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 Cherry
Town-Historical Facts
Back in 1967,
Sergeant Pepper shook the foundation of rock music. The Laymen
(the band's name in the early years), profoundly effected by PEPPER,
decided they should create rather than mimic, like other bands of the
day. Rearranging popular songs continued, but it didn't evoke
the thrill it once did. Leader Jack Eadon wrote songs that addressed
fears and beliefs of teens of the sixties: from drugs to conformity
to love to ambition. It would become the band's first concept project:
amateurish in musicianship; sophisticated in poetics.
Background
In
three days, Eadon scribbled the basis for a set of songs
that described a place in the clouds he called CHERRY
TOWN. The town sat aside Lilly Lime Lagoon which produced
a lime-colored mist that hung in the air, distracting
inhabitants from completing important tasks in life. The
songs described the individual struggles of the citizens;
then, how they were finally resolved.
For a young band, the project was far too ambitious. The
metaphorical lyrics tackled subjects important in
their lives at that time: the pressures of conformity,
the emergence of the drug culture and the struggles
associated with entering adulthood. But their naivete
pushed them to record the album in Dave Skipton's
basement on an amateur tape recorder.
Today only a few copies of the title song Cherry Town remain:
one an acetate; another, one of 150 vinyl pressings. That song, the
band's first recording and the introductory track on the ENCORE! CD,
sounds amateurish, but is included on the CD for its historical significance.
It is the first of a string of recordings the band made between 1968
and 1972.
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