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| Fuckers would tangle up if you so much as looked at 'em... |
The Hit
During high school, and before developing an operating record store M.O., I picked up the odd impulse-buy cassette tape at local gas stations. If I recognized enough of the artists and had about $5 left after buying gas (and probably junk food), I'd get about a month's worth of "fresh-to-me" music out of the good ones (the Dutch imports, though; jesus christ). The education as to what’s what came from classic rock radio and, at some damn point, the Freedom Rock compilation they sold on late-night TV.
I stumbled into The American Breed’s “Bend Me, Shape Me” on a gas station cassettes, apparently. It’s a good late 60s pop tune (1968), nice (literally) galloping rhythm, nice layering of horns over guitars, etc. – and I swear I’ve heard recordings where they really juiced the rhythm parts (or my speakers just sucked and/or accidentally improved on the original). The American Breed neither wrote the song nor recorded it first: the writing team of Scott English and Larry Weiss wrote it, while a guy named Bill Traut (who has another cameo later) graced it with those horns. An all-female band called The Shape got first crack it at (can't find that, so here are The Models doing it), but it was another act – The Outsiders (of “Time Won’t Let Me” fame) – who had the best shot at knicking it out from under The American Breed.
The Rest of the Story
During high school, and before developing an operating record store M.O., I picked up the odd impulse-buy cassette tape at local gas stations. If I recognized enough of the artists and had about $5 left after buying gas (and probably junk food), I'd get about a month's worth of "fresh-to-me" music out of the good ones (the Dutch imports, though; jesus christ). The education as to what’s what came from classic rock radio and, at some damn point, the Freedom Rock compilation they sold on late-night TV.
I stumbled into The American Breed’s “Bend Me, Shape Me” on a gas station cassettes, apparently. It’s a good late 60s pop tune (1968), nice (literally) galloping rhythm, nice layering of horns over guitars, etc. – and I swear I’ve heard recordings where they really juiced the rhythm parts (or my speakers just sucked and/or accidentally improved on the original). The American Breed neither wrote the song nor recorded it first: the writing team of Scott English and Larry Weiss wrote it, while a guy named Bill Traut (who has another cameo later) graced it with those horns. An all-female band called The Shape got first crack it at (can't find that, so here are The Models doing it), but it was another act – The Outsiders (of “Time Won’t Let Me” fame) – who had the best shot at knicking it out from under The American Breed.
The Rest of the Story
The kindest and rudest thing I can say about The American Breed is that key members got sidetracked making commercial jingles (and quite a few of them, and in The Bigs – e.g, writing/singing for Coca Cola and American Airlines) during the band’s hey-day. That these guys knew their way around a song well enough to turn that into a day job is the kind side; the rude side comes with a sneer at the commercialism of the overall project (yeah, I like the “artistes”) and they fact they didn’t write their biggest hits. (Don’t worry, the bona fides come later.)
