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0:00/2:49
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0:00/1:41
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0:00/2:30
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Get To Me 3:080:00/3:08
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Do It Clean 2:450:00/2:45
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She's All Mine 4:110:00/4:11
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Big Brother 1:550:00/1:55
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So Lonely Girl 2:500:00/2:50
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Love In Motion 2:210:00/2:21
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She's Got Everything 2:350:00/2:35
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Teenarama 4:060:00/4:06
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Slip Away 3:330:00/3:33
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Laughing Inside 3:410:00/3:41
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Boys Cry 2:350:00/2:35
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She's An Obsession 3:000:00/3:00
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King Rocker 2:170:00/2:17
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She 2:210:00/2:21
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Mony Mony 2:530:00/2:53
Hit Play (all songs will play)
Latest Music
TakeMe was a great, super fun and popular southern Wisconsin/northern Illinois American Power Pop band of the late ‘70’s/early 80's that I and some friends were introduced to in our senior year in high school by my older brother, Bill (thanks, Bill!), and began to go see regularly once we all had turned 18 (the legal age of drinking in Wisconsin at that time, and where we would drive up to from the Chicago area on week-ends).
They started as mainly a cover group, doing a couple 60's tunes, like The Beatles', ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ (and WAY before every band started doing that song, and really well) and the included Shondells' song they used to close a lot of their shows with, but mainly covering obscure but ultra-catchy upbeat and danceable songs by various artists of the British (& Los Angeles) New Wave that followed the Punk period, and by which they were greatly influenced, musically and visually, as well as by American power pop groups (and local Great Lakes regional heroes) like Cheap Trick and The Romantics (both of which they opened for, along with Duran, Duran and U2).
Kent Parco (bass), Jeff Hunter (drums) & Tommy Ford (guitar), with Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen in 1980, Haymaker's, Chicago.
From Racine, they started-up in 1979, and were a regional favorite between Milwaukee and Chicago for several years. The band was: Jeff Slater (lead vocals), Tommy Ford (guitar/vocals), Danny ‘Patrick’ (Siebert) (guitar/vocals), Kent Parco (bass guitar/vocals), and Jeff Hunter (drums).
This was a great power pop band, among the two or three best I've ever seen live, definitely the most fun, and surely the very best unsigned pop act I ever saw, and by a mile. They were unusually good.
A great, vibrant and consistent sound, no matter the venue, clean and skilled playing by all the instrumentalists, great singing and vocal blend between Slater & Patrick, exceptionally fun live performances, and they were also great looking and stylish, hip, so it seemed like the table was set for them to break up to the next level. They were certainly better, better looking, and more fun than several of their signed colleague bands, like The Shoes, for one, and even The Romantics, for my money and taste, anyway.
Alas, they broke up after a major (though necessary and inevitable) direction change to original music, but which was also moody, darker music very unlike what they'd been covering, and they lost steam, unfortunately, and never did land a recording contract. Nevertheless, I would always remember them and their shows, which left a major mark, and I was to a real degree inspired to pursue music as a profession partly due to my witnessing of TakeMe, so good did I consider them, and so heady being that time of life and youth.
I and my friends wondered then if what we experienced at TM's shows might not have been what it was like to watch The Beatles at The Cavern prior to their rise to fame, and I made it my business at the time to discover and get some of the original recordings by the artists they were covering, buying albums by The Records, Ian Lloyd, and 20/20, and leading me to my own discoveries of like music in American power pop bands like The Producers, and pretty soon to my bread and butter British Pop bands like Squeeze, et al .
Then, over the years, because of some lo-fi bootlegs of some TM shows I found on the internet and the miracle of search engines and YouTube uploads, I've gradually and finally named and located recordings of all the main songs they covered (almost all of which, it turns out, TakeMe did better than the original artists), and I've decided to host and share them here for any still existant TM fans that recall those shows and time happily and might like to again hear them, and all together, one after another, the songs at least, if not TM's performances of them, which mostly don't exist, certainly not in good quality.
If any hi-fi recordings of TM's complete early shows did exist I would share those versions, but none do, and there are only a couple of demo, studio quality recordings or hi-quality live recordings available, so the playlist in the player on this page above is mostly the studio recordings of the original artists they covered, with a couple demo quality studio recordings and one good quality live recording of TM originals, three of them, mixed in.
For those that attended TM's shows back then, listening to this set will absolutely remind you clearly of them and their shows (and probably make you appreciate them even more, since they did many of these tunes better than the original artists), especially with a few of their own performances included, and I hope you enjoy hearing the tunes all together again, and… big thanks to TakeMe for the great music and the fun. Both were exceptionally good.
Cheers, Jim Funk
TakeMe Track List
(roughly in order I recall many of them appearing in set)
1. Remember The Lightning
20/20
2. Listen To The Heartbeat
D.L. Byron
3. The Modern Dance (Quick, Quick Slow)
The Sinceros
4. Get To Me
TakeMe (TM original)
5. Do It Clean
Echo & The Bunnymen
6. She's All Mine
The Hitmen
7. Big Brother
The Scooters
8. So Lonely Girl
TakeMe (TM original)
9. Love In Motion
D.L. Byron
10. She's Got Everything
The Romantics (Kinks)
11. Teenarama
The Records
12. Slip Away
Ian Lloyd
13. Laughing Inside (live)
TakeMe (TM original) ChicagoFest, 1980
14. Boys Cry
The Original Mirrors
15. She's An Obsession
20/20
16. King Rocker
Generation X (Billy Idol)
17. She
David Johansen
18. Mony Mony
Tommy James & The Shondells
Jeff Slater (circa 1980)