Kit Kats

Biography

The Package Kats had several big hits within the Philadelphia area within the mid- to later ’60s, and were also an extremely popular live attraction, but hardly ever broke out nationally, although some of their singles nibbled at Billboard’s Hot 100. The quartet acquired a distinctly Philadelphian mixture of the vintage and the existing, with materials (much compiled by keyboardist Karl Hausman and drummer Package Stewart) that blended doo wop, ’50s rock and roll and spirit oldies, and ’60s industrial pop/rock and roll. Their harmonies had been in a group using the Four Periods, the Happenings, the Tokens, and, even more distantly, the Zombies, and sunlight pop from the Seaside Boys as well as the Association. These were not only another throwback ’60s white vocal group, such as for example Jay & the Us citizens as well as the Vogues. They performed their own equipment, using a traditional/Baroque tinge with their keyboard-dominated agreements that could get them to sound like a far more pop-oriented, minor-league counterpart left Banke as well as the Zombies. Like those groupings, that they had a business lead vocalist (John Bradley) with a higher, sensitive range, although Bradley proceeded to go into falsetto a lot more compared to the Zombies or Still left Banke did. Even though some of the recordings had been pedestrian period pop, their finest ones got an ambitious difficulty, though their innocuous name and square, clean-cut picture guaranteed that listeners of that time period, and historic critics, have mainly forgotten and undervalued their function. The Package Kats do some documenting for Virtue, Laurie, and Yard in 1963 and 1964. They didn’t strike their stride, nevertheless, until linking up with Jamie and focusing on unique material. “That is the Method” and “Let’s Obtain Lost on the Country Street” had been big regional strikes for the group in 1966, the second option making quantity 119 for the Billboard graphs. The records got a large, orchestral creation, with impeccable high harmonies and quasi-classical keyboards, and had been slashes above the degrees of most locally targeted produces. But, although Jamie got got numerous national strikes before, the singles didn’t use nationally. Nor do the group, who have been making big money as regional concert sights — probably additional money, indeed, when compared to a lot of organizations with international strikes had been — and weren’t pressing for national publicity as hard because they might have. The group continuing to record singles, and a handful of albums, for Jamie through the entire remaining ’60s, changing their name to New Wish in 1969. As New Wish, their 1969 solitary “Won’t Find MUCH BETTER THAN Me” — among their most powerful self-penned numbers, that they acquired already released double under the Package Kats’ name for Jamie — became the closest matter they had to some national hit, achieving amount 57. As New Wish they did several singles and an record, shifting to Paramount for just one one in 1971. Although there have been hints through the entire Package Kats/New Wish recordings on Jamie which the musicians were smart and creative more than enough to contend on an increased level than AM pop, they eventually weren’t hip or ambitious more than enough to discover a niche within the album-oriented rock marketplace, and disbanded in 1974.

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