The Lonely Crowd began as the Telstars band renamed. As we grew older, we became more ambitious, soul searching, and I started writing songs. The musical possibilities became exciting because of the great bands who were influencers: the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, James Taylor, Doobie Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Chicago, and so many others.
I was also now graduated from elementary to middle school, and as my brother and band mates got closer to college entry, the band name changed, and we also started to broaden the repertoire for college audiences. We took the band into Ultra Sonic Studios during my middle school days and recorded a 4 track demo of two songs. School was always a distraction for me as my head was thinking about the band and the songs. We just kept playing and were busy.
As I got ready for high shcool, my bandmates had started to drive, and were getting ready for college, and our choices became more diverse. In addition to playing parties, we gigged summers in the Catskills, at Long Island clubs and at the colleges of the band mates (NYU and Hofstra we played often). I was in high school living ahead of my years.
We became influenced by mind expanding experiences. Marijuana and hashish had become popular. My band mates and I spent memorable nights together, zoned out of our minds, watching a Beatles, Stones, or Doors live performance on TV, or listening to Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love or Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland - at top volume.
We found a great lead singer in Mark Abramowitz (Listen to Focus-Lonely Crowd). A dear high school pal and powerful rock drummer, Eddie Steinberg, joined on drums (Listen to Toe Hold-Lonely Crowd), and we added a Chicago-style horn section with Ronnie Breakstone on trumpet, Mark Packer on sax, and Joe Gold on trombone. I spent most of high school transcribing Chicago's first album and playing Chicago tunes note for note with high school pals. It was an exciting time for me hearing great music and being able to arrange for a larger ensemble and seeing how that worked. We recorded the Lonely Crowd at Ultra Sonic Studios with Michael Tapes producing.
LISTEN: Lonely Crowd on Soundcloud
Then High School ended and it was time to consider college and I entered Manhattan School of Music in NYC. I also found my way back into the recording studio as I left high school to record demos of original songs, thanks to the generority of drummer Michael Tapes, who had found a job working at Ultra Sonic Recording Studios, where Billy Joel had recorded his first album. And he would produce these recordings to polish up his recording engineer and production chops. Turned out Michael would become quite the name in studio boards and build some of the industry's best studio consoles.