Hello music lovers of a certain age! Today I’m gonna yak about one of my all time favorite bands! Can you guess who? Yep! Gold star for you bro! Or sis, or any other variation! All are welcome, and would have been welcomed by these guys too.! Just look how happy and sunshiny they are! It ended kinda badly but for a few years in the mid-late 60s this band was serious competition to even those fab guys! The string of hits was amazing, every song a great one, and it went on for a good long time. They had movie soundtrack success too early on, in just the right kind of movies to enhance, not destroy, their reputations as music people. A Woody Allen movie! Back when he was still doing stand up comedy and shilling vodka in magazine ads!
Honestly I’m not intimately familiar with this band’s history. I do know that they were mostly from the “folk” scene. That could mean a lot of things back then, but it meant in this case that they knew a lot about and could play older blues and jug band music, with some familiarity with country music too judging by a few song lyrics. And most importantly they were fans of the new style of pop music that had been brought back home by the Beatles, then expanded on (by those Beatles again mostly) until it was a whole new thing that everyone copied. These guys did that too, and the result was a string of hits that even now most people know, even some young folks! They get used in movies as a way to establish time and place or just to have a great song in there instead of something newer by some DJ with habits nobody wants to think about.
I also know that the band ended on kind of a bummer of an incident, a drug bust involving the wacky one, guitarist Zalman Yanovsky, a Canadian. He got nabbed for marijuana possession while in San Francisco with fellow band member Steve Boone, which believe it or not was the very first weed bust of the 60s among pop/rock artists! And since Zal was fearful of being deported right as the band was at the height of their success, they chose to cooperate with authorities and name their source for that ounce of probably pretty bad weed, by today’s standards at least. Warning!!! Digression ahead!!!
I’m old enough to remember what weed was like before even Colombian came along in the mid-70s, and it wasn’t great. Tons of stems and seeds, and no buds to speak of. A fluffy bag of brownish shake was my first ounce, passed to me right in a classroom, probably in junior high. You needed a whole joint, and it tasted awful yet smelled up wherever you were like crazy, including your clothing and body. Colombian wasn’t much better. It wasn’t until “sinse” started appearing in the 80s that things got more powerful, though fancy varietals like Hawaiian and Thai Stick were occasionally around all along if you were rich and knew the right someone, even the good black hash at times. The green/brown stuff wasn’t worth the price but you’d still buy it to make sure. I was a dealer for most of my life in western NY past age 15 or so, even sold to mom sometimes! I saw up close how the product changed over time, always improving, always getting crazy expensive too!
A short, further digression (hopefully!) to tell y’all about my weed guy in high school, who sold me a quarter pound every month or two like clockwork. This was the Colombian, a step up from the Mexican brick shit mom was still getting. This stuff had buds, but seeds too, and lots of ’em. Gatefold album covers with matte textures were how I usually got things separated, but there was always the strainer if necessary, or if you were out of weed entirely. When weed supplies were “dry”, I’d take my refuse pile, full of seeds and stems and ashes and whatnot, and strain that shit. It worked, until you were down to the crushed up seeds, which were like smoking paint and didn’t work at all.
Anyway, my weed guy was the straightest looking kid imaginable. Glasses, short hair, no outward evidence of puberty, a nerdy demeanor… You’d never ever suspect him of dealing in anything illicit, let alone the deadly dagga! It was the same routine every time I visited his house, in the same confusing tract of quickly built houses as mine. I could almost walk there! His mom would answer the door and I’d be greeted warmly, sometimes offered cookies fresh from the oven! They were great cookies too! The peanut butter ones were my favorite! I’d often leave with a little ziplock bag of those, along with the larger one concealed in my Levi corduroy winter coat, or a jean jacket if it was warm enough.
After greeting mom and sussing out the cookie situation it was down to the basement, where my guy would greet me and we’d go through an elaborate process designed to fool mom into thinking everything was on the up and up. He had a nice stereo setup in his tiny slice of the basement, which was sectioned off with curtains in between the little cubicles where the offspring all slept and did whatever else they could do with almost no privacy. I never met his siblings or dad, just mom. It was weird, but hey, my family was weirder, so whatever man! Let’s get on with it! But we’d have to sit there and absorb whatever he played, which was super predictable. It was either that Supertramp album that started with “Bloody Well Right” or it was Cheap Trick’s Live at Buddhokan, with “You’re mommy’s alright, etc…” Never once was it anything else. We were there for one reason only. And after a couple tunes it was time for business. He’d pull out the triple beam from under his always made bed, my place to sit, and the weed, also hidden somewhere. Minutes later I was on my way home, full of cookies, with a supply for later, after the weed got tested for quality.
It was really quite the suburban experience! Complete with kitchen appliances in that avocado color that was popular then with those that wanted to show the world they were as hep as any family. I miss that guy, and his mom. I should look him up! I bet he’s an accountant, maybe an architect. He was smart, and very good at subterfuge. Shit! He’s probably in the CIA! I better say no more… Digression over!!! Bail out everybody!
Sorry! Sometimes an opportunity can’t be ignored, and I love telling that story! But yes, the Lovin’ Spoonful broke up over all this shit, and it wasn’t for the reasons you might think. It was because they’d lost all credibility with the hippies by cooperating with the police, who busted their source, and he didn’t keep quiet about it, at all! He made noise! The band were suddenly pariahs, betrayers to the hippie ethos! So a change was made to please the weasels and try to get the hippies back. Zal had been erratic and saying unfavorable things about the band in the press even before the bust, so it was easy for them to make him the scapegoat. They fired him and got another guy, Jerry Yester. He was a friend of Zal’s and they’d soon start a production team together that had clients like Pat motherfucking Boone! You can’t make this shit up! Zal also made an album, which of course didn’t stand a chance. The goons were unhappy…
It can’t be overstated, just how big a thing this bust and everything around it was. The band never recovered from it, and it was the first example of the hippies as a movement having this much direct influence on the career of a specific act. In fact, get this! One reason, maybe the most important reason. that the Grateful Dead became heroes with hippies everywhere was that when they were busted, they made a big to do about NOT doing what those bad easterners the Lovin’ Spoonful had done. It was talked about in the underground press continuously, and there were even protesters! Picket signs, lost friends, all kinds of bullshit!!! Ralph Gleason, a hippie icon who knew what the facts were, tried to explain the situation to his followers, even writing about it in Rolling Stone’s second issue, but it was too late. The Spoonful were the very first casualties of audience ignorance and stupidity! The hippies were first with everything!
Back to our story! I’ve mentioned the string of hits, and the bust. There really ain’t much more to it. They made one more album without Zal but it was bad and wasn’t ever gonna sell anyway because the goons hated ’em now. They disbanded shortly after that, with John Sebastian moving on to a rather sedate solo career, at least until Vinnie Barbarino became a thing. I hope he got the publishing on that one! “Welcome Back” was a pretty great tune the first 30-40 times, and it sold like crazy, plus the TV money. He shoulda made millions! I bet he made a few thousand. Weasels gonna weasel…
See, the Spoonful had from the very beginning been paired with a record label that was unusually mob-encrusted, so no money was coming from that, or the publishing either probably. One of the head weasels at Buddha was Neil fucking Bogart!!! That guy was the very definition of sleaze, and responsible for both disco and Kiss becoming bigger than they deserved. He was also the man behind one of the absolute worst movies ever made, the truly godawful Can’t Stop the Music, starring the goddamn Village People and Valerie Perrine, whose promising acting career was ruined. It was directed by Nancy Walker, Rhoda’s mom on TV and also the spokesperson for Bounty paper towels, the quicker picker upper! Bogart had been a practicing weasel since the early 60s, with his involvement in Dick “I’m not a mob guy!” Clark’s Philadelphia labels, Cameo-Parkway to be specific. Clark was dirty as shit but looked like a boy scout, so they used Alan Freed, also mobbed up but less icky, as the fall guy when they invented the word “payola” to distract from all the mob activity
Kiss and disco and everything else thrived because they had fake hits fueled by mob profits! Remember when each Kiss member got an album released on the same day? Now you know why! Even if something didn’t sell they could make big bucks by selling the leftover crates of LPs as cut-outs, those albums that had a notch cut into the cover by an actual chain saw usually! I bought lots of cut-outs. They were in every store that had records too, even the Fay’s Drugs that I went to. Bought those bad James Gang albums there, and plenty more. I think they were a buck each…
The mob was everywhere in the music biz back then, regardless of how classy the label was! Everyone did it back then! Even Pink Floyd! The great book Hit Men (by Fred Dannen) has a whole opening chapter about how they did it with that terrible “The Wall” thing. The mob was in the promotional game too now, and as such had a stranglehold on what was allowed to make the Billboard Hot 100. It really was that simple, I promise you that. I knew guys in Rochester, a very very Italian city, just small enough for lots of hits to take place without too much national attention. Every year there were a few, and that’s just the ones that made the police blotters. There were plenty more!
I knew, or at least experienced, some of these guys, even asked one about music stuff, well beyond his level and intellect. They’d come rolling into the little pool supply place I worked at, Tomar Pools, owned by Tony Marcella, a very nice guy, and they’d just start filling up their cars or vans with patio furniture, umbrellas, whatever! The most disturbing thing was when they bought normal pool supplies like chlorine or bags of sand. You always wondered how they were gonna use that stuff, which brought some grisly thoughts to mind, for me at least. And I know ol Tony wasn’t happy about the guys. They’d peel outta there throwing lit fireworks in their wake, cherry bombs mostly. They were a loud and boisterous bunch those rascals were! Speaking of Rascals, that great band’s drummer was from Rochester, Gene Cornish! I always wondered if that one date, with Wanda Cornish, had been with a relative of a Rascal. Digression ahead!!! Again!!!
Wanda lived around the corner from me and had a body like a goddess, and she was pretty too. Unusual looking but pretty, with curly hair, almost an afro type thing, and bad teeth just like me! I’d been deep in lust for years, but blew it bad by taking her to see Animal House, which I’d already seen and should have known was too much for the occasion. We barely even talked! I was a nervous wreck the whole time, and what little I said probably ruined the movie for her. I dropped her off at home, with not even a handshake, making a big deal of how I had something else to do. Ugghhh… I’m pretty ashamed of that now! To cap off the worst date ever, I made sure to say very dumb things within earshot of her the next day in chemistry lab. We never spoke again until years later when she knocked on my (mom’s) front door, asked if I had some weed to sell. I did, but that’s all she wanted. It was very clear… We coulda been very happy together, but I wasn’t ready yet for all that. Parts were, just not the brain part yet…
Back to the story, again… The remaining Spoonfuls made that last album, which tanked of course. Why would the goons pump up that record now? It was over. The last band that was squarely aimed at the Top 40 but still had lots of greatness went bye bye just as the peace and love was taking over everywhere, even at grandma’s house, where her faves like the Bob Hope specials were starting to book hippie approved shit. That explains the success of lots of acts that seemed OK on the surface but were really bored studio guys being hired as the pretend band for like the Banana Splits records. Remember them? Fleegle, Drooper, the elephant one, Snorky? No?!? I remember! Not fondly, but it did have weirdness going for it, as did Lance Link, Secret Chimp, which I think also had a “band”. Pretending to be chimps was just an afternoon’s work for these guys as they waited and waited for that next Dean Martin record to be past the planning stages. I’ll have to find some Lance Link tunes! I bet it’s Tommy Tedesco on guitar. He played on everything! He was on the Gong Show, as a contestant, wearing a tutu and surprisingly little else! The big guitar was a relief to all who tuned in that day. I tuned in! Couldn’t miss the guy who had a column in Guitar Player Magazine for years! Informative shit too! Like Larry Carlton’s golf handicap! Which studios had vending machines, even real food!
The Spoonful have always been personally important to me, because as an 8-9 year old kid I kept begging for Monkees records but dad gave me a Spoonful album and an explanation: “The Monkees are garbage! Listen to this! It’s way better!” And with that his businessman pants were on their way out the door. He never once wore jeans! Ever! Old man pants made of highly combustible chemicals were his favorites. Black, grey, brown, tan, he didn’t care. It was the feel of rayon he craved! He wore these velour polo shirts usually too, blue, with horizontal stripes. We loved those shirts! So velvety soft! He was also, as a bald man, a hat guy, with a large assortment, but usually it was one of those floppy newsboy caps everyone wore back then, the Donnie Hathaway! He was a big reason those hats sold at all… Then it was the Jimmie Walker bucket hat, fashionable even now!
I keep digressing into family shit! Sorry! We’re about done here anyway. I can’t think of anything else to say, so I’ll start the embedding of tunes, in order of my own preference. One tune, which would have been first, I posted a while ago, with accompanying wordiness as I do, so go find that! Then come back and listen to these. Bad men will get you if you don’t! That’s a joke, or is it?
Second on the list, and first here, is this one, one of the bigger hits, right in the middle of the string of hits. Ladies and others, I give you “Daydream”:
Love those lyrics, and I never mentioned it above but Sebastian’s voice is among my favorites of all time, along with Lennon and Spampinato. That last one is Joey, with NRBQ. They once did a tune that was just them spelling out his name musically, which was pretty good! I love them soo much! They had Sebastian play with them frequently, both live and on records too. Lots of similarities, primarily the songwriting and production excellence. NRBQ managed to avoid the mob as far as I know, but still never rose above bar band status except for brief periods when a major label would sign ’em and promote one album, then drop ’em when even the goons couldn’t get the necessary airplay no matter how much coke was in play. That happened a few times, the last gasp being in the late 80s, when Virgin gave it a try. They got on some late night shows and played great, but nobody bought the record so back on the bus…
I only saw NRBQ live once, and it sucked! I guess the club owner fucked ’em, because they only played one brief and angry set – Al was livid, you could tell by the scowl, and he refused to solo too… I tried to find them after that set but they’d already bolted, leaving behind a half eaten pizza, still steaming in the box. I don’t blame ’em, and I never went to that place again. Motherfuckers!
I should mention also that at one time, in the 70s I think, the Q were managed by none other than WWF superstar manager Captain Lou Albano, who you may recall also managed or was involved with Cindy Lauper. It worked with her, briefly, but it didn’t do shit for NRBQ, despite some real fun TV ads, included on some of the reissued albums! It was a fun period, but as unprofitable as everything else. Remember Connie Chung? CBS news babe? Married that awful Maury Povich? Well she once did a news thing on NRBQ, joining them on the bus for a few hours, maybe longer. It was a great but kinda sad thing to watch. You get to see Al, the big one, sneaking his Taco Bell onto the bus, and Joey is seen having a pay phone conversation with his wife, the country singing legend Skeeter Davis, who they made an album with but it still didn’t work! They really were in love as far as I can tell! He’s super nice on the phone. It’s heartwarming!
That’s it I guess. Enough digressions to make even the all time champ at that, O’s color commentator and former Jockey underwear model Jim “I’m in the Hall of Fame and you’d better say it or else!” Palmer. He’d do digressions from three levels deep without batting a heavily made up eye! I like Jim! His big claim to fame locally was loving pancakes so his nickname was “Cakes”. Or maybe that was just his way of fending off some of the women who saw the Jockey ads. Maybe Cakes meant something else!
I have a few more tunes, then y’all can be on your way to the rest of the fine content here. Spend a few hours with that, maybe comment or like something, or even subscribe! That’d make me ever so happy! I’d have to reward that entity with something! Maybe some guitar picks since I never use ’em. I play nude!
Here’s the next tune, probably the one that people think of when/if they think of these guys at all. I give you the great “Do You Believe in Magic”!
I’ll close this post out with what I believe was their biggest hit, “Summer in the City”, which I always thought was later but was from 1966! Seems like it’s a few years ahead of its time… Reminds me a little of that Blood Sweat and Tears stuff that came in 69-70 and was really pretty musical. The singer made it hard to take but it was fairly complex shit for pop music! Here’s “Summer in the City”…
Alright, that’s it! I’m gonna throw a bunch of pictures down here because I saved them planning to use them and I hate waste and its management. That was a mob joke! Please don’t tell anyone! Especially if they have a rolled up newspaper! There’s a lead pipe in there!!! Run!!! But first listen, won’t you? It’s the neighborly thing to do… Won’t you be my neighbor? Here are those unused pics:
This is the first album I heard, and still my favorite. The last one before the whole mess with Zal… “Boredom” is a great tune from this one!
Leave a comment