One highly collectible record is "The Nickle Bag Doing Their Love Thing" (Kama Sutra 8066, 1968).

Their search for fame becomes a fascinating story, as told by Gary Grappone. "I'd already been through several bands. My first group, The Majestics, played Ventures-like covers. In 1964, after The Beatles hit, we converted our act to sound British and changed our name to The Masqueraders. We were one of the first rock'n'roll bands to invade the sacred folk and jazz scene in Greenwich Village. We shared some shows with The Sellouts, a band that included future Lovin' Spoonful, Joe Butler and bass player Steve Boone's brother, Skip.

Much of the mid-sixties were spent playing as the house band at Ryan's, on Hempstead Turnpike, near Hofstra. Our name was now The Hatfull Of Rain--heavy on vocals--we all sang. It was me, Bob Butera--organ and lead vocals, Bob August--lead guitar and more lead vocals, Lenny Messina--he played rhythm guitar and Vinny Nappi on drums. In '66, we did some recording in Les Paul's home studio. We were fortunate enough to meet some top record producers, who recorded a lot of our original music. One was Jerry Goldstein, who produced The McCoys and was a member of The Strangeloves of "I Want Candy" fame--Rick Derringer worked with us at some sessions at Bell Sound. In '67, we were introduced to Lew Merenstein, who produced "Astral Weeks" for Van Morrison. He offered to produce us and our original stuff. We were excited beyond belief. When we got into the studio, he told us that he wanted to record an album of love poetry, set to music. The money was good--very good--and we did it. The record came out and sold reasonably well in some parts of the country, such as Boston and Chicago. It was a strange record and I shudder now to think of the pretentiousness of such an effort. I think the music beds we laid down though were terrific. Gary Kelgren, then of Mayfair Studios and before he started The Record Plant, engineered the sessions and did a beautiful job. The master tracks sounded tremendous. Unfortunately, Merenstein mixed the masters himself and frankly, as a mixer, he sucked.!"

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