COUNTDOWN 5 PRESS RELEASE: TEXAS CITY LOCALS MAKE IT BIG…50 YEARS LATER!

Over fifty years later, local Texas City and Galveston men are experiencing something very extraordinary, their first international album release.  Tom Williams, Tommy Murphy, and Mack Hayes, Texas City High School graduates and friends, and Galveston buddies John Balzer and Steve Long, were known as the “Countdown 5” band in the 1960’s.  With the legendary beach clubs, the Bamboo Hut and Grass Menagerie as their original home base, the “5” acquired professional management and purchased an interest in Andrus Productions recording studio in Houston, TX.  The band wrote and recorded many songs during this era, two of which made the Billboard Top 100 with additional airplay later in Europe in the 1970’s. These two records and the band’s entertaining showmanship put the group on the road throughout the southern United States performing concerts with such acts as the Grass Roots, Dave Clark 5, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, the Fifth Dimension, Steppenwolf, and many others.  The group disbanded in late 1969 and three of the members formed a new group called the Wire Band, touring with Liza Minnelli for several years.
 
But in the spring of 2018, the band was contacted by GearFab records and informed that the company had purchased the original masters of all of the recordings done by the Countdown 5 in the 60’s.  All 5 members have signed with GearFab Records, and twenty-eight recordings, most never released, have been remastered and offered in a two CD package entitled “Countdown 5 – The Complete Recordings”.  The official date is August 17, 2018, for release in America and Europe.
 
Though the band no longer exists, all members are alive and well residing in Texas City, Clear Lake, Galveston, and Houston, and the music will live on.
 
Reviews: During the ’60s, the Countdown 5 were kingpins of the Galveston, Texas music scene. Aside from boasting the reputation as a piping-hot live act, the band cut several striking singles, some which have appeared on compilation albums over the years.
But the duly dubbed Complete Recordings 1965-1969 marks the first time everything the band ever waxed has been put together in a solitary package. Comprised of two discs, the long awaited anthology from Gear Fab Records is further plumped by a wealth of previously unreleased tracks.
For starters, there’s the saxophone-drenched “Bamboo Hut,” the Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels styled dance-floor groover “Shaka Shaka Na Na,” a wild and wiggy cover of “Shout” by the Isley Brothers, and a bracing version of the Johnny Otis Show’s shuffling “Willie and the Hand Jive” that emphasizes the Countdown 5’s early blues and soul roots.
A ghostly shimmer, seasoned with needling guitar licks, provides “Money Man” with a trippy tie-dyed timbre, while “Elevator,” “I Gotta Keep What I Take” and “Good Woman” slide in as tightly-tuned pop rockers rife with smashing harmonies and strapping hooks. Holding ground as another highlight is the jaunty acid-dappled “Uncle Kirby (From Brazil)” that contains a jarring piano break identical to the one heard on “Hey Bulldog” from the Beatles.
Shaped of screaming psychotic vocals and executed with determined aggression, “Candy” and the grinding funk of “Sweet Talk” follow the Countdown 5 on a hard-rocking bender. Peppered with cheesy keyboard capers and super catchy arrangements, the cute and spunky “Legs” is a bona fide bubblegum classic, and an adaption of “Hair” from the rock musical of the same name, vibrates with vim and vigor.
Rich with diversified sounds, orbiting from horn rock to psychedelic innovation to sunshine pop, Complete Recordings 1965-1969 traces the Countdown 5 reveling in the creative freedom of the era and obviously having fun doing so. Fishing the band’s tapes out of the vaults was indeed a worthy effort! You can find the discs on Amazon
 
 
 
 
Mack Hayes
www.mackhayes.com
281-4885442