Cleveland, 1964-69
The New Breed started out in 1964 or so. Not long after forming, keyboard player/singer Castelli had left the band to attend college in Kent and while there played in a band called the Fallen Angels with sax player/singer Frank Allega. Castelli rejoined the New Breed (he was also in the Baskerville Hounds for a short time) and brought Allega with him. The other members were Jerry Kalish (bass), Barry Kahn (drums), and John Gruden (guitar). All the band members were in college (except Gruden who had graduated). Jerry received a draft notice and when he mentioned it to the band, suggested they take "Selective Sevice" for their name. For those who are not US residents, Selective Service was the 'official' name for the US military draft. It was also a bit of an in-joke as the members had consciously decided to stay in college to avoid being drafted (except Gruden who had already been in the Marines).
The band recorded two songs at Cleveland Recording in the spring of '67, "Shake" b/w "Green Onions". The choice of cover songs was pushed by their manager, Ron Goldstein, who was also employed at Cleveland's Main Line record distribution and he got the songs placed on the short-lived Main Line record label (which had some backing from Main Line's parent RCA records). The record was produced by the late Gordon Neal, a free-lance producer based out of Cincinnati. Neal's forte was soul so he took the recording to New York and had the horns overdubbed. Selective Service was not a soul band, they were big in the college and night clubs like Otto's Grotto, Agora, etc, and played energetic rock-n-roll and soul covers. "Shake" was a huge local hit and the band was really hot for the summer and fall of '67. They intended to release a second 45 called "Here It Comes", a takeoff on the Rolling Stones' "It's Alright", but Main Line was out of the record business and Ron Goldstein took a record industry job out in LA and the record was shelved.
In the fall of '67 Kahn left the band for a medical internship in Philadelphia and Sid Turner from the Grasshoppers replaced him. The loss of Kahn and Goldstein's skills were enough to stall the band's momentum and they played on until mid '68 when the group reorganized with Cookie, Frank, Bob Bruno, Jerry Bruno, Dave Niska, and Jim Cauldwell (replaced shortly by Skip Roberts). This band (which was more or less a merger of the Selective Service and the Bruno's band Bobby Jay and the Castaways) played pretty much all soul music and lasted for a year with no additional recordings. Allega left after several months to play blues, and a few of the members ended up playing with Woody Leffel (x-Tree Stumps and Renaissance Faire) in a band called Zephaniah Cross.