THE CHOIR
The Choir was a garage rock band largely active in the greater Cleveland area from the mid-1960’s into the early 1970’s. Originally called The Mods, their largest commercial success came with the release of their first single “It’s Cold Outside” in December 1966. The song, considered by many to be a classic of the garage rock era, was featured on Pebbles, Volume 2, one of the earlier garage rock compilation LPs (issued in 1979). The flipside, “I’m Going Home” was included as a bonus track when the Pebbles album was reissued as a CD, and it can also be found on Highs in the Mid-Sixties, Volume 9. The Choir is well known for containing three of the four original members of Raspberries (all except lead singer Eric Carmen). (More from Wikipedia)
After writing the article, I began to wonder whether Cyrus Erie had actually made any records; I certainly didn’t have any of them (unlike everyone else that I have written about). All I really knew about them was that they were one of the leading bands in Cleveland for a while; and that, when lead singer Eric Carmen left Cyrus Erie and essentially joined the Choir, the Raspberries were born. The story is more complicated than that actually; several of the bandmembers in the Choir were also in Cyrus Erie at one time or another.
A couple of years earlier, Dann Klawon had written the immortal song “It’s Cold Outside” by the Choir that you really shouldn’t miss either; that one is on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JndhLibASI&feature=related .
(February 2012)
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Cyrus Erie is an early band that Eric Carmen was in before he and several members of another Cleveland band the Choir put together the celebrated 1970’s power pop band the Raspberries. They evidently only ever released one single; this is the A side:
Here is a shot of the bandmembers in Cyrus Erie; Eric Carmen is second from the right. The gentleman in the middle, Wally Bryson was in both the Choir and the Raspberries:
(February 2013)
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After I got a copy of Choir Practice, the retrospective album by the Choir – which someone at a pre-blog bulletin board about the Raspberries told me about – I wrote up an article on that band. They are basically a predecessor band to the Raspberries, before Eric Carmen joined as the lead singer – in fact, Carmen had failed his original audition to join the Choir. Their song “It’s Cold Outside” is one of my favorite songs of that era; it was a big local hit but unaccountably never made much noise nationally. Read about them in Wikipedia at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Choir_(garage_band) .
(September 2013)
