Frye Hall is long gone. All that’s left are memories.

The dance hall stood on what is now Holiday Inn by the Bay on Spring Street in Portland. Back in the day, the stuffy old brick structure hosted teen dances just about every weekend.

“If you were in a band back then, you worked every weekend. I feel bad for kids now who want to play live music. There is no place to play anymore,” said Tom Dyhrberg, who played in the band The Untame Sound.

The Untame Sound rotated weekends at Frye Hall with The Talismen and Love Inc., among others. “It was a fantastic time,” said Dyhrberg, now 59 and a lawyer.

Dyhrberg and a group of buddies from those rival bands have assembled a super-group of sorts, appropriately called The All-Stars, and will play the Frye Hall Spring Dance at 8 p.m. Saturday.

The band also includes Rob Rocheleau, Brad Harnois, Mike Wormwood, Steve Wark and Mickey Gouzie, and vocalist Alana MacDonald of Devonsquare fame. With the exception of MacDonald, all the musicians are members of the Westbrook High School class of 1970.

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“We were organizing the 40th high school reunion last October, and I called the guys and said, ‘How about we put a band together and lose the DJ?’ It was a huge success. We had a ball, and everybody kept asking when we were going to do it again,” Dyhrberg said.

They’re playing nothing but the hits.

“There aren’t going to be any surprises,” he said. “When we put this group together, rule No. 1 was it had to be a dance tune. And rule No. 2 is it had to be from the ’60s or early 1970s. It should be a blast.

“We’ve all been working musicians, and as time has gone on, we’ve updated our repertoire. But this is the music we grew up with. This is the music that got our juices flowing when we were teenagers.”

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Follow him on Twitter at:

twitter.com/pphbkeyes

 


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