Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Electric Rugs


The Electric Rugs was our band. We recorded a lot, but only performed in public one time.
We formed in Spring of 1967. The Electric Rugs were Steve Ellett, Dennis McHaney, and Lance Russell (Jr.).
We recorded our first album in June 1967, titled Sergeat Pecker's Dirty Old Fart's Club Band. Poor quality copies of those tracks still exist.
Many of our early tunes consisted of popular songs of the day, re-written by us (mostly me) with trashy lyrics.
We had a lot of fun trashing the likes of Neil Diamond, The Monkees, The Rolling Stones, and many others. After about a year, Lance went off to school someplace, and in 1970 was replaced by Larry Coyne, a friend of mine from college.
The photo on the top is Steve and McHaney, calling themselves Salmon and Carbunkle, in February 1967. The photo below, from left to right, is Steve, Lance, and Dennis. I now weigh about three times more than I did in those pictures.

In the photo on the top, Steve is holding his first electric guitar, one of those Silvertone brands that came with an amp built into the guitar case. Those guitars are now very collectible (and valuable). In the mid seventies, Steve painted the thing puke green and covered the pick guard and edge with paisley wallpaper. I guess you could call that Steve's "Psychedelic period." I don't know if he kept that guitar all these years.

2 comments:

  1. Yea I remember that guitar of Steve's. I always thought that after he had painted it and added that paisley wallpaper that it vastly improved the guitar. He turned it into art and though I haven't laid eyes on it in decades, I venture to say that if it's around it's value is still quite high. It was very cool

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  2. I am Holly Ellett Troglen, his daughter. I haven't seen that guitar in years. His wife, Jeanne thinks it's in the attic. I hope so. I would hate to lose that piece of my dad.

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