martinwilbury

I'm sure your right. I just remember thinking it was probably the least commercial song of the 3.

The referenced songs were all Cyrus Erie studio demos. Only Sparrow became a released 45. My recollection is that Sparrow and The Painter were recorded in Spring of '68. This version of Sparrow sounds nothing like the 45 released by Epic. Although Get the Message was played live, it was never recorded until the band got to Epic and the producers wanted a weak B-side for their version of Sparrow. I'm pretty sure that only 3 songs ... Wish You Were Here (Wally song), Cindy In The Wind (Eric song), and I Need Your Lovin' (Eric song) ... were recorded in late-Summer or Fall of '68.

Truly one of the greats who was, also, from (as in born, raised, and started career) the Cleveland area.

Difficult topic ... it looks like most of the ground has been covered ... might want to bring in Leonard Bernstein to do arranging. As an aside, I seem to recall that Hal Blaine (Wrecking Crew - "Be My Baby") was the drummer in one of Eric's sessions during the brief time he was a solo artist on Epic between Cyrus Erie and Raspberries.

Since its Christmas ... this photo is actually from a Christmas party. It was at Wally's house in 1971 or, maybe, '72. Eric, Jim & Dave are obvious in the picture but Wally (standing about where the photographer was) was busy distributing the presents that had been stacked under the tree behind him. Regarding the black turtleneck that Eric is wearing ... it was actually a holdover from Sounds of Silence and was part of an alternate band outfit for when we didn't want to wear ties (see the 'Live At Brush High School' outfits). Unless Eric jumps in, that's about as accurate a description as you're going to get because that's me sitting on the floor behind Dave and that's all I can remember at the moment. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!

Truly the end of an era. Although I haven't posted often, I've continued to check and see what's up. My thanks and appreciation to Bernie for the love and effort he's always put into this site. May your life be good.

I was researching Hofner's and this popped up in Google. Regarding the photograph ... it is faded. Wally only owned 1 'V' and it is/was black. The guitar Dave is playing was black (It was mine and I lent it to him). Eric's bass was way darker (the outer edge of the sunburst was a really dark brown).

Queen II (where they had their own time in the studio to do what the wanted) surpassed Queen (where they were recording in unbooked, after hours studio time) and is considered by some to be Queen's best album.

It occurs to me that we should not be too hard on this production. (1) The production values and technology between a 1970's top 40 record and a 2016's television show are somewhat different. (2) Probably MOST IMPORTANT is that the writers and producers of Vinyl appear to be acknowledging Raspberries place in musical history. I think we should applaud the effort.

It occurs to me that we should not be too hard on this production. (1) The production values and technology between a 1970's top 40 record and a 2016's television show are somewhat different. (2) Probably MOST IMPORTANT is that the writers and producers of Vinyl appear to be acknowledging Raspberries place in musical history. I think we should applaud the effort.

Good comment by Bernie. Wally can be disarmingly complex and difficult to cover. Other people can play his stuff but it just isn't the same (sort of like covering Jimi Hendrix ... you can play it but it doesn't really sound like Hendrix - aside, I'm not comparing Wally to Hendrix or vice versa - two completely different entitiies).

I like the Leo Sayer concept ... I don't usually comment on this stuff but I thought a studio produced cover was pretty interesting. My initial senses/observations are: (1) Ruess did a pretty good job of covering Eric's phrasing and intonation (Eric can be difficult to sing). (2) Production methods and values may be the cause but the instrumental lacks the urgency conveyed in the original. (3) Other than Ruess' vocal, they completely missed the boat (no pun intended) on the bridge. The 'muted' flag pattern on guitar lost the hyped up sense of urgency in the original,

A final note ... 'Nights in White Satin' was dropped from Raspberries' repertoire when John Aleksic left and the band played 3-man until David S. joined

PART 2 of the, sort of, ‘Nights in White Satin’ saga (rounded out with some minor digressions) … Fast forward … when talking about material at Raspberries’ inception, the discussions went something like this … Can’t transfer any of the Cyrus Erie material or Raspberries becomes “Son of Cyrus Erie”. How about the Beatles? Can’t do the Abbey Road medley ... but, if you think of the record industry in terms of a cycle … you get updated, improved covers of earlier material together with new songs approximately every 8 years. Think of it in terms of Frank Sinatra circa 1948, Elvis circa 1956, and Beatles circa 1964 … a new cycle might surface around 1972 … hmmm. In the end, the only Cyrus Erie song (that they were playing when they disbanded) to make it into Raspberries was ‘Nights in White Satin’. The instrumentation was the same, Wally sang lead, and Eric, Jim B., and John Aleksic (original bass player) sang backup. There’s a Raspberries antidote pertaining to ‘Nights in White Satin’ (referenced by Jim B. when he and Eric were doing an interview at the inception of the reunion … Eric was talking about early Raspberries venues and material and Jim chimes in with “… and Nights in White Satin”). VERY early (before Raspberries started playing at the Agora) they did a show at the Plato. Both the Agora and the Plato were large, college venues that served alcohol, which was a change from the Hullabaloo venues. In addition, while people in the Hullabaloo venues knew of and would recognize members of Raspberries, at the Agora and Plato the band members were virtually unknown (eg: neither the band or the audience knew what to expect). So … Raspberries played its set in this uncharted venue and closed with ‘Nights in White Satin’. At the end of the song there was dead silence (I mean REALLY dead, you could hear a pin drop, silence) and the band started thinking, “uh, oh … ” at which point the entire room erupted into a rather lengthy period of applause, cheers and whistles. Then, as the band was leaving the stage, Jim (in his typical low key fashion) said, “That seemed to go well.”

I just saw this topic and thought I’d provide some context … PART 1 of the, sort of, ‘Nights in White Satin’ saga (rounded out with some minor digressions) … In early to mid-1968 someone brought the single of ‘Nights in White Satin’ to a Cyrus Erie rehearsal and said, “We should figure out how to do this.” LOTS of laughter. Subsequently, the band figured out how to do ‘Tuesday Afternoon’ and then it was a short leap to playing ‘Nights in White Satin’. On the two (2) Moody Blues songs, Wally sang lead and Eric, Michael McBride, and Bob McBride sang backup. Eric used a mini-Farfisa organ (on top of the piano) with an Echoplex (a small box with a loop of recording tape that you could set the interval of time between the recording and automatic playback) for the string parts and the flute solo. No one outside the band would believe that there was such a simple setup for the strings and flute so Dan Ladanyi (Manager) put together a small box with colored lights and switches (that did absolutely nothing but turn the colored lights on and off). When it came time to do the strings or flute, Eric would kick a couple switches and the colored lights would flash and interested people in the audience would go, “Ooh, yeah … a Mellotron”. Cyrus Erie opened a Jeff Back Group show (the Group included Rod Stewart and Ron Wood) and Jeff Beck did make the comment that Cyrus Erie played ‘Nights in White Satin’ better that the Moody Blues. People would actually come to see Cyrus Erie just to hear them play the Moody Blues songs, the Who and Small Faces medley’s, the Abbey Road medley, and ‘Tin Soldier’.