Galapagos

  THE MUSIC

Galapagos

THE STORY

Way back in the mid 1970s I was a member of a band we called "Galapagos". It consisted of Craig Howard on lead guitar and vocals, Steve Szorady on bass, Chris Formela on Hammond organ and yours truly Peter Richardson on drums. Craig had this Leslie speaker he used on his guitar amp & could get this incredible high pitch sound on his guitar. That coupled with his playing that was reminiscent of a Jimi Hendrix style along with the great organ technique of Chris, and Steve's inventive bass I think we had a sound like no other.

Our repertoire consisted of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, April wine, Grand funk, among others. We also did several originals along the same vain.  

My brother-in-law David put us in touch with a salesman named Tony Burns from England who was looking for a band to record his music with. The record companies at the time weren't interested in single acts. It seems they all wanted another Hollies act or a Led Zeppelin. Forget it if you were a lone act.

We had a listen to some of Tony's songs and we were very impressed. Three in particular along with a fourth written by a friend of Tony's. Unfortunately I can't remember the friend's name. (Get in touch with me if you come across this. Sand Castles is a great song!!) After some extensive rehearsals we recorded a demo of the four songs and started to peddle them to some record companies. Most weren't interested as admittedly they did have a kind of dated English sound. But we felt that it was time to hear some more melodic type Rock& Roll as opposed to the heavy rock that was dominating the airwaves at the time. As it turns out we were about 5 years ahead of our time because it was in early 80s that new wave started to take hold. New wave was just a little bit harder sounding than the original UK Rock & Roll but not as hard as Led Zeppelin and such.

A couple of guys from Capitol Records said they liked what they heard & gave us 4 demo songs to learn. We listened to the 4 songs and couldn't understand why the record company wouldn't release them as is.

We thought they were great. Unfortunately we never even found out who it was that recorded them. (except one ..make that 2.. see note at the bottom) If anyone has information on these songs or artists please contact me here. Anyway these 2 A&R guys said they would check back with us in a few weeks. Needless to say we were delighted and set off to rehearse them.

After a few weeks they drove all the way to Hillsburgh where we rehearsed to hear our rendition of these 4 songs. Well, I guess we let them down because they were looking for a 'Hollies' sound. They actually came right out & asked us if we could sound more like the Hollies. Unfortunately that wasn't really what we wanted & I'm not sure if we could have pulled it off even if we wanted to.  So that was the end of that. Tony Burns disappeared & we haven't seen or heard from him since. Tony if you're out there please contact me here.  I'd love to hear from you.

That brings me to the reason for this little story.

I believe it's unfortunate that nobody has had the opportunity to hear any of those 8 songs. Four recorded by Galapagos featuring Tony burns, and the other four recorded by 4 different unknown artists. 

UNTIL NOW

Now for the first time all 8 of these song are available for listening and/or downloading. Just click on the links to left at the top of the page. The first 4 are the demos we recorded with Tony burns. The Capitol records demos by artists unknown are underneath the picture.

disclaimer:

If anybody has any reason why they do not want any of these songs to be available through this web site please contact me here
It is not my intention to infringe on any copyrighted material. I simply want to give people the opportunity to hear some very good music of which they have previously been deprived. These songs are close to thirty years old (they are now over 30 years old) & have never been heard. It is my belief that the owners & performers of any musical endeavour want their material heard otherwise why else would they write or perform it.  note: I actually did come across a single 45RPM of one of the Capitol Records demo songs (Sing A Song For Me) in a delete bin many years ago. It was actually written & recorded by one of  the 2 guys that gave us the songs.  I wish now that I had purchased it.  I have also recently learned that Ride Home Across The Mountain was written & sang by Karl Erikson & was eventually released in Australia on an LP by Karl entitled Karl Erikson I. Thanks Karl for that info.

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My music today

Updated Jan 2011