gear into my dad’s 1957 Chrysler, and Mike Borch’s Ford station wagon, we excitedly set out for the recording studio early one crisp Saturday morning.
We were mesmerized as we walked into the quiet, professional confines of MBS. Expensive German microphones were gathered in the corner at the ready, and, man, were we ready! We cut those two tracks efficiently, and even talked my dad into providing the jangly tambourine part on “Like It or Lump It.” My dad was beaming as he rested his arm on the grand piano and played the tambourine part. This was his first time ever in a recording studio and he was lit from within.
As we packed our equipment back up, after what we considered a successful session, the engineer left the control room and sheepishly approached us with an ashen expression on his face. It looked like bad news. “Boys, I hate to tell you this, but we have to do your two songs all over again. We stretched the tape.”
At first, we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. We kept playing those words over and over in our minds: “stretched the tape”! We set our gear back up so that we could try to recapture the magic all over again. Back in the day, apparently, it wasn’t uncommon to stretch the tape because it was much more elastic than the more durable modern tape that would be used years later.
When the discs finally arrived, we were giddy with excitement. We had even created our own record label, Epitome Records—of course everyone called it Epi-tome!—but we were so consumed with this new recording that the following fact didn’t really seem to upset us: Each and every one of our names was misspelled under the printed song titles! “Millias,” “Peter ik,” and “Broche” instead of “Millas,” “Peterik,” and “Borch.” (There must be some guy hired to mess up the lettering on every band’s first release.) Fortunately, though, these recordings, which were available after every sock hop, sold like hotcakes. In fact, it looked like we would have to reorder soon!
But the best was soon to come. One sunny Saturday morning, I got a call from Larry, whose voice trembled with excitement. He could barely get out the words.
“My mom got us an appointment at Mercury Records! They want to hear our forty-five!”
Anne Millas was an exotic-looking woman of northern Italian descent with a beehive hairdo and dark, flashing eyes. Today you’d call her a diva. She looked and held herself like a movie star complete with a confident air that could sell ice to the Eskimos. Because of Doc Millas’s thriving practice, Anne was always dressed to the nines—even at noon.
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