Honour Society / J.C. Dobbs, Philadelphia, PA June 14, 1985 WYSP-FM

Honour Society
J.C. Dobbs 10th Anniversary
June 14, 1985 
WYSP-FM broadcast

01 Honour Society - (cuts in) unknown 
02 Honour Society - What's Going On
03 Honour Society - Your Time

04 Honour Society - I Am To You
05 Honour Society - In My Eye
06 Honour Society - Nightmare Ends
07 Honour Society - unknown
08 Honour Society - We Know Why
09 Honour Society - Cherry Oh Baby
10 Honour Society - What We Like
11 Honour Society - I'll Be Around
12 Honour Society - Johnny Too Bad
13 Unknown - Stage Outro, WYSP-FM
14 Commercial - Khyber Pass Pub Ad
15 Commercial - Job Cigarette Rolling Paper
16 Commercial - Computer Learning Center
17 Commercial - Cowtown Rodeo
18 Unknown - WYSP-FM

Brought to you by the Collective For Live Music
and the Sam Eliot's Mustache Collection.

Another from the Sam Eliot's Mustache collection, and another band I didn't know.  Sam's cassette had the name as "Honor Society" which led nowhere, as there's a ton of "honor societies" that make searches difficult.  I did find that the club where this was recorded, J.C. Dobbs, was holding a week long "10th Anniversary" week featuring multiple bands.

That led to this blurb:

"Five more bands butt heads at Dobbs in Friday night's Marathon.  The one to check out, we hear, is Honour Society, reportedly the hottest band out of Wilmington nowadays."

So it's Honour Society with the British spelling with the "u" in there.  That allowed me to find some press coverage, and a mention that on June 14, 1985, "Tonight, Dobb's  bill of fare includes Honour Society, Separate Checks, King Rhythm, The Models and Suze Cosmo."

Five bands in one night!  

Well, that wasn't usual, but it was J.C. Dobbs 10th Anniversary Party which featured 42 bands in one week!

I've included press coverage of the 10th Anniversary Party, and general coverage of Honour Society.  I also left a few of the local ads at the end of the show, just for the heck of it.  

https://mega.nz/file/OUQmkS6a#5RQAWmOfv1eVPp0wqLObtncRZhefYocbOBelBwZFV-M

The Heartbeats / Khyber Pass Pub, Philadelphia, PA WYSP-F Dec. 27, 1985

The Heartbeats
Khyber Pass,
Philadelphia, PA
December 27, 1985
WYSP-FM

01 The Heartbeats - Indecision Everywhere
02 The Heartbeats - The Waiting
03 The Heartbeats - I Surrender
04 The Heartbeats - Floating On Air
05 The Heartbeats - So What
06 The Heartbeats - On and On
07 The Heartbeats - Drop Your Eyes
08 The Heartbeats - Heaven On Earth Tonight
09 The Heartbeats - A Night Like This
10 The Heartbeats - Jet Black
11 Mark Houston - Encore Break
12 The Heartbeats - Down
13 Ed Green - Outro
14 Commercial - Kempfer Music
15 Commercial - Family Billiards
16 Commercial - J&B's Red Garter
17 Commercial - Future Rest
18 Ed Green - Weather

From the Sam Eliot's Mustache Collection
Brought to you by the Collective For Live Music
Date confirmed by newspaper entertainment listing

This kicks off the local Philadelphia area bands for 2026.  There's more to come.  I've chosen to leave in a run of vintage commercials at the end of the show, plus the disc jockey.  Everything's chaptered so you can drop it if it's of no interest to you.

There must be a dozen or more bands named the Heartbeats.  I couldn't find any information on this particular Heartbeats, other than a few newspaper listings.  Searching for "heartbeats" produces hundreds of hits.

Sam did some research and found that track 12 is on Youtube, "under the name John Kuzma with the Heartbeats. John was a member of the Hooters back in the day as well. He left to form this band. Apparently, they make an album that was never released. Seems John passed away in 2011."

https://mega.nz/file/OJJlGJqQ#sjApeOn3NiIKhbewhnsBzT_R0f2IY5yDuX3Ac5HX2hU

Smash Palace / J.C. Dobbs, Philadelphia, PA July 9, 1985 WYSP-FM

Smash Palace

J.C. Dobbs,

Philadelphia, PA

July 9, 1985

WYSP-FM

01 Smash Palace - Count The Days

02 Smash Palace - Living On The Borderline

03 Smash Palace - My Back Pages

04 Smash Palace - Shining Eyes

05 Smash Palace - Love Will Find A Way

06 Smash Palace - No Love Lost

07 Smash Palace - Night Of A Thousand Faces

08 Smash Palace - Lightning Strikes

09 Smash Palace - Pieces Of My Heart

10 Smash Palace - Walk On Air

11 Announcer - Stage Outro

12 Lesley Ann Patten - WYSP-FM

From the Sam Eliot's Mustache collection

Brought to you by the Collective For Live Music

This one is Smash Palace in a tight set from the J.C. Dobbs club on WYSP-FM.

As a West Coast guy, I run into problems understanding the geography. These guys are from south New Jersey...but right across the river from Philadelphia.  Are they a Philadelphia band?  California's big cities are far from the borders with other states, and the one place that doesn't apply is San Diego/Tijuana where things are pretty clear as to where a band comes from.

Anyway... Smash Palace had an LP out on Epic Records in 1985, but it looks like they didn't get a chance to release a second album.

But on October 10, 2025...they are releasing SMASH PALACE 87.

From the promo sheet:

"After nearly four decades, Smash Palace’s “lost” second album finally sees the light of day. “87” represents the follow up to their critically acclaimed 1985 Epic Records debut that never was – derailed by industry upheaval just as the Butler brothers had their sophomore effort ready to roll. This isn’t just a historical curiosity; it’s an energetic album featuring five expertly ‘re-recorded’ tracks performed by the original Epic lineup alongside five pristine demos from 1986/87.

The newly recorded material benefits from four decades of musical evolution while maintaining the jangly power-pop essence that made tracks like “Living on the Borderline” essential listening. The original demos offer a fascinating glimpse into the band’s creative process, capturing the raw energy and ambitious songwriting that had critics comparing them favorably to R.E.M., The Hooters, and the best of 80s American modern rock.

 “87” bridges past and present perfectly, delivering the album longtime fans have waited 40 years to hear while giving newcomers an ideal entry point into Smash Palace’s catalog. The original line-up is reuniting to hit the stage in support of the record, tapping into the band’s loyal fanbase and a renewed appetite for ’80s alternative rock, making this release both a vital piece of music history and a genuinely compelling listen."

So... if y'all like this live show, on the 10th of this month you can BUY THEIR CD.

https://mega.nz/file/fNBDmbgb#w264eBQ0YfoBPpejCYgZ09MnKifqEwk30wraIGN-lC4

  

Picture This - Khyber Pass Pub, Philadelphia, PA Nov. 8, 1985 WYSP-FM

Picture This
Khyber Pass Pub
Philadelphia, PA
November 8, 1985
WYSP-FM

01 Jerry Abear - WYSP-FM Intro
02 Picture This - My Imaginary Girl
03 Picture This - Shades of Gray
04 Picture This - Running In The Night
05 Picture This - Who Will Stop The Rain
06 Picture This - Waiting For The Day
07 Picture This - Looking Through Glass Eyes
08 Picture This - Heat of the Night
09 Picture This - She's My Girl
10 Picture This - Mistreated
11 Picture This - Any Day Now
12 Picture This - Encore Break
13 Picture This - American Boys
14 Jerry Abear, Debbi Calton - WYSP-FM Outro

From the Collective of Live Music
Sam Eliot's Mustache Strikes Again!

This one is a local Philadelphia band. As I was 3,000 miles to the west, I had never heard of them, but they're very good.  "Shades Of Gray" has all the elements of a Top 40 hit.

I don't see any evidence they released anything on Discogs.  There is a Picture This band with two CDs out in '95 and '96, but they're probably not the same band as this.

https://mega.nz/file/KcRgiYRa#aEjZJnMnLS4RUnWSlT6BfgNJKx1xIjg9OCeWSIwDtcE

CORRECTION:   The dj is Jerry Abear, not Gerry Herbert.

The A's / Studio Four, Philadelphia, PA March 8, 1983 WYSP-FM

The A's
Studio Four
Philadelphia, PA
March 8, 1983
WYSP-FM

01 The A's - After Last Night
02 The A's - Nothing Wrong With Falling In Love 
03 The A's - The Girl I Love
04 The A's - How Do You Live With A Broken Heart
05 The A's - Swept Away
06 The A's - Paint By Numbers
07 The A's - Parasite
08 The A's - Goes Around, Comes Around
09 The A's - Ain't No Secret
10 The A's - tape fail
11 The A's - A Woman's Got The Power
12 The A's - Misunderstanding
13 The A's - Do The Dance
14 The A's - Everlasting Love

Okay, Voodoo Wagon Gang!  I see SilentWay has a post in the "on deck circle" so I'm gonna slip this one in without the usual picture on the post, and he'll come along and bat clean-up later and push it down the blog with his usual home-run hitting.  Why the baseball metaphors?  Because I spent twenty minutes looking for a promo picture of "The A's" and came up with nothing but baseball pictures.  Anyway, this is another one for the Philadelphia radio fans in the Voodoo audience, featuring the fabulous A's in a studio performance.

Come to think of it, how did they get away with that name without a lawsuit from the ball club?

Anyway....on to the music....

Discogs list a Japanese release of this broadcast on CD-r named "Goes Around, Comes Around."  There are no images included, so I can't tell if it's got a fancy cover.

I have to address Track 10 which I've named "tape fail."  Track 10 Tape Fail is really "A Woman's Got The Power," but only one channel plays for a few seconds. The song then starts over as track 11, but with both channels. Whatever happened, it was a failure at the studio or the radio station, as the spoken intro is exactly the same (that is, it's not a second take of the song). I could drop this stuff out but I figure it's best to document it exactly as it as broadcast.

Based on the tape starting over, my guess is that this was not a live broadcast, but a rebroadcast of a show recorded earlier.  This is supported by the deejay saying "You're listening to the A's recorded in March '83 on WYSP..."  If the show was live, they wouldn't mention the date.

While I didn't find anything about the A's, I found some information about the studio, and it's in the artwork folder.

And yes, this is indeed another tape loaned to me from the fabulous Sam Eliot's Mustache Collection!

https://mega.nz/file/fZZHDLzZ#6g3TPorGmIt2Oukh-GD1HNB688wA4o-5uVjlvuMgsbI

The Hooters / Studio Four / WYSP-FM, Philadelphia, PA December 6, 1983

The Hooters
Studio Four
WYSP-FM
Philadelphia, PA
December 6, 1983

01 Hooters, The - Amore
02 Hooters, The - All You Zombies
03 Hooters, The - Hanging On A Heartbeat
04 Hooters, The - Walkman
05 Hooters, The - Point Your Little Pinky
06 Hooters, The - You Still Belong To Me
07 Hooters, The - Scared By Science
08 Hooters, The - Words & Music
09 Hooters, The - Don't Wanna Fight
10 Hooters, The - Birdman
11 Hooters, The - Blood From A Stone
12 Hooters, The - Trouble In Paradise
13 Hooters, The - Concubine
14 Hooters, The - Fightin' On the Same Side
15 Hooters, The - Got My Own
16 Hooters, The - Man In The Street (cut off)

From the Sam Eliot's Mustache collection!

Early stuff... lots of unreleased songs here.  If you're a fan of the Hooters, you'll find this tape interesting.  Sound quality is pretty great for a forty year old cassette tape.

The last song ("Man In The Street") cuts off just before the end of the show, right at 59 minutes and 50 seconds.  This was likely the last song.  It's a cover of a Don Drummond & the Skatalites song that was a Top 10 hit in the UK in the fall of 1965. 

They dedicate the song to WYSP program director Michael Picozzi.  

Now...that's a pretty obscure cover.  These days, here in the future where we can hear every song by saying "Alexa, play "Man In The Street" by Don Drummond" it seems like nothing...but in 1983?  Who the HECK knew Don Drummond in 1983?

And yes, I just walked out into the kitchen, and said "Alexa, play Don Drummond "Man In The Street" and sure enough, the 1964 Studio Records 45 started playing.  Just like that, I ask for music and I get it.

The future is both wonderful (in that everything is available) and terrible for the same reason. Being ahead of the curve...like the Hooters... isn't special anymore.

https://mega.nz/file/mZJQFA5I#XoaHGZe-XEcdFNVLRrpmh9eMRArzQ3kBq8147SYNcgI

But seriously...the Hooters had interesting, diverse, and obscure influences.

Pretty Poison / Studio 4, Philadelphia, PA WYSP-FM

Pretty Poison
November 8, 1983
Studio 4, 
Philadelphia, PA
WYSP-FM

01 Pretty Poison - Let Freedom Ring
02 Pretty Poison - unknown _I Still Love You
03 Pretty Poison - unknown _Save Myself
04 Pretty Poison - unknown _The Roses
05 Pretty Poison - Tempest Nightmare
06 Pretty Poison - The Realm of Existence
07 Pretty Poison - Band intros
08 Pretty Poison - Expiration
09 Pretty Poison - Never Forget Your Face
10 Pretty Poison - Seal It With A Kiss
11 Pretty Poison - No Tears
12 announcer - WYSP-FM Outro

Hello, Voodoo Gang!

Once again, I'm tackling a band I don't know, in a genre I know little about, from a city that I visited for an afternoon fifty-three years ago, broadcast on a radio station I've never heard of.

Can you guys throw me a life preserver?  I'm drownin' here...

But I'll give it a go.  First of all, this is an EXCELLENT tape sent to me from back east by our blog-buddy, Sam Eliot's Mustache.  Can I get a round of New Year's applause for him?

As I mentioned, I'm flyin' blind here (yeah, I'm mixin' metaphors, so sue me...) but for a band I've never heard of, these guys (plus a girl...) are fabulous.  An easy comparision is they're a bit like BERLIN...synth-pop, dance music, but aimed at a rock n' roll audience.  

Only they're a bit darker, a bit more "Goth."

Or at lease "were" a bit Goth at the time of this recording; it looks like they smoothed things out a bit by the end of the 80s after they got a major label deal.  But in 1983? The San Fran punk rocker in me immediately recognized "No Tears" as a cover of a song from first EP put out by Tuxedomoon in 1978. You can find "No Tears" on YouTube, and as an influence, it's a pretty grim piece of work.  

The next thing I learned about Pretty Poison was they're from Camden, New Jersey.  A glance at the map shows that burg is right across the river from Philadelphia.  I suspect there's probably some local angle I'm missing; here in Oakland we like to point out that we get to look across the bay at one of the world's most beautiful cities while those fools gotta look out their windows at us, and we're ugly.  So we win. If any of our Philadelphia fans can provide some local insight about Camden, it'll beat my stupid guesswork. 

I also don't know anything about WYSP-FN...they mention this is from "Studio 4."  Is that a studio at the radio station itself?  Or somewhere else?  Did they really have four studios at a radio station?

I'm clueless, but what I'm not clueless about is Pretty Poison impressed the hell out of me. I consider this tape a major find; there are several songs I couldn't track down that are probably unreleased, so excavating this tape is like Schliemann finding the ruins of Troy!

Okay. 

Yeah.  That's a bit of a stretch, I'll admit it.  But seriously...if you like electronic goth-rock, give this one a spin.  Đ®åⒻṬëŕṽøï says, "Check it out."

https://mega.nz/file/PNRAALhL#qx80PnkyIVH9XkEYCSyz-Rtp7xoZOrl-53VfJ8ianx4

Oh, yeah...I almost forgot...I was guessin' at the titles.  If I'm wrong about any of them, please let me know by leaving a comment.  If you know the titles to any of the "unknown" songs up above, well, jeez...let me know that, too.  I'm happy to know I'm wrong about something, you're not going to hurt my feelings by pointing out I have no idea what I'm talking about; I've already made that clear. :)

Suze Cosmo / Khyber Pass Pub, Philadelphia, PA March 7, 1986 WYSP-FM

Suze Cosmo
Khyber Pass Pub
56 S. Second Street
Philadelphia, PA
Friday, March 7, 1986

01 Mean Ed Green - WYSP Intro
02 Suze Cosmo - Woman Needs A Man
03 Suze Cosmo - Going To A Go Go
04 Suze Cosmo - Collector Of Hearts
05 Suze Cosmo - When He Says Goodbye
06 Suze Cosmo - I Miss You So Much
07 Suze Cosmo - Hands of Time
08 Suze Cosmo - Why Are You Leaving Me
09 Suze Cosmo - Don't Go Please Stay
10 Suze Cosmo - I Don't Read The News
11 Suze Cosmo - Bound By The Chains of Love
12 Suze Cosmo - Nowhere To Run
13 Suze Cosmo - Think
14 Suze Cosmo - You Keep Me Hanging On
15 Suze Cosmo - When A Man Wears Black
16 Suze Cosmo - Land of 1,000 Dances
17 Mean Ed Green & Debbi Calton - Stage Outro, WYSP Outro

Another tape from the Sam Eliot's Mustache collection.  

First of all, I was in Philadelphia once, for an afternoon, back in July of 1971.  So, I don't know diddlysquat about the city. Everything I'm about to type I found on the Internet, and that means it's not reliable. 

According to the Philadelphia Daily News (Feb. 28, 1986)
"WYSP (FM/94 now offers a local shot of talent every Friday afternoon at 5, and airs live bands from the Khyber Pass Fridays at midnight."  This concert is sourced from one of those shows. 

The show is hosted by WYSP-FM's Mean Ed Green, with deejay duties back at the station handled by by Debbi Calton.

The Khyber Pass Pub is still in open.

I've never heard of Suze Cosmo, and there's not much on the Internet about the band. Don't let that put you off... this is pop-rock, with a solid grounding in R&B.  I'd say their primary influence was Motown but the Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett covers show they had a couple of Atlantic LPs, too.  

I found lots of listings for the band in 1983 to 1986, but nothing before (or after), so it looks like they had a brief three year long career. They played at clubs like Nardi's, J.C. Dobbs, Khyber Pass, Empire Rock Club, 24 East Cabaret, and John Holmes Restaurant.

It's a lot of fun; they had the talent and enough good self-penned songs that should have gotten a record contract, but it looks like they only managed to put out a self-released 45 and an EP (see below).

But while their discography is thin... I found another listing from June 14, 1985 that mentioned they did another live WYSP midnight broadcast.  So there's more out there.

I didn't find any newspaper listing for this show, but found a few other appearances by the band at the Khyber Pass, so I've included them.  I also found a great two-page center spread from the entertainment section on the local Philadelphia scene.  All that's in the "Artwork" folder.

https://mega.nz/file/Wc5ThRRZ#9smvh723Tj6uaN6lJ1fAfM1l6WWvZeJh0-dHDYwphB8

Discogs says:

Suze Cosmo Band 1983 EP:
Bound By The Chains Of Love
I Don't Read The News
Assets
Questions
Don't Like Russia, Cause She Don't Like Rock

Suze Cosmo 1984 single:
When A Man Wears Black
When He Says Goodbye