The Cyrkle was formed by guitarists and lead singers Don Dannemann and Tom Dawes (who also played bass guitar), and original drummer Jim Maiella, who all met while studying at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. With the addition of Earle Pickens on keyboards and Marty Fried on drums, they started out as a "frat rock" band called the Rhondells, but were later discovered and managed by Brian Epstein, who was best known as manager of the Beatles. Epstein found out about the band when his business partner, New York attorney Nathan Weiss, heard them in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on Labor Day of 1965, and on his recommendation Epstein became their manager and renamed them, as a reference to the circular roundabout known as Centre Square, located in downtown Easton, and John Lennon provided the unique spelling of their new name. In mid-1966, they opened on 14 dates for the Beatles during their US tour, and in August they were one of the opening acts prior to the Beatles performing at Dodger Stadium. The band are best known for their 1966 song 'Red Rubber Ball', which went to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, selling over one million copies, and being awarded a gold disc. The song was co-written by Paul Simon, with Bruce Woodley of the Seekers, and was released by Columbia Records. Later in 1966, the band had one more Top 20 hit, 'Turn-Down Day', which reached No. 16 in the pop charts. After the release of their debut album, 'Red Rubber Ball', they recorded a second album, 'Neon', in late 1966, and then they recorded the soundtrack to the film 'The Minx', although the film and its soundtrack were not released until 1969.
Instead of recording a third album, they spent the rest of 1967 and 1968 releasing various singles on Columbia Records, while CBS re-released 'Red Rubber Ball' to cash in. The band disbanded in mid-1968, and both Dawes and Dannemann became professional jingle writers, with Dawes writing the "plop plop fizz fizz" jingle for Alka-Seltzer, and Dannemann wrote jingles for Continental Airlines and Swanson Foods. Dawes produced two albums for the band Foghat, 'Rock & Roll' in 1973 and 'Energized' in 1974, and he co-wrote the song 'Wild Cherry' on the latter. Marty Fried left the music business to attend law school, and Earle Pickens became a surgeon in Gainesville, Florida. In the spring of 2014, the keyboardist of The Cyrkle, Mike Losekamp, joined a Columbus, Ohio-based band called The Gas Pump Jockeys, a regionally popular classic rock act performing in the Ohio region and neighbouring states. Following positive audience reaction to the inclusion of the two Cyrkle singles in the set, Losekamp contacted Dannemann, and together with Pat McLoughlin, Mike Rousculp , Don White, Scott Langley, and later Mike Shoaf, they reformed The Cyrkle, and recorded and released the band's third album 'Revival', which was released on the Big Stir label in 2024. However, what fans really wanted to hear was a third album by the 60's incarnation of the group, and so here is all the music that they recorded after the 'Neon' album and before 'The Minx' soundtrack, to make the third album that they should have released in 1968.
Track listing
01 Where Are You Going?
02 Red Chair Fade Away
03 Reading Her Paper
04 Penny Arcade
05 Turn Of The Century
06 Straighten Out My Messed Up Life
07 We Had A Good Thing Goin'
08 The Words
09 You Can't Go Home Again
10 Canaro
11 Friends
12 Downtown Blues
13 We Said Goodbye
