Skip Batchelor, Bob Amerman, Dwight Babcock, Fender Tucker
She's With Him (written by Skip)
THE (YAY!) TORQUES!
In a fit of boredom I Googled the name of the R&R band I had in high school back in 1963-1965: The Torques. I came up with a link to the J-Walk Blog (which is no longer there) which told me a lot about "The Torques".
There I discovered many interesting things, including the distressing fact that George W. Bush was a "clapper" in a frat band at Andover in 1964 called, gulp, The Torques! Before you leap to any number of delicious conclusions as to what the hell a "clapper" is, let me tell you that J-Walk Blog explains it all wonderfully. It's a kind of all-boy chorus that dances and claps in front of the band at a dance. They dress up like Sha-Na-Na and probably add a lot of testosterone to the mix. I don't know, since The Torques from Farmington New Mexico didn't have any clappers.
I was gratified to find that the band from Andover pronounced their name Tor-kays. We were the Torks. Rhymes with Dorks, as we were often reminded. Still, as band names from the 60s go, ours is obviously much better.
It would be interesting to know even more about the enigmatic GWB Torqu-ays, especially to hear their music. If you'd care to listen to what passed for music in 1965 at the Boys Club on a balmy October night, there are a few of our songs at the left. We used the ingenious method of pointing a microphone at a horribly abused 12" speaker that was somehow patched into the PA system, which was a Fender Bandmaster 30-watt guitar amp. It's the only recording I have of the old band, although we did put out a .45 of She's With Him. I lost my copies somewhere along the way. I found this old reel-to-reel tape about ten years ago and spliced it up as best I could.
2010 Update: The original Torques 45 has been found! Thanks to a collector who found a copy of the 45 and e-mailed me asking for more info about The Torques, I now have MP3s of both sides as well as JPGs of the labels. Check 'em out!
SHE'S WITH HIM Music and Lyrics by Skip Batchelor
SHE'S THE ONE written by J. Dubas of The Chartbusters
