the Keggs on Orbit

the Keggs
Art Lenox-Steve Cool-Bob Rich-Pat Amboyan

20959 ~ To Find Out
20960 ~ Girl

Orbit
Producer - Yolanda Owens
Rite account # 328

No number on label

Dead wax info : R328 20960 and a D reversed

Only 75 copies were pressed. Bootleg copies of this 45 exist in vast quantities, they have "ORBIT-A" and "ORBIT-B" scratched in the deadwax area. According to Tim Warren (Crypt Records) :

"A band so hated in Detroit, they had to change their name after every show they played! The guitarist met with an evil demise: on his way to practice on his motorbike, he got hit by a truck and knocked into a metal rail which lopped his head off 'n' ended the Keggs' wicked career."

DISCoveries, July 1996 ad

One Susan Bowman of Geneva, Illinois wanted this rare record so badly that she advertised in the records collector magazine DISCoveries and she paid probably as much as $ 129.50, advertising rate for a quarter page -5"x 6"- in the mag at the time.


update Feb. 15, 2014 : quote from White Swirl forum

The Keggs: inept garage band from Westland, Michigan record two outta tune blasts at Be A Star Studios in a shady neighborhood in Detroit in the summer of '67. They come back two weeks later to pick up their records and find that the studio burned down in the riots. Yolanda Owens (listed as "producer" on the record but really she just lent the name of her label, Orbit, to the 7") had made a safety master and was still able to press the record. According to liner notes for the "Back From the Grave" compilation only 75 copies were made, but research indicates that 100 were made with the missing 25 supplied by Yolanda Owens to local radio DJ's for promotion. "Discovered" by compiler Tim Warren in 1984 (I believe in Los Angeles) he treks to Detroit and spends 2 days parked in front of the house of a former band member in hopes of turning up more copies. He gets two more copies, one of which is sold at the Paris Record show in 1986 to an Italian collector who I buy my copy off of in 2005. Total number of copies known to still exist is somewhere around 12. I paid $2561 for my copy in 2005 and a barely playable, cracked copy sold for $373 in 2009. This is, by far, the pinnacle of Detroit garage music.