Lawrence Gaylord ("LG") Snyder was born in 1950, grandson of James L. Snyder of the Snyder Railroad Company out of New England. Coming from a rather well-off family young LG got, according to his own recollection, infected by the explosion of amazing new rock sounds, and especially the garage rock of the mid-60s, hat showed him that talent could be secondary to enthusiam when playing rock'n'roll music. Trained on piano by his mother, he switched to guitar, despite the misgivings of his family about such a 'vulgar' instrument. He started writing his own songs at around 15, then recruited his first band among his class mates: Canadian import Eric St. Laurent on lead guitar, Tommy Zordi on bass and Zack Domino on drums.
They were first known as The Nihilists, a name quickly abandoned, then as the Back Stars, before becoming The Firemen, and then The Firefighters. Snyder had a different name planned for the last iteration of the band, but more on that later. Throughout the last two years of high school the band played the usual hig school balls, homecoming and the occasional house party, their repertoir mostly consisting of sped up, guitar-heavy version -s of the hits of the day, plus an original song or two. After finishing high school - something his rather conservative family insisted on - he decided to try for a career in music instead of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a doctor.
One of two surviving pictures of The Firefighters
The band had built a primitive rehearsal room in the back half of his family's guest house and were allowed to perform their "awful noise" (LG's father Lawrence Sr.). The band managed to get a publishing contract with local mini label Roof Music, and some studio time to work on material. Musically, there was just one problem: Though an extroverted and entertaining front man, LG Snyder wasn't much of a singer. But since he was footing the bill thanks to his trust fund, his band mates had little choice but to put up with sometimes less than entirely successful vocal performances by their leader. In the DIY spirit of the garage rock movement it's probably fair to say, that they had a point.
In February 1968 the band cut a tape of eight songs, three originals and five covers, including covers of the recent hits "Nights In White Satin" and "A Whiter Shade Of Pale". Roof Music, however, had by this time started to leave garage bands behind to focus on psychedelic acts, and despite some overtures of the band in that direction, PeteYork at Roof Music didn't feel that The Firefighters' music had a chance of success. So a proposed single with their cover of "Hey Joe", backed by the original "Room To Room With The devil" was scrapped. This, as it turned out, was the beginning of the end for the band.
Zack Domino got his draft notice, then subsequently went to Canada to dodge the draft. At around the same time, St. Laurent returned to Quebec to work in his family's furniture store. With the band down to just Zordi and Snyder, Zordi decided to work fulltime at the family restaurant, and Snyder was left without a band. Dejectedly, he finally followed into the family-endorsed career plan and enrolled at Boston University to become a doctor. Even after moving to Texas later in his life, "Doc" Snyder always preciously kept the reel-to-reel tape of The Firefighters' demo tape, mostly in a well-tempered garage. It was upon his death in 2018 from a heart attack that his kids found the tape and were amazed what their father had been up to so many years before. In trying to transfer the reels to digital, local music lover Sergei Gleithman was astonished by the results when proposing the transfer in his music shop and called Toby "Rocko" Shamani of Boston-based independent label Jamaica Plain Records. Shamani, a fan of original ska and garage rock decided to issue the record and so in 2019 the mini-album We Are The Firefighters finally saw the light of day, more than sixty years after its recording.

Still in the same space...and sadly no firefighter costumes (they were still The Back Stars at the time, I believe...)
Bratislav Metulskie from garagedoor.ru opines: "These guys were a hidden treasure. Behind the rather extravagant vocal sylings of lead singer LG Snyder, the band could produce a racket of noise when they wanted to, but where also able to rein things in, especially on their surprisingly subtle take on traditional 'I'm Going Back To Old Texas Now'. The finding and remastering of these tapes long lost to time and memory is a major cause for celebration and any garage rock and pysychedelic rock fan should celebrate this release, especially since the sound quality is simply astounding for recordings that are now over 55 years old. Major thumbs up!". Robert Overbarger from Allmusic adds that "while the recordings, much like the band itself, are only a minor addition to the garage band canon, the finding of these tapes is a major event".
Like most garage bands, The Firefighters mainly traded in covering popular genre songs, including - inevitably - "Hey Joe", a band that seemingly every garage band had in their repertoire (though they miss out on "Hang On Sloopy"!). They also cover The Who's "My Generation" as the opening track here, while "Nights In White Satin" is a pretty straightforward cover. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" gets a swinging, jazz-inspired arragement, set to what sounds almost like a polk rhythm, and including a trumpet solo. Maybe they weren't geniuses, but The Firefighters definitely tried some stuff! This is also true for their slowed down take on "I'm Going To Leave Old Texas Now".
Snyder in 2016, guitar still in hand...
Of the originals, "Room To Room With The Devil" is pretty much early hard rock, as is "Beside The Snake", which adds some nifty psychedelic touches. And then there's the band's 'theme' song, picking up the band's original, more vulgar name. It took some convincing from Pete York at Roof Music that The Firefuckers as a band name would mean that there was no way to officially distribute their recordings, so Snyder renamed the band and also rewrote their band anthem "We are the Firefuckers" to "We are the Firefighters". For this re-issue, the original, untouched version of the song - also discovered on the tape - has been used.
So, folks, are you ready for some Firefighters to cause a ruckus and bring you back into the heady days of the late 60s? Then let LG Snyder and his parthers in crime noise take it away...