YOU MAKE ME NOTHING by THE ENERGETTICS

A decade older than New Edition and from an entirely different block than NKOTB, the Energettics make a case for being Boston's original boy band. In 1974, Mattapan, Massachusetts pre-teens Joey Lites and Bernard Franklin linked up with Herbert "Pee Wee" Jackson, Calvin Shepard, and Tony Borders at the Boston Black Action Committee. "You Make Me Nothing," paired with the Carpenters' "Rainy Days and Mondays", comprised the quintet's debut single on Cobra Records. After a Stanton Davis-arranged follow-up release, they signed to Atlantic but were dropped when their sacrifice to disco bombed, only to re-emerge briefly in the early `80s when boyhood neighbor Arthur Baker reconfigured them as Planet Patrol for a run on Tommy Boy Records.