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 Mike Somerville and Stephen Scorfina first met in the St. Louis area in the late 70's. They soon discovered that they had much in common to include their ideas and concepts of rock music. Both were products of 70's Midwest Rock bands. Mike was playing lead guitar with Head East and Stephen had played lead guitar for Pavlov's Dog. They began playing and writing together and in 1981 they formed the Somerville - Scorfina Band with Jeff Becker (bass), Tom Nickeson (keyboards and rhythm guitar), and Jimmy Miller (drums).
Their official debut performance was in November of 1981 at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis, where they opened for the Iron City House Rockers. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat gave the following description of their debut:
"Somerville/Scorfina premiered with a nice collection
of hard pop, with Mike Somerville on the hard and Steve Scorfina on the pop.
Beyond newly composed originals, the band performed the Everly Brothers'
arrangement of Little Richard's "Lucille" and gave fans a touch of the old
bombast with Pavlov Dog's "Natchez Trace."
 During 1982, they booked themselves in and around the St. Louis area and completed work on a six song demo that they shopped to major labels. One song from the demo, "Your Eyes" was released on KSHE 95 Seeds Vol. II, a local radio station release featuring the best of St. Louis area artists. The band experienced changes in personnel and also performed under various different names with new members, including Mike Safron who had played with Scorfina in Pavlov's Dog. But the band disbanded within a year, and never obtained a recording contract. The remaining songs on the demo have never been released. Scorfina recently provided the following insight when reflecting on why the band never attracted a major label:
"We were musicians and we concentrated
on the music. We just didn't have enough business sense."
Mike Somerville and Stephen Scorfina have discussed the possibility of releasing the Somerville-Scorfina demo. And may someday collaborate on new songs, developing the demo into a full length CD, bringing this project to its long overdue conclusion. To learn more about Mike Somerville and Stephen Scorfina visit the Mike Somerville Gallery and Bio Page and the
Pavlov's Dog website. Song titles with linked Mp3 segments for the Somerville - Scorfina demo are shown below:
(1) Your Eyes (2) Somebody New (3) Unlock The Door (4) Quiet Rain (5) To Be Nice To (6) Loving You Tonight
Click on song titles linked above to hear short mp3 segments of each song. Turn your speaker volume up when listening to mp3 files.
All images and sound files
© 2001 - 2008 SS Project
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