The Stained Glass - Dollar Sign Friends (1967)

In 1964 guitarist Roger Hedge joined up with bass player Jim McPherson, guitarist Bob Rominger, and drummer Dennis Carrasco to form The Trolls. All four members were vocalists, and, for its time, the group had an impressive vocal capability, which no only enabled them to sing accurate covers, but to create unique and melodic vocal arrangements on original material, setting them apart from most of their competition. Hedge put the group together, invested personal funds for equipment and promotion, and was the leader and business manager for the first couple of years, while they performed in and around the San Jose area, self-releasing a single, 'Walkin' Shoes', which sold out in a matter of weeks in San Jose. By the end of 1966 they had been snapped up by RCA Records, and they started writing their own material for their future recordings. It was mostly written by McPherson, with some written by Hedge, some by Rominger, and with Carrasco co-writing a few, and the songs were partially a mixture of rock, folk, blues, and Merseybeat, but had a distinctive original sound. The band decided that they needed a change of name, and so chose The Stained Glass Window, but they felt is was a but cumbersome, and so when a mistake on some paperwork left off the word 'Window', they accepted it and became The Stained Glass. RCA had them record a Beatles tune, 'If I Needed Someone', which they hoped would not be released by the Beatles in the US, and the record got enough play in late 1966 to justify a short tour of the East Coast a while later, with the group playing a few gigs, and doing some recording at the RCA studios in New York City. However, The Beatles did release the track on their own album, 'Yesterday And Today' which slowed the sales of the Stained Glass version. 

When The band entered the studios in February 1967, they realized what being signed to a record company entailed, as RCA wanted them to record songs by other songwriters. None of them were suitable, but  then they hit upon 'We Got A Long Way To Go', which was penned by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and which was totally different to the type of songs the group usually recorded. During recording, effects were used to create feedback and sustain which was very different from previous singles, giving it a psychedelic sound, as pop and rock combine on a hook-laden track which The Stained Glass hoped would be their breakthrough single. Unfortunately the record wasn't the hit that they'd hoped, and more turmoil hit the group later that year, when Hedge was asked to leave the band due to differences in musical direction, and in the Spring of 1968 their recording contract was taken over by Capitol Records. They released three singles for the label, one of which was the non-album song 'Lady In Lace' written by McPherson and backed by 'Soap And Turkey (On A Pyramid)', written by Rominger. An LP, 'Crazy Horse Roads', was released in 1968, and had some controversial album art, in what appeared to be a photograph of the three of them all hanging by the neck from the branch of a tall tree. In 1969, Rominger left and was replaced by Tom Bryant, and a second album, 'Aurora', was recorded by the new line-up, but it didn't sell any better than the first one, and despite positive critical reviews, neither the singles nor the albums made any commercial impact, and the group disbanded in November 1969. Before the upheaval in 1968, when Hedge was removed and they lost their RCA contact, the band were often to be found in the recording studio, and they had taped enough material by the end of 1967 to release an album featuring their original line-up, which could have capitalised on the success of the 'We Got A Long Way To Go' single, but it wasn't to be, and so they became another in a long line of lost and forgotten late 60's pop bands. To remind us of what could have been, here is what that 1967 debut album could have sounded like.  

Track listing

01 We Got A Long Way To Go
02 Broken Man
03 If I Needed Someone
04 Inside Ouch
05 Too Fit To Be Tied
06 A Scene In-Between
07 Revenge Is Sweet
08 Mediocre Me
09 Lonely Am I
10 My Buddy Sin
11 Second Day
12 Dollar Sign Friends
13 Bubble Machine
14 Mr Martyr