Category: Ohio

Deadbeat Poets “Notes from the Underground” CD is LITG’s featured release

Deadbeat Poets' Notes from the Underground is a featured Lost in the Grooves release. To preview and download single or multiple tracks, or to purchase the CD, click here.

Deadbeat Poets press release:
The Deadbeat Poets were formed in Youngstown, Ohio in the summer of 2006. The band consists of veteran Ohio musicians with eclectic credentials: Frank Secich (Blue Ash, Club Wow, Stiv Bators Band), Terry Hartman (Backdoor Men, Napoleon In Rags, Terry & The Tornadoes), Pete Drivere (Infidels, Pretty Demons) and John Koury (Infidels, Slackjaw). Their debut album (which was recorded over the first few months of 2007 at Youngstown's Ampreon Recorder) is now released on Pop Detective Records and is available online through Lost in the Grooves and MMG, and in Japan on Vivid Sound Records. Also, making guest appearances on the album are Bill "Cupid" Bartolin on guitar and Chris Leonardi on piano and organ.

Soon, you'll be able to sit back and relax (pop the top and set the sail) as the Deadbeat Poets take you on a timely journey. To such places…. romantic places like Beaver Falls (via Mahoningtown) you'll go. You'll travel to the exotic northside of Youngstown, Cleveland, the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, Toronto, Geneva-On-The-Lake, New York, LA, London, the far reaches of outer space, Paris, Mt. Pilot, The Bering Sea, St. Paul and of course Buffalo, NY. You'll meet fun lovin', sex-crazed aliens in "The Truth About Flying Saucers". You'll hear the tale of the legendary Ray Robinson who once roamed the dark, back-country roads of Western, PA in "The Green Man". You'll encounter semi-romantic mountain men and their passions in "Ernest T" and ride along with Stiv Bators as he once terrorized the western world in "The Stiv Bators Ghost Tour". You'll find out the connection between Ernest Hemmingway and Gertrude Stein and French bidets in "Where Was I When I Needed Me?" You'll raise glasses and bottles with the lads in "No Island Like The Mind, No Ship Like Beer" and be sadly disappointed by gangsters and thieves as "The Goody Wagon" never arrives. If floating in a psychedelic flutter is your inclination then "What Part Of Cognitive Dissonance Don't You Understand?" will probably be your cup of tea. Then again, you may find that after all of this …..well that "It's Nothing" to you. Then again, you may start getting "A Funny Little Feeling" that you will enjoy the Deadbeat Poets.

Blue Ash

Blue Ash is a Lost in the Grooves artist. Click to sample the music or purchase tracks from Around Again – A Collection of Rarities From the Vault 1972-1979. And keep an eye peeled to Frank Secich’s Blue Ash blog here at LITG for news, photos and insights straight from the band. This reissue (of a double CD first put out by the good folks at Not Lame) is just the start, as we’ll soon be digging deeper into the Blue Ash vaults for songs never before heard by fans.

Metal Mike Saunders provided this vintage record review for the Lost in the Grooves anthology:

Blue Ash No More, No Less (Mercury, 1973)

“I Remember A Time” could do for Blue Ash what “Mr. Tambourine Man” did for the Byrds: the start of a brilliant career, a Number One hit, instant mythology. The guitar intro lasts all of five seconds before Jimmy Kendzor and Frank Secich’s voices come in, oozing of everything the Byrds and Lovin’ Spoonful ever promised, the soaring harmonies in the chorus driving over jangling lead guitar work. It’s the sound of tomorrow right here today, it’s the perfect folk-rock single. It’s beautiful, that’s what.

This is one of the most spirited, powerful debuts ever from an American group. No More, No Less opens with “Have you Seen Her,” a fast rocker kicked off by four whomps on David Evans’ snare. This is the one that makes me think of The Who; the lead guitar is pure West Coast, though.

"Just Another Game” is the one quiet song, an effective tonedown before “I Remember A Time.” “Plain To See” is similar to “I Remember A Time” in the way its simple, compelling melody rocks out with vocal harmonies framed over a trebly Byrds guitar sound.

“Here We Go Again” follows, midway between the hardest and softest numbers on the first side. What’s great here are the group vocals on top of the tuff folk-rock cum hard rock instrumental sound; it’s like killing two birds with one stone, the whole premise behind the old and new Mod groups (Small Faces, early Who, the Sweet), not to mention the hard pop masterpiece known to the world as “Do Ya.”

By the time this album ends, there’s no doubt about it, Blue Ash have got themselves one hell of a debut LP that may send fellow stateside groups like Stories, the Raspberries, and Big Star running back to the woodshed to come up with music even better than their present stuff. (Mike Saunders)