Rocky Sharpe & The Replays Lookin' For An Echo - The Best Of Rocky Sharpe & The Replays (CD)

(ACE) 27 tracks (77:35) including all the Hits plus rarities with 16 page booklet. Superb and Essential collection. (Bear Family Records)
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Rocky Sharpe And The Replays made practically all of their best recordings for Chiswick Records and this CD has twenty-seven of them. It tries to capture the spirit of the group.
Their recording career spanned six years, from 1978 to 1984. It included four albums and some thirteen singles. Although they spent some time with Mickie Most's RAK record label and recorded quite a number of tracks, they only ever released one single with them. Many of these were later included on the fourth album that was released on the Polydor label, as were two further singles.

After that Rocky returned to his vinyl home at Chiswick Records (which now appeared, with many other famous names, under the umbrella of Ace Records) for what was to be a farewell single. I can claim to speak with some authority on the group and their recordings as my voice is to be heard at least once on every track. Before I take you through this selection, I feel you should have a sort of Rocky Sharpe and the Replays `policy statement'. Although we covered a great deal of doo wop, we were, strictly speaking, a rock'n'roll vocal harmony group and many of the songs we recorded were originally recorded by individual artists. We always tried to make the backing vocals as interesting and inventive as possible.

Just listen to tracks like 'Imagination', 'Martian Hop' or 'I Really Love You' to hear for yourself. We made duets out of tracks that were originally by solo artistes and also because we had Helen in the group, we changed some male leads into female. Her voice gave an edge to our harmonies that made them significantly different from most other doo wop groups. We tried to find obscure tracks in an effort to come up with a single that was successful and as original as possible while always trying to retain the spirit of doo wop. Now listen and enjoy!