Sunnyside

The Kopterz Faded Not Forgotten

The band released their debut 7" 45 rpm record The one that got away b/w You're all I need , in December 1982. Recorded at Fishtraks Studios in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during that past summer, it became an instant hit on local AM radio. They followed up the release by recording , also at Fishtraks, the would be debut LP during the following spring and summer of 1983, but the tracks never made it to vinyl and the album was shelved. The tracks: "All Around the World"," There's Just one Thing", "I read It in Your Eyes", "I'm Immune to You", "All the Other Girls", "Action this Time" and "I wanna be your Power "from those sessions appear here for the first time anywhere. That following summer, frustrated with the lack of a new record, the band recorded what became the 1985 Eponymous EP "The Kopterz" a 4 song 12" 45rpm which included the hits "Sunnyside" and "Walk Away", and also included their first Reggae hit "Me or You" and a cover of The Beatles classic "And Your Bird Can Sing". Following the success of Sunnyside, which yielded a made for TV video now on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7vcvKkhX2E . The band had now reached a much larger audience and began reaching out and playing shows all over New England. Winter 1985the band hit the studio again, this tike to record what became their first full length LP. In December 1986 the band released "Dancin' Disorder" which local FM giant WBLM latched onto right away and began spinning their REM tinged "The Fall" in heavy rotation. The band moved several thousand units and seemed poised to break onto the national scene. record labels came calling, there was Electra, Warner Brothers, and even a subsidiary of Atlantic called Giant Records. The band was courted and corralled but no one bit. The big break proved elusive. Not letting anything get in the way, the band immediately began writing a follow up LP, the would be 2nd LP , another collection of pop chestnuts and a bunch of harder edged rock tunes and recording began during the late part of 1987 and extended well into the early months of 1988. The work continued at a snails pace, largely due to the bands constant LIVE schedule which allowed for little time dedicated to the completion of the record. By the end of the year, the band had planned a tour that would take them to Nashville where they planned to finish the album with REM producer Scott Litt. Jon Suskin, a Nashville based audio engineer who had befriended the band when they opened for Concrete Blonde years earlier, was a friend of Litts and had arranged for the band to spend a few days in a studio owned by Steve Earle reworking the tracks with hopes of finishing the album. The tour, known as the phantom tour, never materialized , and the sessions with Litt were thrown out the window when he had to abruptly leave on a tour of the UK. The multi-track master reels for this uncompleted LP were left behind when the band hit the road and headed home to Maine. The tracks from those sessions will appear on Faded Volume 2 in their rawest, incomplete form, but the energy of the bands performance while laying down the basic tracks remains solid and a great representation of where the band was in its Live form. Following their ill fated trip to Nashville, the band returned to their rigorous paced touring schedule, playing 4, 5 6 nights a week, week after week through the summer when they landed in Bethel Maine at the Outlook, a studio run by former Bostonians Ted and Connie St. Pierre where they recorded 4 new tunes, "Get The Money Up", "Live to be a Thousand", "Outta My Mind", and "Somebody's Settin' Me Up" for their swan song release , the cassette only EP "Twistin' in the Wind".