MARK V

St. Petersburg, FL

In St. Petersburg, Florida around 1965 by just a group of high school buddies that wanted to play music.  I played bass, Chris Wells played lead guitar, Sammy Bond played rhythm guitar, Tom Stovall was the front man and occasional keyboard player and I don't remember the (original) drummer's name. We had several drummers over the time we were together but the one in the photograph is Donny Vosburgh. We sounded like the British bands of the time with a lot of harmonies. Of course, we were influenced by The Beatles, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Searchers, The Animals, and The Zombies. There were a lot of great bands around at that time in the St. Pete and Tampa Bay areas, including The Tropics, The Tempests, The Blues Image, and Iron Butterfly (Note: The Los Angeles band did spend time in Florida, and even appeared in the low budget film Musical Mutiny). Everyone loved the music--and cared only about the music--so much that we never thought of trying to make money at it. We used to play around and make a few bucks but that was never the driving force. There was rivalry, of course, but for the most part we all just dug each other and had a great time. We started out playing at a little youth place called Patritian Point. We played pretty much every weekend there. We also played at the high school a couple of times and parties around town at some people's houses. Later we started to play at Moose’s Showcase, which was at the Italian American Hall on the Southside. We got very popular there playing every weekend. A lot of the national acts like The Turtles, The Association and others played there as well and we were the opening act for them. We also played at the National Guard Armory on the Southside. We only went on one tour to Warner Robbins, Georgia.It was one show for one time. Wow..what a tour, huh? We used to go over and play some clubs in Cocoa Beach and that’s when we also played on the Cocoa Beach pier. There was a battle of the bands there one time and we won. The pier was where Ron Jon Surfboards got started. We were very good and probably could have gone on to do other things but we were young.  Most of the guys in the band wanted to go on to college after high school so that pretty much ended it all. I think I was the only one who didn’t go to college. I started playing in another band called Me And The Other Guys and subsequently got drafted into the army out of that band.

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