Mike Connors, who played the tv detective Mannix, died yesterday at the age of 91. If you are of a certain age, you will remember that Mannix was a hit tv show for a number of years in the late sixties and early seventies. Mannix was a hip young detective who smoked a lot, chased people in his car a lot and was prone to physical violence, In other words, it was like any other cop/detective show of the era.
Here is a clip from an episode in which Mannix enters a hippie club and experiences the generation gap first hand. And, of course, things quickly turn dangerous. It's a pretty funny clip. Incidentally, Buffalo Springfield is the band on stage at the club.
Can a band of cartoon characters change the world? Probably not. But that didn't keep The Archies from trying. "Sunshine", The Archies' fourth album, is one weird record. The Archies finally join the Age Of Aquarius with some pretty strange results. While most of the album contains your typical upbeat Archies' tunes about romance, dancing and mindless fun, it also touches on such serious subjects as, overpopulation, pollution and world peace. One song even name drops Woodstock and Jimmy Page!
Jeff Barry produced and co-wrote all of the songs on the record. Some of his co-writers include Andy Kim, Bobby Bloom (of "Montego Bay" fame) and lead singer Ron Dante. Perhaps Barry had gotten tired of writing such bubble gum babble as "Sugar, Sugar" and "Jingle Jangle" and wanted to write more "serious" compositions. Maybe he was trying to reach every nine year old Archie fan's inner hippie. Or maybe it was all done as a gag. Who can say for sure but this definitely ain't the same "band" that sang "Shang-Bang-A-Lang"
The album cover is the first indication that we won't be spending the next 35 minutes at the malt shop. The cover depicts a group of people frolicking (dancing...maybe?) at the beach under a glaring super nova like sun. We only see the people in silhouette but they seem to be lacking any...uhh...bathing suits. Now we can't say this for sure and there is nothing gratuitous about the picture, but compare it to the cover of their first album and, well...we've come a long way, baby.
Also, if you look closely, don't the two individuals in the foreground look kind of like aliens? Aliens? Goodnight! Why are naked dancing aliens on the cover of an Archies' album? What the hell is going on here?!?
The first two songs on side one ("Sunshine", "Who's Gonna Love Me?") are your typical early seventies teeny-bopper tunes. But the third song, "Mr. Factory", is where the fun begins. A Floyd Cramer like piano and a bluesy guitar open the track as Ron "Archie" Dante sings about disappearing birds, dirty rivers and pollution spewing automobiles. Although The Archies may have been budding eco-revolutionaries, they were respectable enough kids to address their adversaries as, "Mr. Factory" and "Mr. Motorcar. Sample lyric:
"The air is dark and dirty/When it should be fresh and purty."
The next two songs, "Love And Rock N Roll" and "Over And Over", follow the standard Archies' song formula; upbeat music with lyrics about love repeated, well...over and over.
The only distinguishing feature about either of these songs is the opening guitar lick on "Over And Over" , it is a note for note ripoff of The Music Explosion's, "Little Bit Of Soul". "Little Bit Of Soul" was produced by Kasenetz & Katz, Jeff Barry's bubblegum music rivals. So, it may have been done as a friendly tribute or perhaps a giant "Screw You!" to them.
Side one ends with the catchiest song on the album, "Waldo P. Emerson Jones". A great slice of sunny seventies guitar pop, the band sings about an annoying pathological liar who claims, " He took his chopper up to Woodstock and he worked his way backstage." The supposed helicopter flying Mr. Jones also boasts, "He knows The Beatles, S&G and Jimmy Page."
Now I would say just about every eleven year old in the world knew who The Beatles were back in 1970. Some may have been familiar with Simon & Garfunkel and Woodstock but how many cartoon watching elementary school students were hip to Jimmy Page? If they were, they probably weren't listening to The Archies' new record.
Jimmy Page: The sixth Archie?
Side two kicks off with, "A Summer Prayer For Peace." Traditionally, back in the vinyl era, the producer placed the songs with the most hit potential as the lead off tracks on each side of a record. Apparently, Jeff Barry must have thought that this song about overpopulation had the potential be the "Sugar, Sugar" of 1970.
A slow folky number, Ron Dante and friends implore the 3 billion people of the world to live in peace "forever together" while two stentorian narrators recite population numbers from around the world (France...50 million...Japan....101 million...Australia...12 million etc.) over sad sounding music. You gotta wonder how this song went over at your average suburban slumber party. It's not exactly a fun song to play Twister to.
I guess Jeff Barry knew what he was doing as the song was a big hit overseas. It actually went number 1 in Sweden and South Africa. It did not chart in the U.S. The prayer must have fallen on deaf ears, however, since the world population is at 7.5 billion and growing.
Side two continues with more teeny-bopper fare, "Dance", "Comes The Sun" and the catchy, "Suddenly Susan". Then it's time for one more hippie-let's-all-be-brothers anthem, "One Big Family". Sample lyric:
I have a brother in Birmingham
I have a brother in Amsterdam
I have a brother in Kokomo
I have a brother everywhere I go.
This is followed by the rousing fist pumping chorus:
We're one big family
And our daddy's in the sky
We're one big family
Don't make your brother cry.
This could be a plea for world peace or a scene from the family station wagon on a road trip to Disneyland. It's difficult to say.
The album closes with, "It's The Summertime". We are back in bubblegum territory here with a song about, well...summertime. In fact, it's difficult to forget the name of the tune because the word , "summertime", is repeated nineteen times. Yes, I counted. (And yes, that is sad.)
The Archies' "Sunshine" is a fun/weird artifact from another time. A time when even a band of cartoon characters thought they could change the world. It's worth a listen.
Here is an aircheck of Big Jim Edwards on CKLW-AM from.December 1969. The recording lasts nearly an hour and includes songs, commercials and a newscast.
CKLW was a powerhouse top forty station in the late sixties and early seventies. It was located in Windsor, Ontario but reached Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland. I remember listening to CKLW as a very small boy in northeast, Ohio.
The aircheck includes a wide variety of music including soul, folk, bubble gum, rock n roll and even a reggae cover of an old Sam Cooke classic that I had never heard before. The commercials include advertisements for cigarettes and long forgotten beers. (Anybody, remember Black Label?) The newscast is with reports on Vietnam, peace protests and the death and injury report from the year's deer hunting season. (Talk about a bloodbath!)
Take fifty minutes and go back in time with Big Jim Edwards and CKLW.
Back in the sixties, Bob Dylan was considered a poet. People listened to his songs over and over trying to decipher the secret meanings to his lyrics. Personally, I have always felt that Dylan could have used a good editor. Sure, "A Hard Rains A-Gonna-Fall" is a good tune, but do we really need 321 verses?
It was most likely the "poet angle" that gave some record company guy the bright idea to do an album of someone reciting Dylan lyrics over easy listening musical arrangements. The kind of record that would make your Aunt feel hip. And what better "someone" than that English butler guy on the hit television show "Family Affair".
So Mr. French, the upstanding classy sophisticated man- servant, decides to record an album's worth of song lyrics by some radical hippie commie smart alek Minnesotan. What would Uncle Bill say?
Probably nothing. As long, as the butler kept his trousers pressed, his Argyle socks matched and those two little twins quiet, what did he care what the "help" did on their days off?
What would Sissy say? Also probably not much as I always took her for a Herman's Hermits fan anyway. She probably thought Peter Noone was "dreamy" while Dylan was a "total ick". Which, let's be honest here, he most certainly was.
Don't get me wrong here, I like Uncle Bobby. I used to be one of those people who sat around studying his lyrics to see what hidden meanings they contained. I even wrote a term paper in college examining the lyrics to "Subteranean Homesick Blues".
I still like Dylan but in a pinch I'll take "Monster Mash" over "Desolation Row" any day. As the man himself once sang, "I was so much older than, I'm younger than that now."
Initially, I bought this record for the yuk-yuk factor but over time, the album has grown on me. There is something quite soothing about the combination of Sebastian Cabot's voice, the middle of the road schmaltz musical arrangements and Dylan's over the top lyricism that causes me to fall into a pleasant catatonic stupor. Like a litre NyQuil on an empty stomach, only more lethal.
Listen for yourself.
--Rock N Roll Casey
September 30, 2016
Shangri-La, Ohio Casey's Website
Carry-All Action Playsets
I had forgotten all about these toys until a friend of mine recently purchased one off of e-Bay. (I won't say how much he spent, I am embarrassed for him.)
Marx sold three different Carry-All Action Sets; Fort
Apache, Cape Kennedy and Fighting Knights. These were
popular in my neighborhood for a short time in the very early seventies. Surprisingly, I don't remember if I owned any of these. I remember playing with them but the set could have been owned by one of the kids on my street.
Cape Kennedy was by far the best set as it was loaded with trucks, helicopters, planes, and best of all, rockets. (Or were they warheads and missiles? I guess it depended on how violent your imagination was.) Fort Apache was also great as killing technologically over matched Native Americans (we still called them Indians or "Injuns" back then) was still considered an acceptable game for children to play. I don't remember ever playing Fighting Knights. Perhaps, it was acceptable to my five year old brain to shoot off bombs and missiles and kill "Injuns", I guess I drew a line at the crusades.
One of the best features of each set was the "carry-all" aspect. Each set folded neatly into a suitcase, complete with handle, so you could carry the violence down to your friends house and share the fun.
Check out the commercial below. The kid in the rust colored shirt is Christopher Knight, aka. Peter Brady
I recently spent a couple of weeks barricaded in my family compound/bunker reading two books about the sixties tv show/rock n roll band, The Monkees. Both books, "Monkee Business" by Eric Lefcowitz and "Total Control" by Randi L. Massingill, were fascinating reading. Now I realize that 99% of the world has no desire to read even ONE book about The Monkees and yet, I have read two. I am not sure what exactly this may say about me, but perhaps the words "pathetic" and "sad" come to mind.
In the fourteen days I was holed up reading about the
prefab four, I imagine quite a few of you were doing such constructive activities as, rotating your tires, attending all-important committee meetings, changing the oil in your lawn mower, writing your Congressperson to enact social change and flossing. I would like to thank all of you who did the heavy lifting. Without you, I would never have been able to spend a fortnight lounging around and reading about a fifty year old pop band. For this, I will always be grateful.
To try and fool myself into believing that my recent activities were not a complete waste of time, I have decided to wow and fascinate you with a list of interesting facts I learned from my recent historical study of the made for tv rock n roll band.
"INTERESTING" FACTS:
--Peter Tork was invited to audition for the show after Stephen Stills (Yes, THAT Stephen Stills) was rejected by the producers because of his receding hairline. Before leaving the studio, he was asked if he could recommend anyone who resembled himself but had better hair. Stills advised them to contact his friend Peter Tork.
--Michael Nesmith's father abandoned the family when he was a very young boy. As a result, he lived in extreme poverty through most of his childhood. However, during his teenage years his mother, who was working as a secretary in Dallas, invented Liquid Paper (ie. Whiteout). She eventually became a multi-millionaire.
--Both Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith recorded a lead vocal track for "Pleasant Valley Sunday". Instead of picking one or the other to use on the final recording, the producer mixed both voices together. Although, on record it sounds like one voice, it is actually both voices overdubbed together.
--For many years, Micky Dolenz was the voice of Snuggles, that annoying fabric softener tv commercial bear.
Snuggles aka. Nicky Dolenz
--Before he became a Monkee, Davy Jones was set to star as a pair of identical cousins (one American and one English) on a prime time television show. At the last minute, however, the studio decided to change the main characters
from two male cousins to a couple of female cousins. "The Patty Duke Show" went on to be a hit tv series for a few years in the sixties.
There you have it. While you were doing your duty and contributing to society, I was shirking my responsibilities and picking up completely useless information on a pretend rock n roll band from the nineteen-sixties. Ain't life grand?
Don't forget, The Monkees are currently touring and just released a new album called, "Good Times". Although it seems impossible, they actually sound happier than they did in the sixties. "Our Own World", one of the standout tracks on the album, is so upbeat and jangely it makes "I'm A Believer" sound like a funeral dirge. Take a listen for yourself.
When this album came out back in 1966, I was six months old and I don't remember it making much of an impression on me. I must admit, I wasn't very open minded back then and I was a bit fixated on things like patty cake, keeping my pacifier in my mouth and playing with my father's car keys. But through the years, this album has grown on me and I am quite fond of it now.
The Challengers never broke out nationally, like The Ventures, but they were superstars in southern California. Their first album, Surfbeat, is still one of the best selling surf instrumental albums of all-time and they even hosted their own local television show.
"California Kicks" has some great instrumental rock n roll tunes including, "Balboa", "One Track Mind" and "North Shore" and includes some cool cover versions of "Louie, Louie", The Raiders' "Kicks" and "Shakin All Over".
The album also has one of the grooviest album covers of the mid-sixties. Every time I look at the smiling young people in their pre-hippie mod clothes standing in front of the painted sunset under the banner, "California Kicks", I am ready to hop the first plane to So-Cal and hang out in a malt shop near the beach. The only problem:
the young people are probably Grandparents now, the Challengers' television show was cancelled a long long time ago and nobody hangs out in malt shops anymore.
Take a listen below.
