(Christopher Arnott continues to convert his 7″ vinyl collection to mp3s.)
1. The Turtles, Elenore/Surfer Dan.
I remember when Peter Sellars, at the height of his ubiquity in the 1980s Boston arts scene—when he was running the Boston Shakespeare Company, staging special events at his Harvard alma mater, contriving one-act spectacles for local arts festivals, directing operas around the country and even programming a film series at a big Boston Cineplex—he was included in one of the local-celebrity surveys of “what’s your favorite song of all time?” and chose this one.
“Elenore”’s the famous follow-up to “Happy Together.” Its inexperienced composer Howard Kaylan, better known as one of the band’s lead vocalists, tells of how he carefully studied the specific strengths of “Happy Together” (by the not-all-that-much-more-experienced songwriting team of Bonner & Gordon) and refashioned them into a song that exemplified those elements without just aping them.
It’s a sterling example of rousing by-the-numbers songcraft, but what everyone really loves about “Elenore” is not how it honors conventions but how it mocks them. The line “Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell, and you really do me well, you’re my pride and joy etcetera” has brashness at every turn. Kaylan’s said folks often ask him if he knew how comical it was to use “etcetera” in a love lyric, which is an amazing example of how an audience can make themselves feel superior to a performer. Of course he knew—hadn’t he also put a “gee” and a “do me well” in the same line. The Turtles were the most whimsical band of the ‘60s, and only got crazier when, as Flo & Eddie, Kaylan and fellow Turtles vocalist Mark Volman joined Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and later formed their own subversive act.
This copy of Elenore is cracked and unplayable, but no way am I throwing it out. The Turtles were one of the first bands I ever loved—when I was seven years old, I had two pet turtles I named Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman—and “Elenore” is a key reason why. (“Can’t You Hear the Cows,” from the same album, The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, is the other, but that’s a passionate reckoning for another time.) The flip side (also from “Battle of the Bands”), “Surfer Dan,” is a reminder that Volman and Kaylan had been gigging since their mid-teens, when they were in the surf combo The Crossfires.
2. Dinky Doo, Slow Motion/Superdrag, “Sleeping Beauty.” At a time in the mid-‘90s when it seemed that all the good songwriters were going alt-country, bands like Superdrag (and Splitsville and Best Kissers in the World) held out hope for good ol’ power pop, even if some of them did later soften. This split single, which I’d forgotten I’d owned and maybe even never have heard before now (stamped “No. 00104” of a limited edition and probably purchased along with a mountain of other stuff when the Tune Inn went out of business) has power chords to match the powerful emotions—the antithesis of the whispery maudlin strains alt-country was peddling. Both sides are loose live-in-studio takes that sound like club shows you wish you were at. I did get to see Superdrag once, but it was at Toad’s, where they were playing at rock stars rather than ruling a smaller room the way they surely could.
So, who Dinky Doo? No idea, and no Superdrag, but enough like them to make this a well-conceived single, a double-shot warning for those who would soften pop.
3. Richard Chamberlain, Love Me Tender/All I Do is Dream of You.
I am of the opinion that Richard Chamberlain should have had more of a singing career. This single, however, is not the evidence, Chamberlain’s thin voice buttressed by Jimmy Haskell’s overreaching orchestra. The band’s jaunty take on the flapper standard “All I Do is Dream of You” (the song during which Debbie Reynolds jumps out of a cake in “Singing in the Rain”) practically moves into Louis Prima swingersville, while Chamberlain gets behind. “Love Me Tender” benefits from what we now know of the erstwhile Dr. Kildare’s personal life. Sung by a man who seemed (from his memoirs) to be comfortable with his homosexuality, yet unable to come out to the legions of young female fans, the song choice of “Love Me Tender” seems loaded and clouded.
Where I began to appreciate Richard Chamberlain’s singing potential was when he toured in the musicals The Sound of Music and Scrooge and made me cry both times.
4. Willie Loco Alexander, Kerouac/Mass. Ave.
One of the seminal singles of the 1970s Boston music scene, and thus a major part of my life. This is the studio version of Kerouac, which also appeared in a live version on the Live at the Rat album in 1976. For years, due to shoddy turntables and such, I had no idea what was being said in the line which I now clearly hear as “you’re on the top of my shelf.” Mass. Ave. is an anecdotal slice of Boston life as detailed and vital in its way as Lou Reed’s vision of New York in “Walk on the Wild Side.”
5. The Gravel Pit, The Devil/Paul Westerberg. Recorded at Wallingford’s Trod Nossel studios but mastered at the world-famous Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, where The Gravel Pit travelled to record their first full-length album, this 45 was released on the New Haven-based Caffeine Disk label in 1992. The B-side joke of naming a song after the man who named a song “Alex Chilton” is somewhat ruined by having a text clarification on the record sleeve stating “The song on the flip side is called “Paul Westerberg.” This is a band that appeared to plan their conquests carefully and, in any case, did things differently than a lot of other bands around at the time. This single marked a pivotal moment for them, a break from the prolific demo tapes and frequent live shows into fewer but heftier well-produced statements. I couldn’t get enough of these guys, and saw every local show they played for a period of several years (OK, I did miss one; still regret being sick the night they played the Little Theater on Lincoln Street.)
6. Willie Alexander, Perfect Stranger/Lonely Avenue.
One of my idol’s releases for the French label New Rose, which I found at the Mystery Train used record shop in Cambridge for $4.50 some years ago. Both were recroded at Boston’s Studio Outlook and are part of what could be considered Alexander’s dance-rock period, when the eclectic singer/composer/keyboardist seemed obsessed with synthetic rhythms. These aren’t really dance records, of course—Alexander’s jazz and rock instincts intersect over throbbing steady beats, adding warmth and unpredictability to stolid beats and familiar riffs. The Doc Pomus cover “Lonely Avenue” is in keeping with Willie Alexander reworkings of “Bebopalula” and “Slippin’ and Slidin’”—profound meditations on the insidious simplicities and symmetries of basic rock & roll.
7. Banana Pad Riot EP: Boris the Sprinkler, We’re the Banana Splits; The Vindictives, Two Ton Tessie; Young Fresh Fellows, Doin’ the Banana Split; Mr. T Experience, Don’t Go Away (Go-Go Girl).
Young Fresh Fellows and Mr. T Experience are arguably the best known and most accomplished of the four bands here. But Boris the Sprinkler, who once covered The Ramones’ End of the Century album in its entirety and was made for wacky cover concepts such as this Banana Splits tribute, is justly rewarded the lead-off track, “We’re the Banana Splits,” and sets a pace the other bands can’t quite keep. Mr. T. Experience gets the best-written song of the bunch, “Don’t Go Away (Go-Go Girl),” which jibes nicely with the band’s unique ‘60s perspective as proffered in “Love American Style” and “Danny Partridge Busted.”
8. Dash Rip Rock, Dosed/Living the Lie I Love
Woke up this morning feeling like toast.
Was then I realized that I had been dosed.
Every line of this understated, effects-laden mindbender is quotable. It’s a singular kind of psychotic rock—rootsy rather than psychedelic, depicting the after-effects of a hallucinogenic trip as equivalent to a bad alcoholic hangover.
The flip side, “Living the Lie I Love,” is a much more conventional rockabilly barnburner. Nothing wrong with that, but “Dosed” is something miraculous, a real non-chemical mind-expander for those who don’t see how capable and far-reaching traditionalist rock & rollers can be.
9. The Contours, Do You Love Me.
At the season-end party for a bunch of us summer camp counselors from the Boston area who’d helped bring urban kids out to the wilds of Maine, I badgered the host incessantly to play this record I’d found deep in his collection, but he was feeling much more current that night (this was the era of Michael Jackson and New Edition), I finally snuck it on, whereupon I threw up, passed out and chose not to return to camp the following summer, lest my camp moniker change from “Chief Archie” to, as threatened, “Chief Upchuck.”
This is a record that really should only be owned as a 45 vinyl single. I’ve always dug that the title is unpunctuated. The flip side of my copy, which is a bargain reissue on the Motown Yesteryear label, is “Shake, Sherrie” (aka “Shake Sherry”) which marries The Contours to the then-gestating subgenre of garage frat rock, was the follow-up single to the huge hit of “Do You Love Me,” and shares its Carrie-esque false ending surprise gimmick.
10. The Ben Yost Singers, Let’s All Sing EP
No less than “16 Old Time Favorites,” arranged as four medleys and all fit on two sides of a 45 rpm single (“unbreakable”) on the Royale label. The cover art is of a striped barbershop pole with a bowler hat and curly mustache, crooning and waving his skinny barbershop-pole arms. So it’s not really “Let’s All Sing”—it’s extravagant four-part barbershop harmonizing that you don’t want to get in the way off, especially when they flit so quickly from one melody to another. From “School Days” right into “East Side West Side” right into “The Bowery.” From a bunch of drinking songs to “How Dry I Am.” From “Little Annie Rooney” to “Frivolous Sal.” Music to get a crewcut by.