Purple Majesty / In This Day And Age (7″ Vinyl)

Description

7″ Vinyl / 45RPM Single

Purple transparent vinyl

1967/US

Format: 7″ Vinyl

#Ref: 45-177

Release date: 2013

Release notes

Mickey Leigh’s 1967 garage band produced by 15 year old Joey Ramone! Taken from the only surviving (very crude) acetate!

IN 1967, 15-YEAR-OLD Jeff Hyman of Queens, New York was nearly a decade away from inventing punk rock as Joey Ramone. He was already making records. In the late winter of that year, he made an irresistible offer to a neighborhood psychedelic trio, Purple Majesty: He would take them into a proper studio and produce a single. The band – singer-guitarist Doug Scott, drummer Andy Ritter and Joey’s younger brother, bassist Mickey Leigh, all barely 13 but writing their own tunes – jumped at the chance. Joey and Purple Majesty cut two songs, a group original called “In This Day and Age” and a version of the Blues Project‘s “I Can’t Keep From Crying,” at Sanders Recording Studios on West 48th Street.

46 years later, that single has finally come out. Lost-wild-rock specialists Norton Records have issued Purple Majesty’s Joey-produced debut with lavish, if belated class: on purple vinyl with a picture sleeve. The label has done its best with the subway-tunnel fidelity, dubbing from the only surviving acetate, which Scott found lurking in an old Beach Boys album cover. Musically, beware: Purple Majesty were kids, at a time when School of Rock was a euphemism for geology class. Scott’s solo on “In This Day and Age” is impressive, though, by the lopsided-grading standards of obscure garage-nugget collecting. The Blues Project song is evidence of a precocious hipness too; the original had only come out a few months earlier.

Tracklisting

A. In This Day And Age
B. I Can’t Keep From Crying