The Sherbs

The Sherbs were an early 80s reincarnation of a very successful Australian rock band of the 70s, Sherbet. I’m not familiar at all with the Sherbet material (there's some on Youtube) and unfortunately there’s not much Sherbs material available online. I got to like them from a couple of songs (I’m Alive and We Ride Tonight) that got decent airplay on album-oriented rock stations. They can be loosely classified as a progressive rock band. Vocalist Daryl Braithwaite had a subtle but distinctive sound that was not falsetto, but still ranged up toward that territory, vaguely reminiscent of Steve Perry but much more restrained. The Sherbs sound was somewhat atmospheric, with synthesizers playing a prominent role. The songs were on the poppy end of prog-rock, but this was nowhere near Top-40 (at least not in America). Overall, the sound was of the same flavor as a lot of local progressive rock bands in the Rochester area at the time. Nothing earth-shatteringly novel, just a sound of its times and some interesting rock songs. Rock music took off for many distant lands after that time and has never returned to this rather simple, maybe slightly pretentious at times but not ostentatious, sound.

Here’s a song from the Sherbet era:



Here’s the 80s Sherbs manifestation (same personnel, according to their Wikipedia entry). Quite a bit different, but you can see where it came from:



I’m really glad that people are archiving all of these old TV show appearances of bands on Youtube. Of course, the bands in these shows are lip syncing these songs (or something close to that). But you get a flavor of their studio sound and what they looked like.