Ken Taylor gave me the history and photos of his first group, Mike and the Dimensions, also known as the simply the Dimensions, or the Fabulous Dimensions:

I was blown away to listen to “Little Latin Lupe Lu”. I haven’t heard it in 45 years! That is me singing and playing drums. We recorded it in one take with everyone playing live. No overdubs in those days! The guitars are horribly out of tune!

We recorded it at Frederick’s music store in Goldsboro before Doug [Farwig] joined the group. We only had 500 copies pressed and gave away most of those. We did manage to sell a few and they played it a few times on the local radio station WGBR.

We were called Mike and the Dimensions then and had a guy named Mike Malloney [Malonee] on guitar. The song “Why” was actually written by Mike with input from the rest of the band. Mike was moody and hard to work with. We replaced him with Doug after Mike broke a friend’s guitar at rehearsal one day.

Doug had been playing with another group called the Cobras at the time. They were more of a “surf” band and we were more “beach music” and R&B. We opened the first rock club in the area in an old abandoned county jail and called it “the Bastille”. I was still in high school at the time and we had studied Bastille Day which is where we got the name. We were the house band and also booked all the top Beach music groups to play there. The Embers performed there many times. We were just kids and had our own club! Pretty amazing at the time!

Doug Farwig’s Dad was our manager. He was so cool, he loaned us the money ($200.00) to buy our ’51 Cadillac hearse which was a party on wheels!

We used to go see the Counts IV at the teen club on Seymour Johnson Air Force base and wanted to be just like them. They wore black turtle neck shirts, tight jeans and Beatle boots and we thought they were the coolest thing we had ever seen! We started to play more rock and would go to their rehearsals to learn from them. I was the drummer and Chico taught me a lot!

We got Doug in the band and had a guy named Bill Stroud from a band called “The Spectaculars” on piano for a while. He was one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever known but … he would show up late or sometimes not at all so we had to let him go too.

We hired a local singer named Scotty Todd and started getting real popular, playing fraternity parties and other venues across the state. Meanwhile, Joe Booher quit the Counts IV and they broke up. Al and Chico went back to N.Y. We hooked up with Don Roof who had a bunch of gigs already booked to form the new Counts IV which later became the Inexpensive Handmade Look.

Ken Taylor

Click here for more on the Count IV and their later incarnation as the Inexpensive Handmade Look.

Thanks to Debbie Daniels for correcting the ID of the top photo above with David Kitts’ name.