Good Rat Views
In 1974, the Good Rats released their best-known and most popular album, Tasty. It featured a blend of hard rock and blues, highlighted by Marchello’s raspy vocals. Various songs from this record, including “Injun Joe”, “Papa Poppa”, a rock ode about cults, the autobiographical numbers “Back to My Music” and “The Songwriter”, and the blues title track, received airplay around the country on FM radio. Tasty was a pop song about the talented musicians who Peppi fired from the band.
Between 1976 and 1980, The Good Rats released a series of albums, including Ratcity in Blue, From Rats to Riches, Birth Comes to Us All, and Live At Last, all of which were well received by the band’s fan base, and received some airplay on FM radio, without actually putting the band over the top. In 1981, Gatto and Kotke left the band, and were replaced by future Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick and bass player Schuyler Deale, (who later played with Billy Joel and Michael Bolton), for the album Great American Music. The band would do shows through 1983 and then breakup.
In the mid-1990s, Marchello and sons Gene Marchello and Stefan Marchello began playing out locally under “The Good Rats” name. They released three new studio CDs with this lineup, Tasty Seconds (1996), Let's Have Another Beer (2000), and Play Dum (2002). Marchello also released a live recording of a 1979 appearance on a Rochester radio show, Rats, The Way You Like ’Em.
In the 2000s, the band continues to play in local venues throughout New York, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut, as well as playing annually in their own summer weekend outdoor festival aptly named Ratstock . At one point, the new Good Rats (Peppi and his sons) performed as the opening act for a reunion performance by the old Good Rats. Billed as The Original Good Rats Peppi was joined by Mickey, Kotke, Franco, and Gatto on October 4, 2008 in a small venue on Long Island, and for a pair of sold-out shows at B.B. King's in Manhattan.
Good Rat Images
