Bubbling Under: The Frost

(Getty Images/Ethan Miller)

Each week, Bubbling Under is dedicated to songs that placed on Billboard‘s “chart below the chart,” ranking singles below the famous Hot 100.

The Detroit music scene does not start with Motown and end with Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, and Grand Funk. The greater Detroit area produced a number of less-famous bands fondly remembered by aficionados of the scene, and still worth listening to years later. One of them is the Frost.

The Frost grew out of an early-’60s band called the Bossmen. Bossmen bass guitarist Mark Farner would eventually end up a member of Grand Funk. Guitarist Dick Wagner went on to form the Frost. They began recording in 1968, but their main claim to fame came with their second album, Rock and Roll Music, parts of which were recorded live at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom. Only one more album would follow, however, before the Frost melted. (Sorry.) Wagner went onto play with Lou Reed on the Berlin album, and he would collaborate with Alice Cooper on albums including Welcome to My Nightmare, Lace and Whiskey, and From the Inside.

The title song from Rock and Roll Music bubbled under the Hot 100 for a single week in February 1970, and undoubtedly melted a few transistor radios, too.

Explore more bubblers.