In January of 1967, The Foundations were formed in the basement of a local coffee bar in Bayswater, London. They gathered together through advertisements in Melody Maker, a now defunct British pop/rock music newspaper, They selected the name Foundations based on their surroundings, a rehearsal space in the basement of a building -- a solid foundation. The Foundations were a surprisingly obscure late-60s band, considering that they managed to reach the tops of the both the American and British charts more than once in the space of a year and had a solid three years of recordings. At the time of their debut in mid-1967, they were hailed as being among the most authentic makers of soul music ever to emerge from England -- the best practitioners of the Motown sound to be found on the far side of the Atlantic -- and were also accepted in jazz circles as well. Baby Now That Ive Found You, and Build Me Up Buttercup, were the biggest hits for this multi-racial octet, made up of Londoners and West Indians. The Foundations split in 1970, and by the middle of the decade that followed, a revival was attempted, but they were split into two bands. A lawsuit resulted in one getting the rights to the original name, while another was allowed to use the New Foundations. The group remains fondly remembered, if not often written about, in England, and it achieved some fresh international recognition in 1998 when Build Me Up Buttercup appeared prominently in the hit movie Theres Something About Mary.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 16:05:50 +0000