Rich here to continue my "Not The Beatles" post.
It was 1984, and I was flipping through the stacks of vinyl in my favorite record store, Second Time Around Records, which, in addition to being a great used record store, was one of the only places at the time in Wichita, Kansas, that you could find punk and new wave records, hard-to-find British and Australian/New Zealand alternative bands, and releases on indie labels.
Among all the artsy record covers featuring cutting-edge graphics and art, I spied a fairly nondescript LP featuring a very simple photograph of four somewhat nerdy looking guys on the cover of an album entitled "Beat Music.
A light bulb went off in my head. "Beat Music!" -- that was the label that the British Rock Press of the time had attached to the sounds emanating from the Cavern Club in Liverpool back in 1963.
Taking a chance, I plunked down my Seven Dollars and took the record home to discover joyful, rocking, catchy beat music by a Beatles soundalike band with the unwieldy name of The Spongetones. Maybe they weren't The Beatles, and they weren't from Liverpool -- they were four college boys from North Carolina -- but if their record had been released in 1964 instead of 1982, it would have easily shared the Top 10 alongside the best bands of the British Invasion.
A few years after "Beat Music" was released, The Spongetones bundled that album with their follow-up EP, "Torn Apart," to create the CD "Beat & Torn," which I would present as evidence that it could justifiably be called "The Second Album" The Beatles should have made.
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