Ronnie Rice at "It's Thursday" in Antioch, Illinois.

I'm sitting here at the old keyboard on Saturday listening to 'Fessa John Hook's Beach Music Countdown on the Endless Summer radio network. I sure love getting my Beach Music fix over the internet when I'm not down that way.

This past Thursday. I drove over to Antioch to their "It's Thursday" free concert series. This one featured Ronnie Rice, or the Human Juke Box as he is called.

Ronnie was the lead singer and wrote many of the songs for the seminal Chicago 60s rock group, the New Colony Six, one of my favorites from that era. Other Chicago groups were the Shadows of Knight, Buckinghams, Ides of March, and Cryan' Shames.

They first hit the charts in 1965, and charted 21 singles on the Billboard charts, mostly not in the Top 40. But, they were in the Top 40 all the time on the two major radio stations in Chicago, WLS and WCFL. Both of these were AM stations, but this was before FM.

They had hits with: "Love You So Much,"  "I Confess,"  "Cadillac" (a great way to learn how to spell the word as they kept spelling it out-probably my favorite NC6 song), "I Will Always Think About You" (one of Liz and my "songs"), "Can't You See Me Cry," "Love You So Much," and another favorite of mine, "Mr. You're a Better Man Than I."

You can get info at http://www.ronnierice.com/

Also, www.newcolonysix.com but this one isn't kept up very well.

The New Colony 6 was inducted into Iowa's Rock N Roll Music Association's Hall of Fame in 2002. We don't have a Chicago Rock Hall of Fame that I know of.

They were noted for wearing Revolutionary War uniforms as part of their gimmick. Of course, all things English were in the vogue back in 1965, what with the British Invasion. Get it, colony. Even the Buckinghams were named after Buckingham Fountain in Chicago, but then there's that Buckingham Castle in London.

The group reformed in the the 1980s, but Ronnie doesn't perform with them.

I wish that Bob Stroud would have one of his Rock and Roll Roots compilation CDs on those great Chicago 60s groups. Hear that, Bob!!!

I have two greatest hits New Colony 6 compilations.

The 60s, a Pretty Good Time to Grow Up...Overall. --RoadDog