Frank Lee Sprague

[beatcomber]

I wanted to bring two wonderful albums to the attention of my fellow beat music fans: Frank Lee Sprague's "Merseybeat" and "Cavern".

FLS is one half of the Sprague Brothers group, two guys from West Texas who write and perform a top notch blend of '60s pop and '50s rockabilly. Merseybeat has always been an obvious ingredient in their musical stew, and Frank Lee has recently decided to pay tribute to that sound on two albums.

FLS describes this music as a a mixture of the Beatles and Bobby Fuller - in other words, British Beat filtered through his native West Texas.

Both albums feature some of the BEST Mersey-inspired songwriting I've heard in a LONG TIME. This is not a slavish recreation of 1963 - FLS takes the basic ingredients of Merseybeat and infuses it with his own personality, making for a fresh interpretation. His writing is clever (some very tasty chord progressions!) and warm, and his singing is superb - somewhere between Lennon's raunch and McCartney's sweetness.

Both albums have an endearing homemade quality about them. FLS played most of the instruments (he's a superb multi-instrumentalist) and it was recorded at his home in Wichita Falls, TX. The discs are mass-replicated CD-Rs (from one of those 2000-CDs-for-$2000 companies), and the cover art is amateurish at best. But the music contained inside is the real deal.

These discs are available from Amazon (with sound samples). You can read more about FLS at http://www.frankleesprague.com