People tend to be extremely nostalgic about the music they listened to when they were young. If you were a teenager in the 1960s, chances are that you loved garage rock, power pop, and bubblegum genres; and if you were young in the 1970s, you must swear by Michael Jackson’s albums.
Music is closely linked with memory and emotions. Unfortunately, a lot of old music has been lost with time. But now, many bands are striving to re-introduce this lost music to current youth.
Every retro revival begins with one band. But, a band with the skills, the swagger, and the stones to make their own name from scratch and lead in the next wave contains the power to change the landscape of the entire music industry. Hailing from the Sunshine State with a bright and sunny sound to match, The Cherry Drops may very well be such a band. In a world that’s unraveling the musical fabric, a band like The Cherry Drops is bringing the nostalgia of the harmonies and hooks lost decades ago.
The positive and happening effervescent sounds delivered by The Cherry Drops show that this band couldn’t care less about starting a trend. This band is fully committed to its own singular vision. In fact, The Cherry Drops don’t even care about being cool. For them, it’s all about being groovy. The band was formed in the summer of 2012. It is led by the lead vocalist and songwriter Vern Shank. Being an intellectual songwriter and singer, he combines all that he has absorbed from the garage rock, bubblegum, and power pop genre of the 60s and 70s musical mosaic and displays it back to us with a magnetic passion.
The Cherry Drops comprises of three more skillful minds along with Shank, namely Josh Cobb, Jamie Markowski, and Jimmy Mason. The band creates top-notch music today as a tribute to the power pop and garage rock genres of music. It gives the audience a particular vibe using fuzzed-out surf guitars, vintage Farfisa organs, striking California harmonies, and toe-tapping rhythms. The band doesn’t only attract those who were already there experiencing it in real-time but the youth as well. No matter how old one is, they can’t help but feel the “groovy kind of love” the band espouses.
The Cherry Drops call themselves a ‘retro power pop band’, and their beautifully composed albums confirm this tag. The band’s second album, Life is a Bowl of Cherry Drops is a wonderfully entertaining set of songs on which Steve Boone of The Lovin’ Spoonful helped the Southern California musicians on Sweet Lovin’ and Tony Valentino of The Standells on I Believe, I Believe. Then, to crown it all, this album’s overall garage pop/rock drift is epitomized by a cover of The Count Five’s timeless Psychotic Reaction featuring “The Mighty Manfred of The Woggles.”
The third album, Good to The Last Drop, was released in the winter of 2018, in which an array of guest stars joined them. This included Ron Dante of The Archies, Dennis Tufano of The Buckinghams, Mark Dawson of The Grass Roots, Steve Boone of The Lovin’ Spoonful, and the late Gary DeCarlo of Steam. The opening “Cherry Drops Theme” features pitch-perfect Beach Boys-styled harmonies. One More Try is a bouncy theme that hits all the right optimistic buttons with layered harmonies, guitars, and booming percussion. Tiger Feet is another toe-tapper, similar to The Bay City Rollers, that deserves its own custom dance moves.
The band’s first-ever released album, g, had the number one underground garage hit song, “Outta Sight,” and its second album, , gave the world its second underground garage hit song, “Far Out.” These songs received recognition after being praised by musician Van Zandt. Both these songs were featured on Little Steven’s Underground Garage, the syndicated radio show.
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Jeff Bleiel from Wilson Beach Radio said about The Cherry Drops:
“Mix up doses of power pop, bubblegum, garage rock, and sunshine pop, and the result is a refreshing band called The Cherry Drops. These Drops have the good taste to cover The Raspberries, The Sweet, and The Syndicate of Sound, as well as appropriate the theme to “Laverne & Shirley” into their punky original “Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated. And the Beach Boys-influenced “Summertime Is a State of Mind” was a great addition to our playlist on Wilson Beach Radio.”
The Cherry Drops has contributed so much to the music industry. The perfect combination of vocals and sound is loved by so many people, regardless of their age or generation.
