PETERSBURG - For a few short years from 1967 to 1971, it seemed as if you couldn't throw a party in the Tri-Cities, and in a lot of other places across Virginia, unless Wild Sound Unlimited was invited.
The Petersburg band crisscrossed the state to play at sock hops, post-game parties, nightclubs, fraternity houses, weddings, bar mitzvahs - anyplace they could find an audience.
They opened for major national and regional acts including Sly and the Family Stone and the Box Tops. They played at soft drink bottling plants, at political rallies, at nightclubs that they wouldn't have been allowed to patronize because of their age, and at keg parties in beer up to their ankles. They did it all because they just loved to play music.
And they still do: Wild Sound Unlimited is inviting the community to a party next Friday at the Old Towne Civic Center ahead of the reunions on Saturday of the Petersburg High School classes of 1970-72, where the band will also be playing.
Already, the band's Facebook page is buzzing with anticipation about the reunion gig - which will benefit the CARES Inc. shelter - from people who remember the group's energetic style of pop as the soundtrack of their youth.
"All these people are coming out of the woodwork who identified us with the best time of their lives," said Marvin Lee Faison, Wild Sound's drummer, at a recent get-together of former band members ahead of next Friday's show.
Even today, the former members seem a little surprised by all the excitement, then and now. After all, the phenomenon that was Wild Sound Unlimited began in early 1966 with nothing more than a spur-of-the-moment after-school jam session after school.
Faison and two other kids from the neighborhood, David Jackson and J.T. Garrett, had been taking band class at Petersburg High School and decided to mess around with their instruments in the living room of the Faison home in the Bellevue-Columbia neighborhood off South Crater Road.
"All we had was a cheap snare drum and an ashtray, and two saxes," Faison said.
They found out they enjoyed it, and they kept at it, gradually drawing in other classmates from the neighborhood who were looking for a fun way to pass the time. "There were no video games back then," Jackson explained.
After they had polished their act for about a year, Wild Sound Unlimited was ready to go public. The group gave its first show at a re-election rally for Petersburg Del. W. Roy Smith in 1967, and after that there was no holding them back.
They started out playing mostly rhythm-and-blues and beach music, later shifting more toward rock-and-roll, especially the horn-heavy sound of bands like Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears, Faison said.
They played at sock hops, Friday night post-football parties, proms, fraternity parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs, even company barbecues, in the Tri-Cities and across Southside Virginia. They played dances and frat parties at the University of Richmond, the University of Virginia, Randolph-Macon, Virginia Military Institute, Washington and Lee, William and Mary.
The band members were all just 14 or 15 years old at the beginning.
Come summertime, "We were playing in Virginia Beach at the Peppermint Beach Club and the Golden Garter. Most of the kids in high school couldn't get into those clubs, and we were playing there," said Sieg Felty, a guitarist who was allowed to join the band even though he lived in another neighborhood; his girlfriend at the time was a sister of one of the members.
They played at another over-21 club in Richmond, the Sheik, where the owner once told them, "If the police come in, they'll shut me down" for letting the underage band inside, said Kevan Key, lead singer.
Later on, Felty said, the same club owner told him and Faison that "of all the bands that played there, we were his favorite."
Added horn player Donny Hicks: "Because we played fast. He used to say, 'Don't play slow, play fast, people drink more beer when you play fast.' "
Some of the parties got a little out of bounds. At one frat house keg party, Felty recalled, "They had spilled so much beer, people were dancing in beer. We were afraid we were going to get electrocuted."
From the beginning, band members' parents helped keep things rolling, providing transportation and helping them find bookings. The group especially credited Garrett's parents, John and Joyce Garrett, for their help.
John Garrett "was our main manager," Faison said. Sometimes, he recalled, the elder Garrett would arrive home in the morning after one of the band's light-night performances and "would just change into his work clothes and go straight to work."
As hard as they were working, it was only to be expected that people were talking more and more about Wild Sound Unlimited. And after the group won a Battle of the Bands at the State Fairgrounds in Richmond, they heard from someone who would help spread their fame even farther.
Marty Stone, a media relations specialist at Fort Lee, started lending the band his help as a publicist. And Stone who helped arrange the band's entry into musical immortality: the cutting of their only record, a 45-rpm single of their signature song "I Know You."
The song (along with the B side, "I Just Can't Wait") was recorded at Sigma Sound Studio in Philadelphia, a legend in the industry where many of the stars of the Philly sound, such as Harold Melvin, had done their recording.
The record took the band's local fame to new heights: Faison remembered walking with some of the band members from Petersburg High School down Washington Street to Sycamore Street to catch the bus home one afternoon. Their route took them past the Stevens & Maclin record store, where they saw "a big sign on the front: 'Wild Sound Unlimited record is here!' "
And while the single might not have gone platinum, it still reached a worldwide audience. Felty remembered, "We heard from people coming back from Korea, from Vietnam, who said, 'They played your record over there' " on Armed Forces Radio, probably at Stone's instigation.
The single also got air time as far afield as New York and even England.
By 1971, though, it was getting harder to keep up the pace. The members had finished high school, some were heading to college or day jobs, and love interests (and responsibilities) were becoming more of a priority. The era came to an end.
But not the legend, which has now jumped to cyberspace and continues to spread. Copies of "I Know You" are eagerly sought-after online, with one Web site currently asking $50 for a copy. And the band's page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wild-Sound-Unlimited/110597189870) has attracted 217 "friends," many of them eagerly awaiting next week's reunion.
The reason to make the party a benefit for the CARES shelter is simple. Faison explained that the band had decided to get together for the show because of requests from fans, but "if you're going to have a party, you've got to have a nonprofit to give the money away to."
Tickets for the Friday show at 8 p.m. are selling fast at $20 each, but if you want to try to get hold of some, call Randy Picardat at 804-931-8245 or e-mail rpicardat@comcast.net.