Volume 3, Track 5: Protozoa, “Ring Around My Rosie”

You know how sometimes you’ll see a Buzzfeed quiz titled something like “Which Of These Pieces Of Discarded Gum Are You?” and be like “Wow, Buzzfeed is turning into a parody of itself”?  Obviously it’s because Buzzfeed is a content mill willing to throw any weird piece of nonsense at the wall in the hope of getting clicks, with no regard for its own dignity or anything else.  A similar business ethos was in place at late 60s-era Buddah Records, which explains why they released “Ring Around My Rosie,” a song that began life as a parody of the bubblegum genre.

“Protozoa” was the one-off recording name for the Wooley Thumpers, a Pennsylvania group who according to songwriter David Fox “were purely a performance/entertainment band, a bizarre cross between folk, pop, rock, bluegrass, jug band and parody.”  Fox goes on to tell the story behind the song:

The band played all over the Penn State campus, and through happenstance was the opening act for Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company’s October 1968 concert at Penn State’s Rec Hall… One of my parody songs titled “Ring Around My Rosie” was a send up of the bubblegum-type songs popular at the time (Take a Giant Step, One-Two-Three Redlight, etc.). Another State College musician, Craig Bolyn, suggested we actually make a serious demo recording of the song and we wound up recording it for real at Herb Abramson’s A-1 Sound Studios in New York City. The song was released as a single on Buddah Records under the band name of Protozoa. It reached #4 in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pennsylvania regional area and, I believe, #103 nationally on Billboard or Cash Box. Amazingly, the single is still in demand by esoteric Bubblegum music collectors around the world…. The other band members were: Frank Siegel (vocals/guitar), Jerry Zolten (vocals/guitar), and Pete Schwimmer (banjo).

So, this was not a Buddah studio production. Rather, producers Paul Abramson (who chose the name Protozoa) and co-producer Ed Fox recorded the song and sold it to Buddah.  As his quote suggests, it emulates tunes like “Take a Giant Step” and the Puddle’s “Red Rover,” relying on a strange and labored comparison between childhood games and adult romance.  It seems the speaker used to play games with Rosie, and now that he is growing up, he wants to put a “ring” around her (or rather, presumably, her finger, but he just says he wants to put a “ring around my Rose”) in marriage.

Music-wise, the recording is rather thin and trebly, and it has the stacatto, un-funky sound of canonical bubblegum.  Opens with stabs of guitar and accompanying drum, just like in “Red Rover,” which are succeeded by a 4/4 drumbeat and bass playing a hyperactive eighth-note line based on (I think) perfect fifth intervals.  The singer’s voice is clear and boyish. The guitar returns along with piercing organ stabs.  Harmony vocals going “ahhhhh” enter as the song builds to chorus; typical Buddah-esque organ lines and frenetically paced tambourine add to the driving quality.  Handclaps and what sounds like a brass instrument enter the mix eventually.

After the second verse there’s a bridge with a sing-song chant of “ring around the rosie” and a slide guitar solo.  In the final verse the speaker expresses a creepy that his future son will “sing as he grows” the same chorus: “I can’t wait to put the ring around my Rosie,” etc.  There’s a random key change, doo-woppy falsetto backing vocals add further enthusiasm to the already rather manic chorus, and it’s over.

“Ring Around My Rosie” is noticeable fast even by bubblegum standards and boasts a great, catchy melody. The lyrics capture the inanity of typical bubblegum, and the third verse seems to be oddly wishing an Oedipus complex on an as-yet-unborn child, so that’s different.  Probably the most noteworthy thing about this song is the guitar playing — if you pay attention to the little stabs of slide guitar (e.g. after “I like it that way/ That’s how it will stay”) and the  solo, they have a lot of verve, panache and wit!  It add a refreshingly un-generic flavor to an otherwise perfect genre exercise.  3 stars.

Volume 3, Track 4: Boyce and Hart, “Out and About”

First hit song by songwriting/performing duo Boyce and Hart. They were successful behind the scenes writing songs for the Monkees (“Last Train to Clarksville,” “{Theme From} The Monkees”) and other acts, but eventually rose to prominence under their own names as a duo. Here’s some information about them in bullet point format:

• Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart met in 1959 as 20-year-old aspiring songwriters.
• Boyce got his start when he “took his father’s suggestion to write a song called ‘Be My Guest’ for rock and roll star Fats Domino. He waited six hours at Domino’s hotel room to present him with the demo, and got Domino to promise to listen to the song.” The dad’s suggestion seems oddly specific, like, “Son, I’m supportive of your ambition  to be a songwriter.  Why not write a song called ‘Be My Guest’ and sell it to Fats Domino?” Good for him, though.
• They started working with The Monkees in 1965 and didn’t just write songs, but recorded and produced them, letting the actual Monkees dub their vocals on top.
• When they started recording as Boyce/Hart in 1967, their reasons for doing so were extremely shallow: “I watched the Monkees from backstage and saw all those little girls go crazy while they played our songs, so I said to Bobby, ‘forget being the opening act, here’s the deal: all we have to do is write a couple of smashes and within a year we can dash out on stage with a band behind us and have all those kids go crazy for us!'”
• The pair’s groovy mod lifestyle included matching Jaguar XKE’s and a Hollywood mansion with “strobe lights in the front room, disappearing walls, Japanese beds, films projected onto the walls 24 hours a day, and a sauna that was turned on for 11 months straight, in case anyone ever wanted to use it.”  Yes, they actually lived together.
• They would go on to release 3 LPs and have 5 charting singles.

Their music was poppy but more in tune than that of the Monkees with the louche side of the swingin’ 60’s ethos.  This element of their public image is articulated by Kim Cooper in an from Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: “Say that [an] ‘eligible young girl’…somehow found herself out on a date with the Monkees’ Davy Jones. It would surely be a blissfully innocent experience, punctuated by quiet talk and laughter, the feeding of ducks with stale bread, perhaps a chaste kiss upon the cheek.  But Tommy and Bobby seem more likely to pick their frail up right off the Strip, or from among the taut hordes of knowing, hungry chicks who stand around backstage, or wait by the studio gates. While you might attract any given Monkee with a costume of hip-hugger jeans and a fun op-art blouse, accented by a nice smile and not too much make-up, to catch the Boyce-Hart eye you’ll have to show a lot more skin and imagination.”

But ignore the previous paragraph, because it’s not really relevant to “Out and About,” which began life as a rejected Monkees track.  This tune is lyrically wholesome but musically adventurous, using a mildly experimental two-part structure to dramatize the teen dilemma of domestic boredom and subsequent liberation.  The two parts are as follows:

Slow part: The song opens with a monotonous half-note bassline playing the same note over and over; then tambourine and stabs of guitar join in.  The lyrics are a series of couplets, sung alternately by Boyce and Hart: “Nothing going on around here/ that hasn’t gone on all year/ Stayin’ in day out and day in/ Wishin’ I was outside playin’.”

Fast part: An energetic drumbeat joins in and the bass doubles in speed and switches to a bouncy blues-y line with varied rhythm.  The speaker is now having a good time: “I got everything going for me (out and about!)/ Free from all the things that bore me (out and about!)/ Ridin’ all around the city/ All the girls are lookin pretty/ I’m fine/ When I’m/ (run run run run run run run run)/ When I’m out and about!”  The falsetto “run run run” section sounds just like a part in some Who song (NOT “Run, Run Run,” but I can’t remember which one it is).  It’s followed by another “fast” section: “Where the sun is always shinin’/ Look at all the fun I’m findin’.”  Finally, a cello enters playing the same note repeatedly, then a mournful violin, and vocals are layered on top:  “out and about,” a catchy “ba ba da” thing, falsetto “oooooh”s, cello droning away on low notes.  As one blogger puts it, “Boyce and Hart go into a kind of swirling, multi-layered vocal ‘round’ with the BA BA BAAS and it is most definitely psychedelic.”  Then it all fades out.

This tune is reminiscent of A Quick One While He’s Away-era Who in numerous ways:  the mod-cool, slightly echoey sound,  clever use of falsetto vocals and stringed instruments, and overall silly air of experimentation. Lyrically, it presents a cheery, stylized southern California of sunshine, girls and content-free rebellion.  3 stars.

 

Volume 3, Track 3: Bazooka, “Look At You Now”

Driving minor-key tune about a girl who has blossomed into a beautiful woman, inspiring incoherent gawking on the part of the speaker.  Suspenseful, repetitive piano line and descending bassline. Kick drum or something going ka-THUMP. Vocals kind of fey and british-y. On the chorus, introduces a bunch of backup singers going “oooo” on on a descending pattern.  Chorus slows down, then speeds up again for a driving call-and-response part between main guy and backup singers.  The baroque-pop sound is reminiscent of The Left Banke’s “I Haven’t Got the Nerve.”  This wistful, windswept feel is, however, undermined by idiotic lyrics like “Look at you know, your hair’s so shiny/ Your eyes are brighter than a diamond ring.”  NOT the same Bazooka as the one that did “Boo On You.”  Came out on White Whale and is credited to George Tobin as producer and Randy Benjamin as singer.  Benjamin is an Indiana-born singer-songwriter; more recently he’s turned to authoring and penned the following works:

• FREE Internet: Don’t Pay for Internet – Save Hundreds of Dollars a Year by Building One of These Simple WIFI Antennas
• How To Publish Anything On Amazon’s Kindle
• Authors How to Turn Your Books into Audio Books by Randy Benjamin
• Fermilab: Forging The Keys To Hell
• How To Transfer Cassettes To CD

3 stars!

 

 

 

Volume 3, Track 2: The Art Movement, “Yes Sir, No Sir”

The Art Movement were a late 60s British band who joined the ranks of many other bands with needlessly pretentious names and put out five little-heard singles before disbanding.  This is a good, catchy song, a fact which debunks my poorly-researched claim that there are only three good British bubblegum songs.  Oh well!  It was written Eric Woolfson, a prolific Glaswegian musician/songwriter/producers who went on to work with Mick Jagger and write for Broadway and stuff.  “YSNS” is a gleefully fast-paced number that begins with organ rapidly playing the same note over and over, punctuated by a low drum, just like “Yummy Yummy Yummy” but a little faster-paced. It achieves drama through a run of staccato eighth notes that shift to dotted rhythms and long organ tones as it builds to the chorus.  Downward swoopy harp glissandoes appear between lyric couplets and in the chorus.  Near the end there’s a short “breakdown” with handclaps, laughter, and gleeful vocalizations like “brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”, suggesting a fun party atmosphere.  The singer’s voice has a nuggets-rock hoarseness to it.

Lyrically, this is one of three late-60s songs to be based on the “yes sir, no sir trope.” The Kinks one is an antiauthoritarian satire of the British army as a place where recruits need “permission to breathe,” and the The Ohio Express one will be addressed in a future post.  This “Yes Sir, No Sir” takes the form of a rather unclear conversation between a guy and a character or speaker who’s trying to persuade him to leave his girlfriend:

 Go west young man, just as fast as you can, you better run run run
Better to forget her, get her out of your mind, have fun, fun fun
What if she says she don’t want to be free?
Then you better tell her to forget about me
What if she asks if you still love her true?
I do, i do, you know that I do
I said yes sir, no sir, I don’t think so sir
Three bags of [inaudible,] I’m no fool
Yes sir, no, sir, go go go sir,
Nothing you can say can make me blow my cool

Go west young man, just as fast as you can, you better run run run
Aintcha gonna go, it’s time in your life to have fun fun fun
Promises promises, thats all you say, i will write a letter to her every day
A promise is a promise, its hard to fulfill
I will, I will, you know that I will

 [Repeat chorus 2x]

It seems that the main guy wants to leave home, but can’t resist making half-sincere promises to stay true to his girlfriend while he’s gone.  However, it’s not really clear here who is speaking when — the beginning seems to be from the perspective of a speaker urging him to leave; other lyrics in the first person (“nothing you can say can make me blow my cool”) seem to represent the main character talking to his girlfriend, or maybe this line represents the speaker telling the character what he should say to his girlfriend.  The yes sir/no sir bit suggests the ambivalence with which the young man contemplates his future, but to whom is the “sir” is actually addressed?  The song’s ambiguity and repeated shifts in point of view are interesting, even if they result from nothing more than half-assed lyric writing. 3 stars.

Volume 3, Track 1: The Hardy Boys, “Namby Pamby”

Volume 3!  The Hardy Boys were one of the era’s many cartoon bands.  The iconic crime-solving characters were adapted for TV by Filmation in 1969, very loosely — in this version Joe and Frank Reynolds were adults, and were joined by their three musician friends, Pete the token black guy, Wanda the token woman, and Chet the token fat person (for some reason).   The character of Pete is variously described as the first black cartoon character, or just one of the first.  These five hip young adults travelled the country in a van, using music as a needlessly elaborate cover for their crime-solving activities.  There would be a musical interlude in the middle of every episode.  Yes, this is the exact same premise as Scooby Doo; the two shows also debuted at the same time and aired at the same time slot.  Scooby Doo ultimately prevailed.  The Hardys show was cut within two years, and the band had little success (their most popular song, “Live and Let Love,” bubbled under for a while on the charts).

The real-life ensemble was put together by Dunwich Records and consisted of frontman Jeff Taylor, guitarist Reed Kailing, keyboardist Devon English, drummer Bob Crowder, and saxophonist Norbert Solystiak.  While the Hardy boy band lasted, it was a fascinating microcosm of a complex time in American history.  You can read about it in these four detailed interviews by Pop Culture Addict; some snippets include the following.

• Jeff and Reed were in the Messengers, which was the first white rock group that was signed to Motown on the Rare Earth label, and got to go on tour with Motown legends like the Supremes and Temptations.
• Devon English was a classically trained pianist and jazz singer, as well as a Playboy Bunny who spend some time living in the Mansion. She and Jeff became lovers while playing in the band (although they had to keep it secret due to a morality clause), and they lived together for several years after the band’s breakup.
• Despite the group’s clean-cut image, they had some wild times.  At the opening party for the TV show Dark Shadows, a backup singer went missing for a week: Jeff says “He just disappeared.  I don’t know if the Plaster Casters got him or the groupies.”  Jeff on groupies: “Oh god.  Yeah.  Crazy.  There was a lot.”
• Reed Kaling was a Paul McCartney lookalike and starred in the Broadway show Beatlemania.
• Jeff says the whole band got along well, but Reed felt picked on: “it was an ‘all against me’ situation at one time. They [hassled] me because I liked Leonard Cohen. Jeff thought I was pretty stupid about that so on my birthday they bought me a book of Leonard Cohen poems. I thought Leonard was interesting as a poet. Well guess what! So did Bono!”
• Norbert was hired for being chubby, but says the Hardy Boys era was the the only time in his life where he was fat.  He was skinny before, and slimmed down afterward.
• Each band member had a fictional bio.  Crowder: “My bio was that I was an orphan and the orphanage burnt down and I had a brother who was crippled and I had to support the family from a poor background and I got a big break and now I’m this big music star.”  The fake bios were attached to their real names, which is weird.  Bob Crowder didn’t object to going through life with an ersatz backstory, due to his political beliefs. “During that time period the other band I was playing with was saying that the reason people took the letter X as their last name was because their lives were not their lives and the slave masters had given us their last names.  So I was looking at that and thinking ‘We’re not really us anywhere we go.’  Everywhere you turn somebody’s telling you that you’re not you.  So I just took it in stride, as long as they spelt my name right on the check.”
• Crowder also worked with a group called the Afro Art Esemble on a musical of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  “We were singing, and I had to sing too, and the lyrics were (sings) ‘White man is my enemy/who perfected slavery/look what they have made of me/fools without a memory/always talkin’ brotherhood/white man you just ain’t no good/now we have you understood/Malcolm X is kindlen wood.’  (Laughs)  We’d be singing this song, and the next day I’d have to go with the Hardys and have to sing (sings) ‘Love and Let Love!  Tra la la la la!’  (Laughs)  Ah man, that’d put you in therapy for real!  It was a very interesting time.”
• Crowder went on to record with Marvin Gaye, Barry White and the Bee Gees.  He was the drummer on “Stayin’ Alive.”

“Namby Pamby” (written by Gary Liozzo) is a Here Come the Hardy Boys album track in the classic bubblegum style.  There’s bass, guitar, energetic drums with lots of like, fills and stuff, a flutey-sounding organ that could just be a flute, blasts of horn, handclaps, and maybe tambourine in there somewhere.  Singer Jeff has a smooth pop-singer voice. Eight-line verses followed by a chorus.  The melody is repetitive and sing-songy, but in a good way; it will definitely get stuck in your head.  Generic but well-done lyrics about how a guy is in love with a girl, whom he addresses by the not particularly flattering nickname “Namby Pamby.” Noteworthy lyric: “When you give the eye to me, I feel my heart beginning to swell.”  Hey, that’s not your heart!

This tune has some impassioned fans among those who remember it.  Youtube commenter “matt lewis” describes it as “the second greatest song ever!”  Matt doesn’t state what the first greatest song ever is, but I’ll tell you:  It’s “Underpants” by the Easter Monkeys.  3 stars.

 

 

Volume 2, Track 31: Teri Nelson Group, “Sweet Talkin’ Willie”

Another song that I had previously never heard due to having left it off the CDs I burned to listen to in the car.  Girl group/soul-pop number released on Kama Sutra in 1968.  These five ladies are the Teri Nelson Group:

I can’t seem to find any information about Teri Nelson or this group, but I would guess they were a real band and not a studio concoction. “Sweet Talkin’ Willie” was released as the single for Sweet Talkin’ Teri, their only LP release.  The song is credited to Elliot Chiprut, a Brooklyn-born songwriter responsible for scores of Music Explosion, Ohio Express and Fruitgums tracks, including “Simon Says.”  In fact, he got his first break after sending a demo of “Simon Says” to Jeffrey Katz, who was a childhood friend.  According to this profile, his post-bubblegum life was fairly interesting.  He got into writing music for TV, made a pile of money, and retired to Virginia (no, I don’t know why a rich person would choose to live in Virginia) before having a spiritual awakening and realizing that materialism is bad.  “Finding his higher self, Chiprut, who moved to DeLand [Florida] in 2012, wrote ‘Practical Wisdom from Kabbalah and Edgar Cayce,’ which he published [in 2013].”

“Sweet Talkin’ Willie” is a genially paced number warning the ladies about a player with “one thing on his mind.”   It has a girl-group sound kind of in between the Butterflys’ “Good Night Baby” and the Fabulettes’ “Try the Worryin’ Way.”  Teri Nelson has a sweet, appealingly girlish voice with a hint of huskiness in it.  The sound is pretty sparse, with a lot of space in the mix.  Opens with a jaunty r&b piano riff, and is based on a simple, driving drumbeat and bassline.  The group members hoot “doo-doo-doo-doooo!” and back up Teri with pretty harmonies.  The sound is very well done — doesn’t rock very hard, but it doesn’t try to, instead using variations in line length, rhyme scheme and metrical foot to hold the reader’s attention.

The song lacks conventional verse-chorus structure, instead opening with a pair of six-line stanzas with an ABCCCB rhyme scheme:

Girls, let me tell you bout Willie
He’s such a sweet-talkin’ guy
He’ll give you the moon
And he’ll croon
You will tune (?)
But he soon will bring tears to your eyes

As you can see, the verse shifts midway from a (roughly) trochaic to an anapestic foot.  At the end of two such “stanzas” a high-pitched piano arpeggio joins in, and the lyric transitions into a slowed-down rhyming triplet:

He acts kind of cool
But he’ll make you his fool
If you listen to all of his lies
He’ll make you cry
Girls, watch his lies.

Then there’s a bit where the guitar builds tension by playing the same note repeatedly, like right before the “do you love me” part in the Dave Clark Five’s “Do you Love Me,”  and a trumpet solo that reprises the vocal melody.  There’s another set of two stanzas, the last of which abandons the anapestic rhythm in favor of a series of couplets:

Willie’s like a sailboat, so smooth
Like a wild wolf that’s on the loose
If you just ignore him, you’ll find
Willie won’t be wastin’ your time

Then the opening verse repeats, and it all starts to fade out at 2:05.  This song makes good use of irregular rhythms and sounds to suggest the inconsistency of Willie’s behavior.  Its overall “restrained” sound, which eschews the cathartic release of a chorus, suggests the internal restraint that must be employed when dealing with Willie, and the final stanza’s more even line length, rhythm and sentence structure enact the greater tranquillity that will be achieved when Willie’s target learns to “ignore him.”  I don’t know if Elliot Chiprut’s Kabbalistic wisdom is legit, but he had one hell of an ear for prosody.  3 stars.

Volume 2, Track 30: The Tidal Wave, “Searching for Love”

B-side to the 1968 Buddah release “Sinbad the Sailor.”  Readers will recall that I wasn’t too wild about “Sinbad,” an irritating midtempo r&b number; by contrast, “Searching” is a fast-paced, moody  garage rocker based on a cool, herky-jerky Nuggets-style riff. The sound is suitably angsty and restless; well-played organ doubles the guitar line and solos wildly during the bridge.  That’s all very well, but there are a number of factors that prevent “Searching for Love” from attaining excellence:

•  The lyrics, which are about searching for love, are competent but generic.
• The singer’s voice is high-pitched and too boyish for the material.
• The production is fine I guess, but a little thin.

I bet this song would sound badass if it were recorded to sound really heavy, like Jefferson Lee’s “Sorcerella,” and the singer had a cool deep voice like Sean Bonniwell.  But we can’t all be Sean Bonniwell, can we?  2.25 points.

Volume 2, Track 29: Andy Kim, “So Good Together”

Lush, swooning homage to the girl-group sound.  Andy Kim was a Lebanese-Canadian musician (originally named “Youakim”) who released his first single in 1963, at the age of 16 (maybe–different sources can’t seem to agree on what year he was born), and had his first top 40 hit in 1965.  Around 1968,  he began working with mega-successful pop songwriter Jeff Barry (“Baby, I Love You,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” etc.).  As co-writers, they had a #1 hit with “Sugar, Sugar”  and went on to write extensively for the Archies and the Monkees. Meanwhile, Kim pursued a comparatively low-profile solo career, releasing several albums of smooth, well-crafted, romantic pop.  His biggest self-penned hit was “Rainbow Ride,” but he also had hits with covers of Barry’s tunes “Baby I Love You” and “Be My Baby.”  His versions are very faithful to the girl-group originals (other than the fact that he is a dude), and the act of taking on someone else’s musical identity must have had interesting implications for him: “Kim had shied away from touring for years… when he was working with the Steed label. He has said that he had created a persona in his music in the vein of a white blond surfer and that fans were shocked to see his dark skin color and appearance.”

“So Good Together” was released on Steed Records in 1969 and made it to #36 on the charts.  Opens with dramatic piano chords and a chorus of female singers: “Baby we’re good together, yes we’re so good together.”  Layers of keyboards, guitars, and echoey drums establish a swaying rhythm similar to “Baby I Love You”…kind of a shuffle beat or something?  It’s double-time compared to the vocals, but still sounds relaxed.  Kim breathily voices such seductive sentiments as “If I could only put myself inside you, you could see through my eyes, feel what I’m feeling.”  Celesta and angelic female vocals contribute to the romantic-ness, plus there’s a saxophone solo.   The rhythm continues unbroken throughout the song, with Kim’s legato vocal line swooping, over it, creating an immersive sound that carries the reader along.   Great songwriting and arrangement; the gorgeous, exhilarating sound Kim was going for is flawlessly achieved. 3 stars. 

Volume 2, Track 29: The Puddle, “Red Rover, Red Rover”

This obscure track comes to us from Minneapolis label Candy Floss Records, which released pop and garage  45s during its 1967- 69 existence.  The song was recently re-released on this interesting-looking compilation of their music. The only individual performer on it whom my research can identify is Arne Fogel, who would later become a prolific jazz singer and musician.

“Red Rover” is a well-done K&K knockoff and an entry in the subgenre of bubblegum songs based on children’s games.  It opens with bouncy, rubbery bass and stabs of guitar, and there’s a call-and-response thing between the main guy and the backup singers doing a variation on the “red rover” ritual chant: “Red rover red rover, I’m coming right over, coming right over to staaaaay!  Red rover red rover, I’m coming right over, and nobody gets in the waaaaaaaaaaaay!”  A series of two-line stanzas tell a story of adulthood and its discontents: A guy and a girl used to play Red Rover as children, but “then a year later, we’d start to date, and play the game much closer/ You’d give me a call, a ring and hang up, I’d jump out of bed and come over!” A year?  How old were these people? There’s a funky soul breakdown presumably.  Everything drops out but a propulsive bassline and handclaps, and the singer voices such James Brown-inspired interjections as “UH!  Chah! chah! chah! All right!”, presumably indicating the kind of unbridled passion that is unleashed when on 13-year-old booty-calls another 13-year-old in the middle of the night.  The backup singers nonsensically interject “red rover is easy, red rover is breezy/ red rover is nifty, red rover is swifty!” This break is actually very well done and reasonably funky-sounding.   When the story resumes, it is on a sad note: “Now that we’re older, we’ve seemed to change, we have no time for our games/ But if you feel it, just give me all call, I’ll be over [inaudible] todaaaaaay!”

The singer has a high, nervous-sounding, vibrato-laden tone that I quite enjoy.  His slightly strangulated tone may be a result of trying to sing outside his natural range.   The narrative offered by the lyrics is appealingly economical: Naivete is followed by adolescent sexual awakening and, finally, adult disillusionment.  Songs in this vein, such as “1-2-3 Red Light,”  tend to focus on a speaker’s frustration that a girl isn’t following the rules of a game she played with the speaker as a child.  Presumably trope this is an expression of displaced nostalgia for a time when courtship proceeded according to well-defined rules (or at least, it was imagined to have done so), and thus women’s behavior was easier to predict and control.  However, “Red Rover” tweaks the formula a bit by having the lady be in charge of their encounters, leaving the speaker in the emasculating position of waiting for the phone to ring.

“Red Rover” has everything you could want from a Kasenetz-Katz-style pop song: catchy bassline, melismatic chorus soaring over the bouncy instrumentation, bridge featuring a silly homage to a more legitimate genre of music, impactful production, and a runtime of under 2:30. 3 stars.

Volume 2, Track 28: The Wombles, “Invitation to a Ping Pong Ball”

I once saw an episode of a British reality show in which a struggling but plucky restauranteur was trying to turn his business around by revamping the menu.  At the end of the episode, the restaurant went out of business.  What does this prove?  British people are bad at some things, including makeover TV shows.  A restaurant going bankrupt is not how a reality TV show should end.  If there is an attempted makeover taking place, it should be successful; otherwise, you’ve wasted an hour of the viewer’s time.  All American reality TV producers inherently know this, due to our nation’s plucky optimism and tireless belief in self-reinvention.  Another thing British people are bad at is, of course, 60’s-style bubblegum music.   The genre is as brashly perky, albeit potentially insincere, as telling a stranger to “have a nice day!”.  That’s why there are only three good British bubblegum songs: “Lollipop Man,” the Balloon Buster’s “Alcock and Brown,”  and Simon Turner’s “Shoeshine Boy,” a strange tribute to child labor that exhorts the listener to “get down, get down upon your knees and brush your blues away.”  The subject matter may have been odd, but all these tracks are accurate imitations of the classic Kasenetz-Katz style; by sticking to the formula, Brits produced songs that were just as catchy as their U.S. counterparts.  What if, instead, U.K. bubblegum creators had sought to create their own uniquely British bubblegum aesthetic? The dispiriting answer is The Wombles, a 1970’s multimedia phenomenon featuring a group of furry mole creature-things who live under Wimbledon Commons.  They began life as a children’s book by Elisabeth Beresford and were subsequently adapted for television and music, with Mike Batt as songwriter/performer.

The show was live-action.

So successful was their career, they managed to release four hit LPs, as well as a greatest hits compilation and a Christmas album.  This might not sound that amazing; after all, the Chipmunks were popular too.  But the Chipmunks had a compelling backstory regarding their tempestuous relationship with Dave, and their songs touched on a wide variety of topics and themes.  By contrast, every Wombles song is about picking up trash.  The Wombles storyworld was dreamed up by its creator to teach children the value of being tidy,  and the creatures’ main avocation is throwing away rubbish thoughtless humans leave behind.   The songs depict them  doing so in a variety of contexts, thus transporting children to a magical fantasy world where there’s marginally less litter.  The Wombles’ irritating wholesomeness knows no bounds; unlike anyone in a real band, they are “organized, work as a team.”  This propaganda may have worked, but at what cost?  The Beagles could have kicked these dudes’ asses.

Now let’s turn to “Ping Pong Ball,”  a Keep On Wombling album track set in “China,” where a Ping Pong ball is taking place because that’s what the Chinese language sounds like.  It opens with flute-y thing and gong; then a string instrument enters playing staccato Chinese-y notes (you know the kind), accented by stabs of keyboard or something.  Then electric guitar enters playing a regular non-Chinese guitar line, but there’s still flute in the background being Chinese-sounding. it seems the “Oriental Wombles” are busy demonstrating their “Oriental litter-picking skills.”   The vocalist has an undistinctive, smooth voice, and there are also backup singers whose voices have been sped up like the Chipmunks.  Along the way we’re told about  “a proverb that they sing to the yellow seas,” and also that  “Chinatown is moving to the koto and the flute.”  CHINATOWN ISN’T IN CHINA. The fuzzy, glam-influenced guitar playing is pretty good, but weak, unaggressive production/recording mutes its effect.

The song is nonetheless a chugging, fast-paced number could hypothetically have been catchy.  One major aesthetic and ideological problem, however, is its reliance on “Chinese” motifs that never meld with the overall rock sound, but function only as signifiers of Chineseness.  By contrast, music from the period that uses fake Native America motifs at least manages to integrate “Indian” pounding drums into the songs, thus making their fantasy version of Indian-ness sound cool.  Perhaps that is why “Indian Giver” and the like sound comparatively acceptable to modern ears.   I cannot emphasize enough how inaccurately “Invitation to a Ping Pong Ball” depicts Chinese culture, or how single-mindedly it focuses on the topic of litter collection. 0 points.