The Mandrake Memorial

Biography

The Mandrake Memorial was a U.S. band. It began life as a New York City band called The Novae Police, featuring Kevin Lally and Randy Monaco. They played in the Village for a while, opening for bands like The Flying Police (featuring James Taylor), while Monaco was also doing a lot of demo work, singing on the first demo of "Happy Together" which The Turtles later recorded. Meanwhile, guitarist Craig Anderton was playing in a college band from the University of Pennsylvania called The Flowers...

The Mandrake Memorial was a U.S. band.

It began life as a New York City band called The Novae Police, featuring Kevin Lally and Randy Monaco. They played in the Village for a while, opening for bands like The Flying Police (featuring James Taylor), while Monaco was also doing a lot of demo work, singing on the first demo of "Happy Together" which The Turtles later recorded.

Meanwhile, guitarist Craig Anderton was playing in a college band from the University of Pennsylvania called The Flowers of Evil, who played shows with Woody's Truck Stop (Todd Rundgren's first band). Keyboardist Michael Kac was also in Philadelphia's Cat's Cradle.

The Mandrakes came together through promoter Larry Schriver, who was working in conjunction with club owner Manny Rubin. Rubin was looking for a house band for his club, The Trauma in Philadelphia. The band started playing the Philadelphia, New York, Boston and college circuits, even appearing with Pink Floyd on television, and through Rubin they obtained a deal with MGM subsidiary Poppy (their first two albums were issued by RCA in the U.K.).

Their debut album, The Mandrake Memorial, which was released in the Autumn of 1968, sold over 100,000 copies, and was composed of short commercial-rock compositions, such as "Bird Journey", "Rainy May", and "Dark Lady", with Monaco's laid back vocals and Michael Kac's keyboards usually to the fore. The simple pop format was dropped on their second album, Medium which was the group's first real excursion into the world of psychedelia. By the time of its release Kac had left the band due to musical differences. As a three piece, the band travelled to England to record an LP, with Shel Talmy producing. However the resultant "intimate acoustic guitar" album was deemed too uncommercial and shelved. An acetate of the album still exists, and many of the songs were later re-recorded for their third and final album, Puzzle, which was their most ambitious.

After Puzzle, they recorded a cover of Thunderclap Newman's "Something in the Air", which was released as a single with picture sleeve, but this met with little success, and Kevin Lally left the band. Craig Anderton went on to form Anomaly with musicians Charles Cohen and Jeff Kane. They backed Linda Cohen on her first two Poppy LP's released in 1971-72. Randy Monaco later played with The 1910 Fruitgum Co., but died in the late 1970s of cirrhosis. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.