Sproton Layer

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Sproton Layer was a rock and roll group formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the late 1960s. Their music was mostly hard rock with psychedelic touches.

It was comprised of bass guitarist, singer and primary songwriter Roger Miller and his younger brothers Benjamin Miller on guitar and Laurence Miller on drums. Trumpeter Harold Kirchen (brother^[1] of guitarist Bill Kirchen, a longtime member of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) later joined the group.

Sproton Layer found local success, but earned wider attention when its personnel went on to greater success with other musical groups: Laurence and Benjamin were both members of Destroy All Monsters, and Roger had numerous musical projects, notably art-punk group Mission of Burma and instrumental group Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.

Sproton Layer recorded an albums' worth of material shortly before breaking up in 1970; it went unreleased until 1992 when New Alliance records issued a single of "Lost Behind Words" and a full-length album, With Magnetic Fields Disrupted. Journalist Michael Azerrad^[2] described the recordings as a valuable document of "an amazing band that sounded like Syd Barrett fronting Cream."

The Miller brothers would later occasionally record under the name M3.

[edit] References

1. ^ M3/Sproton Layer URL accessed March 5, 2007
2. ^ Azerrad, Michael. Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991. Little Brown and Company, 2001. ISBN 0-316-78753-1