  During the early 1960s, it was ‘the norm’ for highschool garage bands to swap members, and Edmonton was no different. Gary Frizzell first aligned himself with one of the city’s top gigging highschool groups, The Shame Trees.They played the local dances and did the gravel road tours throughout central Alberta, and even tried on one occasion to get Stateside, but at least one of the members was still underage at the time. They cut the 45 “Junior Saw It Happen” b/w “My Little Buttercup” on Quality Records, but Frizzell ended up abandoning that project. The lineup now was Frizzell on vocals and some more school chums – guitarist Henry Lalliberte, Al Wilson (ex CHED Marauders) on keyboards, bassist Doug Policha, and drummer Leonard Saidman. Changing their name to Sons of Adam, they continued working the Alberta circuit. Their big break came in the fall of 1966 when Gary Paxton of Pentacle Records (one of several labels he owned out of his Bakersfield International studio) agreed to record the band for free. But it wasn’t long before Ede was replaced with Davy Peters, and like so many other Alberta groups looking for somewhere to record (Wes Dakus & The Rebels, Barry Allen, Gainsborough Gallery, Southbound Freeway, etc), Paxton took them to Clovis, New Mexico to work with Norman Pettis. The 45 “Thinking Animal” b/w “My Petite” was released on Pentacle, and ads in KRLA Beat (a magazine put out by one of LA’s top radio stations) were even taken out, leading to a couple of jaunts to California as the song made it to #13 on the local LA charts. A second single – “I Need Love” b/w “Brown Eyed Woman,” was on the shelves in the spring of ’68. Like its predecessor, it was written by Wilson and Lalliberte, but unlike the first single, this one didn’t get nearly as much attention, with more focus on guitar fuzz boxes than their poppier sounding success a year earler. But by early 1970 their flame fizzled out, and everyone either went on to other projects (after staying in LA or going home to Edmonton), or got out of the business all together. “I Need Love” would resurface in the early ’80s on a couple of compliation albums. With notes from Ivan Amirault, Chris Bishop, Michael Panontin, Leonard Saidman, Token Hippie, Al Wilson. |