Free Republic

ALBANY, N.Y. - This could finally be the Electras' breakout year.   Rare vinyl copies of their lone 1961 recording are fetching prices north of $2,000, even though the band tended to stray from the beat. Two separate CD versions of that same recording are being sold after some "Behind The Music"-style intra-band squabbling. Of course, it's not musical chops that has renewed interest in this obscure garage rock recording; it's the bassist: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites). "Their enthusiasm is only muted by the fact that they weren't that good," summed up Chuck Miller, an...

Most of us have a skeleton some where in the closet. John Kerry has a whole band - his other band of brothers. His garage band. The Electras. And just in time to cash in on the presidential campaign, they've escaped from the garage, or the closet. A golden blast from out of the past. Kerry played bass in the group, which he started in 1961 with six high school friends. Prep school, actually - he was at St. Paul's School in New Hampshire while George W. Bush was at Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts. The group lasted about two...

At St. Paul's Academy in the early 1960s, five dudes decided to form a rock 'n' roll band. When they needed a bassist, they tapped one of the few high school students who owned one. His name happened to be John Kerry, now the Democratic nominee for president. Sen. Kerry's band, the Electras, played coming-out-parties and proms. They even made a record with a single microphone and an Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder, featuring songs titled "Shanghaied" and "Because They're Young." But none of the band mates could have predicted that, years later, the re-release of the album would turn as...

He's the Yoko of the Electras By Dean Johnson Wednesday, August 4, 2004 Lennon vs. McCartney, Jagger vs. Richards, Simon vs. Garfunkel . . . rock 'n' roll has a rich history of feuding band members. Now politics has split the Electras, presidential contender John Kerry's '60s prep-school group. Kerry played bass for the Electras when he was a student at St. Paul's in Concord in the early 1960s. The band played a few gigs, made a local album and went their separate ways. But with Kerry running for president, interest in that original record has skyrocketed. So band members...

The year was 1961. The fledgling Beatles couldn't settle on a bass player, President John F. Kennedy was famously asking what you could do for your country, and Vietnam was just a tiny country in muggy Southeast Asia. Somewhere in the halls of St. Paul's School, in secluded Concord, New Hampshire, a couple of teenage guys with the garage-rock ethos found in so many other suburban towns decided to start a band. No, this is not a rock-and-roll success story complete with screaming girls and chart-topping hits — quite the opposite. It's about a band of prep-schoolers who pressed 500...