963. They worked the local Mon Valley circuit, from the Juliot Hotel to the Sigma Nu frat house to the Clairton VFW. As Scully recalls, with a grin, "We were big celebrities - in Clairton."
By late 1964, they'd begun recording demos and early in 1965, they released their debut single on the Astra label, "69" b/w "All My Love," both written by the band.
After cutting "69," the Arondies started working with local WMCK jock, promoter, and all-around Svengali, Terry Lee. While TL and Porky were blissfully spinning the record, the other stations shied away from playing a song titled "69."
"My uncle Al McDowell was at KDKA at the time," Scully told the Post Gazette, "so my aunt and uncle took the record to Clark Race and asked if he would play it. So Clark is listenin', and it's got this nice sound, and we say '69,' and he says, 'I can't play this.' My aunt didn't know." We remember a push by the label to rename the song "The Class of '69", but that ploy didn't really fool anyone.
Still, the Arondies sold 10,000 copies of "69," regarded as a garage rock instrumental classic and to this day Pittsburgh's signature rock anthem among its boomer generation.
A month after making a splash with "69," they split with Lee in a fight over the Benjamins. He was getting them lots of bookings, often two or three shows per night, but not very healthy paychecks. The royalty checks looked a little on the slim side, too. All work and no pay...
Scully quit the band. Pittman and Pavlack formed the Soul Congress, picking up Uniontown soulman Billy Sha-Rae and kit player Jack O'Neill of The Grant Street Exit. They moved on to the Motor City, where they backed artists like the O'Jays. In '71, they scored a minor R&B hit with "Do It."
Meanwhile, Scully hooked up with Herb Marshall in a jazz-rock quartet, but by the '70s, all of the members were out of the music business. The facts of life are that garage bands have the shelf span of a May fly.
"69" is still a local cult hit, and was resurrected in the '80s by the Cynics, whose Gregg Kostelich in 1999 released the first Arondies CD on the Get Hip label, "Introducing the Arondies." The 13 tracks were laid in live sessions dating from November 1964 to a radio appearance on WMCK from 1965.
Pittsburgh 60s Instromental Garage! Complete recordings of this legendary Garage Punk group that recorded the instrumental punk anthem "69" back in the mid-60's. It includes previously unreleased recordings such as "Step Move Jump Slide", "All My Love", "Louie Louie", "Shades",...
In 1965, the Arondies, teens from Clairton, sold 10,000 copies -- which today would still be pretty major numbers -- of an instrumental classic, "69," a record that Get Hip archivist Baran likes to call our town's "Bolero."
"Everybody learned to play guitar to '69,'" he says. "If you wanted to play it simply, you didn't have to even have a tuned guitar. You could keep it on one string."
Although the original three-man lineup, as captured on "69," would go its separate ways before the year was out, the song remains a local cult hit on the underground, as resurrected in the '80s by the Cynics, whose Gregg Kostelich in 1999 released the first Arondies CD on Get Hip. At times, the music -- cut in sessions dating from November 1964 to a radio appearance on McKeesport's WMCK in '65 -- takes on the primal feel of something the Arondies might have played in Hamburg while sharing a bill with the Beatles. But they never made it to the Reeperbahn. Instead, they worked the local circuit from the Juliot Hotel in Clairton to the Sigma Nu fraternity -- immortalized (for those who knew the band) in "Sigma Nu" -- to the Clairton VFW, where they packed the joint, especially during football season.
As drummer Bill Scully recalls, with a grin, "We were big celebrities -- in Clairton."
After cutting "69," the Arondies started working with a local DJ/show promoter/all-around Svengali Terry Lee, who'd already discovered the Larks, whose name he changed, in honor of his own profession, to the Dee-Jays.
While Terry and Porky were spinning the record, other stations balked at the idea of a song called "69."
"My uncle Al McDowell was at KDKA at the time," says Scully, "so my aunt and uncle took the record to Clark Race and asked if he would play it. So Clark is listenin', and it's got this nice sound, and we say '69,' and he says, 'I can't play this.' My aunt didn't know."
A month after making a splash with "69," they split with Lee in a royalty dispute. Then, Scully quit and the other Arondies formed the Soul Congress, featuring Uniontown soul artist Billy Sha-Rae. Eventually, the Congress moved to Detroit, where it played on sessions by such artists as the O'Jays, and in '71, scored a minor R&B hit with "Do It."
As big a hit as "69" was, the kings of the local garage were indisputably the Dee-Jays. "Everybody said, 'Those Dee-Jays, boy, they're just fantastic," Baran says. And so, the name was changed to the Fantastic Dee-Jays. With a sound that ranged from instrumental covers to the gorgeous low-key balladry of "Shy Girl" to the heavier British Invasion-inspired garage-rock of "Get Away Girl," the Dee-Jays, of McKeesport, got a lot of play on WMCK, where their manager, Lee, was working at the time. A self-styled Brian Epstein, the DJ attended the Dee-Jays' rehearsals to make sure they weren't goofing off and recorded them after midnight at the station doing material he'd selected.
They released their debut single, a lo-fi cover of "Apache," in March 1965. In 1966, the very year the Dee-Jays opened for the Stones at the Civic Arena, the band became the Swamp Rats, a grittier punk act whose enduring reputation was built on a series of primitive singles that found them going absolutely wild on everything from a jaw-dropping cover of "Louie Louie" to the Kinks' "Til the End of the Day."
The garage act most likely to make it beyond the garage, the Fenways, from Apollo in Armstrong County, got their start in 1964 on Ricky "C," a local label, with "Nothing to Offer You." Before they'd even backed the Vogues on "You're the One," the group, more polished and less rocking than your typical garage-rock act, signed briefly to the Imperial label, home of Ricky Nelson and Fats Domino, for "Walk." As Pittsburgh's first successful self-contained rock 'n' roll unit, the Fenways (led by vocalist Sunny DeNunzio, Lee's cousin) were tapped, in the summer of 1964, to open for the Rolling Stones and Dave Clark Five. With "Walk," in 1965, they topped the charts on both of Pittsburgh's major pop radio outlets -- KQV and KDKA -- in addition to WMCK.
The Arondies never charted a single nationally and seldom played far outside of their western Pennsylvania base. But during the summer of 1965, they burned up the Pittsburgh airwaves with a single, "69," that seemed to portend great possibilities for the group. The latter never came to fruition, but the Arondies left behind a legacy of a baker's dozen garage rock tracks that are nearly as fresh to the ear in 2002 as they were in 1963-1967; and "69" is regarded as a garage rock instrumental classic. Guitarist Jim Pavlack and drummer Bill Scully starting playing and singing together in the early '60s. Gary Pittman came aboard as a singer and took up bass; by the end of 1962, they had a rock & roll trio heavily steeped in R&B -- their major influences included Maurice Williams, Bo Diddley, and local R&B star Herb Marshall. They chose the name the Arondies and began playing gigs during late 1963, distinguishing themselves with their serious devotion to authentic R&B, their hard and intense approach to their playing, and good harmonizing. The results were close in spirit to early Paul Revere & the Raiders, except that the guitar -- rather than sax or organ -- was their lead instrument, even on "Louie Louie." By late 1964, they'd begun recording demos and early the following year, they released a debut single of "69" b/w "All My Love," both group originals. The group hit locally with help from Pittsburgh DJ Terry Lee, who heard the group and liked how they sounded. The Arondies began playing at his dances and record hops, he began plugging them on the radio, and "69" sold as fast as it could be pressed until it was moving over 10,000 copies in a month. The band got lots of bookings but saw very little money, and their relationship with Lee ended in less than a year. The original lineup had ceased to function by late 1965, though Pittman and Pavlack kept the Arondies going as a quartet with Chuck Taska and Ralph Falk, and the two later assembled a quintet called the Soul Congress, who got some work behind the O'Jays and later lofted a single ("Do It") low onto the R&B charts. Meanwhile, Scully hooked up with Herb Marshall in a jazz-rock quartet and by the '70s, all of the members were out of the music business. That might've been the last anyone heard of the Arondies, except for Get Hip Records, which issued a CD in 1999 made from the group's 13 extant sides. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
