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The Kidds
You Were Wrong / Children in Love - 7"
Nestor - 1967
Michael Panontin
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Allegedly, the Kidds got their name from the British Modbeats' singer Fraser Loveman, who often referred to them as 'kids'. The St. Catharines (ON) five-piece was originally formed in 1965 by guitarist Mark Campbell and drummer Glen Gratto. "Mark and myself started a band called the Kidds. We were playing Beatles stuff, and the Hollies. We used to practise six days a week," Gratto explained in the Paul Mir doc The Big Story of Small Potatoes.
With singer Roy Dickinson, second guitarist Henry Zablocki and bassist Wayne Lawryk rounding things out, the Kidds got gigs galore that first year. "We weren't good enough to play at The Castle, so we played at the Roller Rink for fifty dollars a night," Campbell tells us. "We sort of followed the Modbeats and tried to copy everything they did for the first six months. And then we started to get away from that. We had more harmonies and we started playing louder and louder."
In late 1967, with new guitarist Omer Langlois having replaced Campbell, the Kidds released this single, with the sought-after psych gem 'Children in Love' on the back side. Though the record likely met with little success, the Kidds certainly seemed to be hitting their stride by the spring of '68, with RPM reporting in March that "if you happen to be in Toronto March 4th through the 6th, drop into the Nite Owl in Toronto's Village. The Kidds will be turning the Village crowd on." By July, RPM was telling us that "Jack Nestor and his Kidds are making large strides up the popularity poll for appearances throughout Upper Canada, as well as in Bytown and Lower Canada." That tour, which in all lasted a good two months, also included a US leg from August 1st to the 14th.
Even more impressive is the April 13 issue of Billboard, which informs us that "the Kidds from St. Catharines appear on Upbeat, the syndicated TV show this month. Plans are to follow their initial release on manager Jack Nestor's own Nestor label with a single on an established label soon." Upbeat was a local variety show produced at WEWS-TV in Cleveland from 1964 to 1971, which hosted, in addition to local greats like the James Gang, Eric Carmen and the Outsiders, a slew of heavyweights from James Brown and Jerry Butler to the Velvet Underground and the Jefferson Airplane, and all points in between. It may have helped that Upbeat was hosted by the Chatham (ON)-raised Don Webster, who had cut his teeth in Hamilton before making it big in the States. Still, that is pretty darned impressive for a bunch of, well, kids.
(Interestingly, for all its rarity, mintish copies of 'Children in Love' can still be had for about a hundred bucks US.)
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