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The Pinkerton Colours
Strange Things / Girl by the Bay - 7"
Forte - 1968
Michael Panontin
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The Pinkerton Colours released just one middling forty-five in their brief existence. That record, the vaguely psychedelic 'Strange Thing' with its whirling organ and searing guitar, seems to be pretty well forgotten these days, even in their hometown of Niagara Falls. The group merit barely a minute in The Big Story of Small Potatoes, Paul Miil's otherwise informative doc on the area's sixties and seventies music scene. And for all the disc's rarity, a near-mint copy can still be had for about fifty bucks.
As Miil informs us, the Pinkerton Colours formed in 1967 as a five-piece around singer Jerry Salfi and guitarists Frank Ahman and Rick Peel, with bassist Paul McKimmie and drummer Doug Lauder holding up the rhythm end of things. (McKimmie and Lauder were eventually replaced by Brian Billing and Rob Monroe, respectively.) Astute collectors will note the similarity here to those one-hit wonders, Pinkerton's Assorted Colours, whose song 'Mirror, Mirror' was released in Canada in March of 1966. And in fact, the band did indeed cull their name from those obscure Brits, though as Monroe tells us in the film, "We kind of voted on names...and I was outvoted on the choice of it."
The boys, it would appear, were more than just your average run-of-the-mill teenage hacks, having enlisted the services of a manager, an agent and even a public relations firm. Still, for a record issued on the Grand Rapids (MI)-based Forte label, home to Iggy Pop's first band the Iguanas, 'Strange Thing' seems to have gotten very little traction on the charts of the day. But perhaps the greatest injustice comes from Monroe himself. "We went down to Michigan and signed a contract and we did a 45. And I believe WKBW radio [in Buffalo] may have played it once or twice. Actually, CHOW [in Welland, ON] played it more than once or twice, but to this day I don't know why."
Ouch.
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