Note: For an index of all articles in all three Favorite Songs series, click here, then scroll down.

Who They Are: In a just universe, Good Rats would have been to Long Island as Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band were to New Jersey: local heroes who turned vivid depictions of their hometown, gritty, blue-collar world into a universal musical and lyrical language, that resonated with listeners coast to coast, regardless of whether they knew where Asbury Park (or Hempstead, or Huntington) were. From where I sit, that would have been not only a just universe, but a better one, as I’d much rather listen to the Rats than the Boss any old day, for sure. The group traces its roots back to 1964 at St. John’s University, where singer-songwriter Peppi Marchello recruited four fellow students to form The U-Men, who mostly played covers, slowly injecting their own original material into the mix as they built a following in the grittier clubs of New York City’s Long Island boroughs and out into Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Following some personnel shifts and a name change, the evolving quintet issued a somewhat atypical self-titled solo album in 1969. Their “classic line-up” cohered by about 1972, with Peppi joined by his brother Mickey and John “The Cat” Gatto on guitars, with Lenny Kotke on bass and Joe Franco on drums. (Peppi “played” the Baseball Bat on stage as his primary non-vocal instrument). That quintet issued four studio albums and one live album between 1974 and 1979, after which Gatto and Kotke left, replaced by future KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick and bassist Schuyler Deale, best known for his later work with Billy Joel. That version of the group issued one studio album before sundering in 1983. Peppi continued to work and record with his sons, Gene and Stefan, eventually re-adopting the Good Rats moniker in the 1990s, with occasional shows credited to “The Original Good Rats” reuniting the classic era quintet alongside its latter-day descendant. Sadly, the Pep died of a heart attack in 2013; Stefan Marchello continues the family music business to this day with his own long-running version of the group.

When I First Heard Them: My first exposure to Good Rats came in the mid-1970s, when my family moved from my native southern climes to Mitchel Field, smack dab in the middle of Nassau County, Long Island. I was a little dislocated weirdo at that point, with an odd musical penchant for Steely Dan, Jethro Tull and Steppenwolf. I can distinctly remember going to the base exchange soon after we moved there, poring through its pleasingly large (and cheap! and sales-tax-free!) assortment of records, and seeing a horrifyingly garish album cover regularly on the display racks, with a giant cartoon rat sitting on a pile of fetid garbage, upon which it happily feasted. Here it is:

Later, another album appeared near it, bearing the same band name (“Good Rats;” they are agnostic and inconsistent about whether there is a “The” in the name, but I personally don’t use it), but this time with a picture of five impossibly hairy dudes on the cover, some with facial hair of a variety that just didn’t grow in rural South Carolina. It looked like this:

I got bold enough eventually to shell out some of my newspaper delivery route earnings (or maybe my earnings from my first writing job with the base newspaper, I’m not quite sure) to score both of these albums, and was thrilled to discover the truly outstanding rock and roll music contained on each of them. I faithfully bought their subsequent albums as they emerged, and count them to this day as a key cultural relic of my four-year stint on Long Island.

Why I Love Them: Peppi Marchello was cut from similar cloth to, say, the slightly-better-known Roger Chapman of Family, both of them great, braying, brash, belting frontman with startling vibratos and over-the-top stage styles. Good Rats’ vintage line up also featured the exceptional guitar work of Mickey Marchello and John Gatto, who could easily noodle their way into Wishbone Ash-styled twin-guitar wonderlands on the songs that Peppi gave them to romp and stomp upon. Good Rats’ classic songs remain distinct and unique to this day, ostensibly anchored in straight-forward blues-based rock, but with weirdly prog-leaning twists, interesting arrangements (Flo and Eddie produced From Rats to Riches, arguably their best-sounding album), and amusing-to-trenchant lyrics with oddly impressionistic and surreal elements spicing the stew. I saw them play live a few times in the late ’70s and early ’80s, first opening for Rush at Nassau Coliseum (with home-team fan support, they blew the Canadian headliners off the stage, honestly), then at some sort of summer music festival at (I think?) Eisenhower Park, then lastly at a club venue in Huntington (fake ID much?) right before I left the Island, and they rocked their audiences like nobody’s business, no matter how many people they were playing for, or the glamor (or lack thereof) of the their venues.

#10. “Mr. Mechanic,” from From Rats to Riches (1978)

#9. “Does It Make You Feel Good,” from Ratcity in Blue (1976)

#8. “300 Boys,” from Tasty (1974)

#7. “On My Way to School,” from Great American Music (1981)

#6. “Tasty,” from Tasty (1974)

#5. “School Days,” from Birth Comes to Us All (1978)

#4. “Papa Poppa,” from Tasty (1974)

#3. “Birth Comes to Us All,” from Birth Comes to Us All (1978)

#2. “Injun Joe,” from Tasty (1974)

#1. “City Liners,” from Birth Comes to Us All (1978)