The Anders & Poncia - The Anders & Poncia Album

Like the other more familiar and phenomenally successful duos (Goffin/King, Barry/Greenwich or Mann/Weil), Peter Anders and Vini Poncia are also graduates of the Brill Building era writing school. Friends since high school , Anders and Poncia debuted as members of the Providence, Rhode Island vocal group The Videls. The project's second single, Mister Lonely (written by Anders-Poncia), proved to be a moderate national hit (#73). on Cash Box and Billboard) in the early 1960s. It would be another five years before the duo's pièce de résistance,
pièce de résistance, The Trade Winds' New York's A Lonely Town, appeared on the legendary Red Bird label (founded by George Goldner and songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1964). An anthem of East Coast surf music ( although Californian),
A Lonely Town of New York had impressed Phil Spector, with whom Anders and Poncia had had a brief collaboration.
They also worked on an Elvis Presley film score - "Harum Scarum".
Having released albums like The Trade Winds and The Innocence, as well as writing and releasing a bunch of songs in various forms for Kama Sutra and Buddah Records.
Anders & Poncia signed to Warner Bros in 1969 and were produced by Richard Perry (Captain Beefheart, Fats Domino, Tiny Tim ...). Their only album contains ten original compositions and a version of Leiber & Stoller's "Smokey Joe's Cafe" (with excellent bottleneck guitar by Ry Cooder). Reissued here for the first time, these eleven brilliant and extraordinarily powerful tracks are ready to be rediscovered.