Phil Basile, owner of Long Island's Action House, differed in his opinion about the "trippy" sounds of the Pigeons and other bands experimenting in similar ways. In some cases, the band was thrown out into the street midway through a set. Some club owners and managers weren't impressed with what was, to their ears, the destruction of perfectly good music bookings were suddenly harder to come by. With Felix Cavaliere's organ workouts at the core of Rascals recordings, it encouraged Stein, Bogert and company to try the same approach, building each song around Stein's classically-inspired keyboard intros and musical bridges, resulting in much longer finished takes than were typical at the time. The Pigeons were particularly impressed with The Young Rascals, who in early '66 had amped up The Olympics' soul hit of a year earlier, "Good Lovin'," and topped the charts. The Pigeons plied their brand of rocking soul in various clubs ( Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and the stars of Motown among the artists whose work they often performed), finding steady work on Long Island where The Vagrants, having the same predisposition for R&B, had made some local impact the bands became friends and friendly rivals. As the band's experience widened, Brennan drifted away and was replaced around the end of 1966 by Brooklyn-born Carmine Appice, one serious percussion man who'd grown up emulating the greats of the big band era. Bogert, five years Stein's senior, messed around with piano, clarinet and sax (playing the latter in a local surf combo) before permanently taking up bass. He cut his teeth playing guitar during his childhood but later found he had a knack for creatively manipulating a keyboard. Stein was the most experienced of the four, having made a record for a small label when he was 15, a doo wop group number called "Come Back to My Heart" as Mark Stevens and the Charmers that, all things considered, was a strong track with a little luck it could have been a hit, but was perhaps a little behind the times when it came out in 1962. They found work in clubs up and down the east coast throughout most of '66 and occasionally backed touring vocal acts (one being girl group The Shangri-Las). In 1965, organist Mark Stein, bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Joey Brennan broke away from Rick and the Showmen, a New York area group they'd played with briefly, to form The Pigeons, later adding guitarist Vince Martell in a concerted effort to bring their favorite R&B songs into a rock nightclub environment. Mind-expanded Motown! Pop and soul music transformed into psychedelia above, below and beyond what the original composers intended! This band of Jersey guys specialized in reshaping familiar '60s hits into grandiose rock productions.
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