Yes, this will be a nostalgia site in the future, so please bookmark us if you’re into 50s, 60s, and 70s culture and the music that bound us.

We posted this truncated version of the Strombecker Lighthouse history instead of an “Under Construction” sign, so please bear with us for a little while!

First, a natural enough question is, “What in blazes is a ‘Strombecker Lighthouse’”???

Good question.

Strombecker Lighthouse was a 70s rock group; actually, we defined the standard for semi-pro music groups of this era--a presumptuous statement, but let’s talk this one out...

Strombecker Lighthouse began in the late 60s with a talented assortment of teenagers who were devoted to loudness, girls, and the American Way . The group roster changed through the years, but the concept remained the same—let’s cover the songs of the times as best we can in front of as many teenagers as we can. We evolved through the years into...well, 20-Something year olds...and our taste in music grew, expanded, actually, and so did our offerings. We were always a Top 40 group, but we began to cover the Top 40 of different decades...The Beatles’ music entered our repertoire, the group actually imitated a “Beatlemania” stage show shortly after Gary Bouton left the group...complete with mop-top wigs, British banker suits, and a phony Ed Sullivan recorded intro. The Beach Boys’ songs were a natural; hey, they’re billed as The All-American group, and Strombecker was as suburban, middle-class as you’d get at the time.

And when Disco reared its ugly head, we covered Disco, complete with tricot shirts and polyester straight-cut pants. But we always rocked hard (not as hard as the Heavy Metal trend to follow, but we pumped out a pretty mean version of Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water”), and we played hard. I put some largely unnecessary wear and tear on my eardrums and my back (we didn’t use roadies, and yet we had to lug around $20,000 worth of amplifiers in addition to our instruments), but these were the best times of my life, and Gary Eden (lead guitar and vocals), and I (Gary Bouton- bass guitar, Moog, and other keyboards) are dying to share with you the atmosphere and the music of a bygone era. Along with our site administrator and Gary Bouton’s spousal unit Barbara, we hope to recapture and present to you as large a snapshot of Strombecker Lighthouse as Web bandwidth will allow. We’re retouching scans of photos and posters that drummer Jim Pratt’s mom lent us, along with Gary Eden’s personal treasure trove. We recorded a few songs professionally, and have some live performance tapes that Gary Bouton digitized into uncompressed WAV files that he’s enhancing and converting to mp3 format; many thanks to Claudia for sitting with a cassette recorder in smoky bars while we pranced around on stage—she also took a lot of the photos we’ll be posting soon.

So stay tuned for a lively documentation of a time before the term “multimedia” was coined, lava lamps and astronaut snack food were staples in our rooms, dorm rooms, and dens, and let us do what we’ve done best—to entertain you!

Sincerely,

Gary, Gary, and Barb

Strombecker Lighthouse members were, as of 1975:

Pat Geno; lead vocals and rhythm guitar,

Gary Eden; vocals and lead guitar,

the late and sorely missed Jim Pratt; drums and vocals, and

Gary Bouton; vocals, bass, and keyboards

We have a backup scrapbook that Gary Eden compiled and you can visit if you click here. This archive is a taste of what’s to come right here.