I'm 57 now. Nobody independantly remembers me for that band. Something in a conversation has to trigger it and that happens quite seldom. But, every now and then, I'll get the "Wow, you were in that band?" line. Generally from people who about 7 to 9 years younger than I. We never thought of ourselves as psychedelic at the time. And yes, I was contacted by Gary Myers for his book about "recording groups" from Wisconsin in the 60s. Seeing the different responses he got from the members and manager, who was the brother of the girl in the group, for that book show that most of the bad feelings from that point in time never mended. I never saw Jane Little after she left the group even though she was married at that time to the drummer, who stayed for a while in the group. The other 2 players [ bass guitar and drums ] were brothers who were born in Germany and in the later 80s we made some connection again as I had learned to speak German from trips to Europe. I think Gary Myers' book is called "Do You Hear That Beat". I'll answer what I can but we really should get the bass player to post here. He was in the band from the inception while I joined after "Birthday" was released. This post is long enough already. Chris

Chris, thanks for responding... All interesting stuff... The part about not considering yourselves psychedelic makes sense, as in my ears only "Take Me, Break Me" has a real psychedelic feel to it... But, there were so many bands of that era who did dabble in the form...

Too bad about the "bad vibes" in the band,, but isn't that a story you hear in so many rock artist's history... I would imagine it is really hard to keep a core unit of a band together for a long period of time...


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Chris, do you know if Let There Be Light will be issued on cd?

It would be great to include some singles like "9 To 5 (Ain't My Bag)" as bonus tracks. I have heard a short version of "Take Me, Break Me" on internet radio.

I am sure nothing more will ever be done with that album. The short version of "Take Me, Break Me" was used as the flip side of one of the singles and that's why it exists. The US also recorded "Jesus Is Just Allright With Me" before the Doobies did it. The versions are not similar. I will PM you my email address. Chris

Wow I would like to hear some of this stuff also. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us on here who are enthralled with all things psychedelic . It must have been great to be a young guitarist in that scene back then.

I'm boosting this thread because I just got an email from another member of The Underground Sunshine and I asked him to come join us here at radiomute and perhaps answer some of the questions that have been already asked, and some more that others (including myself) may still have...


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As a follow up note here,, the guy who wrote a bulk of the Underground Sunshine's music has contacted me by email (thanks to the guitar player Chris Conner who posted earlier)... He has decided he doesn't want to participate here, but would answer my questions through email. So I sent him the unanswered questions from this thread.. I'll post his answers when I get them...


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Hey Syd! It's Chris Connors. I hope you get what you need from Bert. Chris

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Thanks Chris... I was surprised he didn't want to post the answers here.. Hopefully he will email me the answers...


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Bert from The Underground Sunshine just answered virtually all of the questions that were posted here in a email to me... Check this out,, some really fascinating insightful stuff:


The guitar riff was originally intended to be my bass line but after some
thought I decided that it would serve better on the guitar as an answer to
the bass line of a couple of measures before. It worked very well, I think.
During one of our few practice sessions with Chris, who at the time was
brand new to the group, I actually hummed the riff over and over until Chris
got the exact feel that I wanted.

The organ part was dictated to Jane by Chris.(She was a great technician on
the piano and organ, but had little imagination and pretty much required
written music in front of her and Chris had done an organ -bar gig in
brookfield, Wi. for a short while and had a good imagination.)

The so called Silly Dilly spoken word (as someone once called it) was
inspired by other Silly Dilly spoken words by Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison
(Father I want to kill you... Mother I want to...(followed by a scream), and
Burton Cumming's thirteen steps spoken word off, I believe, their first
album.
Album.... that brings up an interesting fact. I believe we hold
the World Record for the fastest album ever recorded. From start (unloading
equipment into the studio), recording the album, to finish (loading
everything back into the truck) we did this in 4 - 7hr.Sessions. 28 hrs.
total

We went in, set up and played each song live, overdubbed the vocals and
sometimes Chris' lead and that was it. Mixing was done on the spot with no
post production at all.The record company wanted an album NOW and they
didn't care what was on it. That's why there were so many cover tunes. I had
five more songs in my "Originals" repertoire that within a couple of weeks
could have had ready for the studio, but our So-called producer didn't care.
(long, long sad story)

That famous "wo" you're talking about was me backing away from the mic
preparing for one of my screams and at the very last milisecond I decided
the a simple "wo" would have as strong of an impact, so "wo" came out
instead.

How did we land the record contract. We, as a trio,(Me, My brother Frank,
and Rex as the "Entrance To Sound") were in
the studio once before we decided to go with "Birthday".(many changes
happend between the two, but that's another couple of chapters). Anyway, we
went to Milwaukee and spent $400.00 on a producer(Tom Gress) and a little
more for studio time. "Birthday" & "All I Want Is You",(the flip side) were
recorded, mixed and sent in for pressing in one
4 hr. session. While it was still on tape, we took it to WSPT in Stevens
Point, WI and asked them to play it and they did.(WSPT was one of several
stations in the country, at that time, that Bill Gavins (The Gavins Sheet)
listened to and he gave it a Bullet which landed it on Billboard and we took
the first (really stupid) offer that our mis-manager advised us to take.
( I later learned from an A&R person that several labels were interested)
The book, The Book.... There should be a Book.

Anywho, I hope I've answered your questions to your liking. Bert

(If you want, you may post this)



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