When
I spoke with The Invictas’ frontman Herb Gross in 2001, he nixed the idea of a
band reunion.
“It
would be pretty tough to re-create that time,” he said. “But it was a blast.”
From
1964 to 1968 The Invictas — Herb Gross (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Dave
Hickey (drums), Mark “Max” Blumenfeld (lead guitar), Jim Koehler (bass) —
ruled Rochester’s early rock ‘n’ roll scene. The band played primal,
r&b-based music that Gross describes as “in the shadow of groups like The
Stones and The Animals.” In fact, The Invictas recorded a cover of Bo Diddley’s
“I’m Alright” as a single two years before The Stones did. The band also caused
near hysteria locally and nationwide with the then-controversial single “The
Hump.”In the early ’60s, rock music was just getting off the ground to fly the
mainstream skies. It was young, completely wild, and totally unpredictable.
Sadly, that will probably never happen again.
Enter
The Invictas… again.
Long
since retired from music and living in North Carolina, Gross (up visiting
Rochester) and Invictas drummer Dave Hickey were having a beer at the Dinosaur
last summer. Blues mama Mary Haitz was on stage and invited them up.
Gross,
who hadn’t played guitar in 20 years, agreed only to sing one song, The
Invictas’ hit “Long Tall Shorty.”
“The
crowd went crazy,” he says. The audience started yelling for “The Hump.”
The
Invictas were back, baby.
1962. Gross and his
friends at RIT were bored.
“We
just decided that maybe we should put a rock ‘n’ roll band together,” he says.
“We ran an ad at RIT and got a bunch of guys together and we just started
jamming.”
The
early Invictas sound was garage rock with a decidedly English accent, despite
the fact that the British invasion was still somewhere in the mid-Atlantic.
Gross cites The Ventures and boogie woogie — like Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole
Lotta Shakin” — as early influences.
The
band cut its teeth at area frat houses.
“They
were pretty wild,” Gross says of the frat parties. “They’d fill up a bathtub
with everything they could put in it. God, it was nasty stuff. And then there’d
be kegs of beer. In some of these places, you’d go slidin’ across the floor
there was so much beer being splashed all over the place.” The band started
demanding risers for those shows to avoid getting electrocuted.
Word
started spreadingand more schools
like Hobart College and Colgate University started calling. The growing hype
eventually led The Invictas to Tiny’s. And then things really took off.
Tiny’s
Bengal Innwas a little dive in
Summerville at the end of St. Paul Boulevard. Fred “Tiny” Watson ran the joint,
collected money at the door, and bounced rowdies.
Tiny’s
became The Invictas’ home, where they played four-night stands, Thursdays to
Sundays.
“It
was a college hangout with a legal limit of about 150,” says Gross. “We would
jam 500 to 600 people in there a night, easily. And there’d be another 300 to
400 standing out in line all the way to the Coastguard station. The whole place
would shake when we played there. The floor would go up and down, the walls
would wave back and forth.”
That’s
where “The Hump” came about: “Well come with me, push it in and push it out /
Put your hands behind your head and you’ll learn what it’s about / Do the hump,
do the hump.”
“We
were playing there one night and this guy, he’s gyrating around this girl,”
Gross says. “And I said, ‘What the hell you doin’ there?’ And he said, ‘I’m
humpin’.'”
Two
weeks later the band debuted “The Hump” at Tiny’s.
Buffalo’s Sahara Records owner
Steve Brodie caught wind of The Invictas and put “The Hump” b/w “Long Tall
Shorty” out on his label. At the height of its run, “The Hump” was locally
outselling the current releases by The Beatles (“Ticket To Ride”) and The
Rolling Stones (“The Last Time”). It went number one in Miami, it made The
Billboard Top 100, and it was banned in Boston.
“I
remember a gig specifically in Newark, New York,” Grosssays. “The
police had surrounded the whole stage. We were playing, the crowd was going
crazy, girls were grabbing at our hair, and the cops were trying to keep them
back.”
The
police chief threatened to shut down the show if the band played its hit; but
he let them play it when the crowd looked ready to riot.
For
roughly four years The Invictas made their living rockin’ Rochester. They were
also the first band in Rochester to release a full length LP, The Invictas A Go-Go, on Sahara Records.
The band essentially dissolved in 1968, after graduation.
“We
were making good money for the time,” Gross says. “We were just kids. We were
able to go out and buy ourselves a new car or motorcycle, things like that,
maybe put some money away for college.”
Though
a few other shows are planned later in the summer, it remains to be seen how
long the Invictas’ reunion will last. Logistically it’s hard to practice. Gross
has been flying back and forth from North Carolina and Kohler has been
commuting from Pennsylvania for the past six months. In between practices
they’ve been mailing CDs to each other to practice along to.
“I
know this is as much a memory trip for people as it is about the music,” says
Gross, who will be slinging his original Telecaster on stage. The band will
augment their original set with ’60s classics like “Twist And Shout” and “It’s
Only Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
“And
we’ll definitely be doing ‘The Hump.'”
The Invictas play
Friday, June 4, and Saturday, June 5, at The California Brew Haus, 402 West
Ridge Road, at 8 p.m. Tix: $8-$10. 621-1480. Street Machines of Rochester will
present a classic hot rod show on Saturday at 5 p.m.
This article appears in Jun 1-7, 2005.
