The Archies – The Definitive Archies: Greatest Hits and More!

Real Gone Music Modestly Releases Bubblegum Classics from America’s Greatest Fictitious Band

Link: Real Gone Music

In this new era of Archie fandom there are comic books that feature Archie versus zombies or Predator or Jughead and werewolves. There are new levels of love triangles and Netflix has us burning through seasons of Riverdale.

Although a comic book was recently dedicated to the gang’s one-off musical endeavor, this fictional band aptly named The Archies and its prominence has not been felt since the original 1968-69 fictional launch of The Archie Show. Boasting hit single after hit single, The Archies exited the 1960s with some of the greatest bubblegum songs in pop music history.

In this world of streaming saturation, it is hard to get excited over a “Greatest Hits” album, but when Real Gone Music compiled The Archies’s hits together on vinyl—something not witnessed in over 30 years—my excitement could not be contained. Hearing immortal pop classics like “Sugar Sugar” or “Jingle Jangle” in its purity now is still a unique experience just as it was in the late 1960s. And to feel the in-the-moment vibrancy of “Sugar Sugar,” a post-poodle skirt innocence under a sunny glow of Saturday mornings, now feels like Kodochrome folklore.

Yet when you have Jeff Barry, whose songwriting collaborations with then-wife Ellie Greenwich include “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Be My Baby,” and “Rock Me Gently” Andy Kim penning the greatest pop song in history over the phone, The Archies was a head-boppin force to be reckoned with. Add in ‘60s rockers like “Sunshine” or “Bicycles, Rollers Skates, and You,” this collection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9nE2spOw_orolls from one glorious gem after another.

Much like The Monkees, Ron Dante’s vocals defined pop music with a certain atmosphere and logistics that fascinated children who thought it was the voice of Archie as well as doey-eyed teens who looked for a cuter, non-hippy view of late 1960s pop. The Archies made room for 1970s mega bands like The Partridge Family or The Osmond Brothers.

What Real Gone Music did was properly preserve and collect songs from the band’s repertoire. This album is an essential monument acknowledging the band’s talent as a group even if it meant cutting the album out of the back of a cereal box at one time.

The Archies – Sugar Sugar (Original 1969 Music Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9nE2spOw_o