The Galaxies IV : Trenton, New Jersey’s ’60’s Garage-Accordion Kings

The Galaxies IV were some Catholic school boys who formed a garage-band and made a few records, some of which rock, including this one, “Let Me Hear You Say Yeah!” and the next, “Piccadilly Circus” (which is a cover of the Stones’ “2120 South Michigan Avenue.”)

“Let Me Hear You Say Yeah!” with footage of their “house band” gig at the New York World’s Fair, which got them written up in the New York Times and Readers’ Digest and stuff.

“Piccadilly Circus” (which is a cover of the Stones’ “2120 South Michigan Avenue.”)
Psychadelic jamming man! Dig that volume-pedal action on the organ/cordovox/whatever he’s got there. Pretty awesome.

They later changed their name to the much more hip, “Alexander Rabbit.” Ahem. And the band members unfortunately get to tell the story of how their manager turned down the offer for them to play upstate at Woodstock. Not sure what else they were doing that weekend, but ouch.

Please check out Charles Brodowicz on the Cordovox organ/accordion. The Cordovox (or other similar brands’ Electravox, Elkavox, Transivox etc) was an attempt to bring the accordion into modern music by taking an electric organ and cramming it inside a full-size, already heavy standard accordion. Ridiculous, and an abject failure. There was a brief period though from around 1963-4 when some early rock groups had these in their bands. After that everybody wised up and just got an electric organ or whatever. Still, cool to see the squeezebox rockin’. If they’d figured out how to make the accordion light enough and loud enough, rock could have looked different!

Here’s a Cordovox, I’d love to see inside.

 

I think early models had vacuum tubes!  Then there was a huge cable that went to a huge “tone-generator” the size of a giant bass amp, which was then attached to another giant box which was the actual speaker/amp.  Absurd.

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