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about this album
The Contents Are came from the Quad Cities area by Davenport, Iowa. High school students Dave Neumann and Craig Hute were in the Blazers when they decided to form a new group to pursue a more original and harmonic direction. Adding Larry Smith and Paul Staack, they started playing live shows in the area, including Cedar Rapids, IA and Rock Island, Illinois. In April of 1967 they entered the Fredlo studio in Davenport and recorded “I Don’t Know” and “Direction of Mind”. Craig Hute wrote both songs, with arrangements by Dave Neumann. The 45 did well locally, selling as many as 1,000 copies, though it’s pretty scarce nowadays. It’s one of my favorite 45s, I don’t think there’s anything else quite like this band in the ’60s. They have a calm, melancholy sound and their lyrics really stay with me.Once the band was out of high school and mostly attending college, they played shows as far away as Champaign, Illinois and Minneapolis. Later in 1967 or early ’68 they returned to Fredlo to cut an album of originals by Craig Hute. These are just as good as the single, my favorite being “If You’re Relaxing”. Marianne Dean played piano, oboe and sang on the album. The band pressed 100 copies and gave them away, and it is now incredibly rare. This record was mostly a rumor until a demo copy surfaced in 2005. Shadoks reissued the album, adding a little color to the line drawing that was the front cover. The original back cover was bland, but the Shadoks release has a photo of the band and an
