Artist: Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders
LP: The Game of Love
I guess there were probably dozens of handsome young male quartets forming in Britain in the mid-1960s, each hoping to catch some tailwind from the fab four's outer-space rocket ship. Here's one of them. Wayne Fontana and his Mindbenders did catch a little wind—"Game of Love" was a #1 hit in the USA—but I think it's safe to say Wayne Fontana is not a household name today. He did once set a police car on fire with a policeman still inside it. That was eleven years ago. In 1965 he up and left The Mindbenders in the middle of one of their concerts. The group continued on with Eric Stewart at the mic and they scored another top ten hit.
"The Game of Love" is one of only two records I picked up at Lakeshore Record Exchange in Rochester—the other was an old Johnny Cash LP. The Record Exchange is situated not on the shore of a lake, but in a trendy little nook of the city, with sidewalk cafes and such. The store seems more focused on 'new and cool' and not as much on 'interesting.' When I asked the salesmen to play samples for me from this Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders record, they had to interrupt the loud contemporary noise-rock they were listening to in the store. I definitely felt like I was cramping everyone's style. But they were still nice about it.
Someone named Julie evidently once owned this copy of "The Game of Love." She vandalized the back of it with notes proclaiming her affection for a John and a Frank—though Frank seems to have been her #1 priority.
[ Lakeshore Record Exchange — Rochester, NY ]
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