User:Jamesrk43/sandbox

The Syndicate was an American 60s garage rock band formed in Orange County, California that was active throughout Los Angeles and Orange Counties from 1964 into 1966. Originally formed just for the fun of it, The Syndicate became one of the most popular 60's garage bands playing the weekend gigs in a variety of local venues in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.

History
Early in 1964 cousins Jim Kobzeff and Bill Patapoff started kicking around the idea of forming a band. Since each were attending college, Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State, they thought it might be fun to put the few guitar chords they knew to good use on the weekends. Given that the 60's British Invasion consisted mostly of five-member bands they figured they were 20 percent a band already; besides, they had nothing to lose. Within the next several months two more college guys were recruited by word-of-mouth and a high school senior from a newspaper ad. They called themselves "The Syndicate" because they wanted to be perceived as a mafia-like family of bad guys. The garage was the perfect place to build a song repertoire because it was free and available and in a closed garage with Fender amps cranked up to ten, practicing songs popularized by bands like the Rolling Stones sounded like British heaven.

It was always incredibly easy to find somewhere to perform. High school and college campuses, college fraternities and sororities, wedding receptions, and other local hangouts because rock bands who sounded half-recognizable to the Beatles, The Who or The Zombies got hired on-the-spot in one of a thousand places in Los Angeles and Orange County.

Four months after their first performance they were asked to record their original songs at Fidelity Recording in Hollywood. As a result, two vinyl 45 RPM records were released: "Love Will Not Take Away" and "My Baby's Barefoot" were released by Dore Records, and afterwards, "The Egyptian Thing" and "She Haunts You" were released by Dot Records.

The Syndicate gave its last performance in sometime in 1966, and for a variety of reasons, each of the members agreed that is was time to part ways.