Sunday, April 5, 2020

THE PASSIONS - Lively One

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  1. THE PASSIONS - Lively One

    from: Lively One / You've Got Me Hurtin' (7", 45 RPM, Single)(1965)

    The Passions' "Lively One" was one such song liberated by Texas Punk From the Sixties. Raw, crude, sounding like an outtake from the first Rolling Stones album, "Lively One" oozed a certain quality that had been lost in the intervening 20 years. It was simple but somewhat dangerous sounding. The singer asks the listener in the first verse, "Don't I act crazy?" When he sings "dark-haired, dark-eyed," he pronounced "dark" in a way that no Texan has before or since. The point of the record was presumably to sound English, but they probably didn't fool many listeners.

    The most surprising thing about the Passions is that, unlike most garage bands of the era, they were not teenagers, but somewhat older men: lead singer and bassist Bill Galyon was 23 or 24 when he sang "Lively One," and the ages of the rest of the group at that time ranged from 20 to 25. They had been playing together as a band since around 1962, and it's likely that at least one member had played in '50s bands. The other members of the Passions were: Gordon Eatherly, Jr. (lead guitar), Bill Sheridan (rhythm guitar), Larry Jannasch (drums), and Jerry Mullins (harmonica). The group lived in the North Texas town of Sherman (population 24,988 in 1963), and played all over the area, as far away as Dallas (60 miles south of Sherman), and into Oklahoma. Photos of the group are known to exist, but none have surfaced. (High school yearbook photos of individual members will have to suffice.)

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