<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The title of this <\/span>FTV <\/span><\/i>started as a mental exercise of me trying to make a \u2018Top Ten\u2019 list of bands I liked to listen to back when I was first learning to be a rock and roll drummer.\u00a0 I thought, \u201cMaybe it would be fun to follow up on some of them and see what happened to them.\u201d\u00a0 The reality of my age caught up to me when I had to admit that many of my influences are dead.\u00a0 From The Monkees (all gone except for Micky Dolenz), to The Doors (Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarak have departed), to The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Jimi, gone, Noel Redding, gone, Mitch Mitchell, gone)(the list goes on), it became apparent focusing on the soundtrack of my early musical life would read more like a listing of obituaries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Undaunted, I began searching the web for random bands and artists I have not thought of in a while just to see if they are still with us and if they are, what they have been up to lately.\u00a0 These are presented in no particular order of importance, just the order in which I thought of them.\u00a0 To avoid the \u2018obituary angle\u2019, I am going to avoid the \u2018who died when\u2019 stuff and stick to what happened to the band over time.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The Music Explosion<\/span> – A garage band out of Mansfield, Ohio, they are mostly remembered for their one hit <\/span>A Little Bit \u2019O Soul.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>I loved this song and it was one of the first ones that made me think I could drum and sing at the same time.\u00a0 Their hit was the product of two English songwriters and originally recorded in 1964 by the beat group The Little Darlings.\u00a0 <\/span>LB\u2019OS <\/span><\/i>was released by the Music Explosion on the Larurie Records label in 1967.\u00a0 Their only album contained several songs that were blatant rewrites of existing songs.\u00a0 These copycat tunes came from a duo of producers named Kasenetz and Katz whom we will discuss again in a little bit.\u00a0 Music Explosion drummer Bob Avery later toured with another band I got to like playing in my high school band, The Twig:\u00a0 Crazy Elephant.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Crazy Elephant<\/span> –\u00a0 An American bubblegum pop group, they were mostly a studio band made up of members of the Marzono-Calvert Studio Band.\u00a0 The masterminds behind this conglomeration were Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz of Super K Productions.\u00a0 K and K made it their mission to toss bands together to write wildly popular bubblegum songs that would get a lot of airplay before disappearing from the charts.\u00a0 Crazy Elephant\u2019s <\/span>Gimme Gimme Good Lovin\u2019 <\/span><\/i>was exactly one of those tunes.\u00a0 I loved it for the driving tom tom part that introduced the song and ran under all the verses – it was always a danceable moment whenever we played it.\u00a0 The K- boys wrote a fantastical biography about the band being made up of Welsh coal miners but when they said they were discovered working 18,372,065 feet underground (that would be 3,480 miles and place them well into the Earth\u2019s inhospitable mantle) it was obvious to anyone with a brain it was all hogwash.\u00a0 The song was released on Bell Records in 1969.\u00a0 At least one member, Kenny Cohen (vocals, saxophone, flute) kept active going on to play with the Eagles, Santana, Rod Stewart and B.B.King.<\/span><\/p>\n The Music Machine<\/span> – Probably one of the first bands to try and make it big by putting as much effort into their look as their music.\u00a0 Their music was fine but one could not help notice they all had dyed black hair, black outfits and wore one black glove on their right hand (something about showing their solidarity with each other).\u00a0 The Sunset Strip band was lead by Sean Bonniwell and they, too, are remembered mostly for one song, <\/span>Talk Talk.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Bonniwell\u2019s half spoken vocal and the fuzz guitar riffing literally burst from your radio.\u00a0 In later years I found their first album and it is an interesting mix including their take on The Beatles <\/span>Taxman<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 They began as a folk trio called the Ragamuffins and they progressed to what could only be described as a proto-punk style leaning into psychedelia.\u00a0 Their image got them on a lot of the music shows catering to teens but they fractured in 1967.\u00a0 Bonniwell later formed his own Music Machine\u00a0 (Bonniwell\u2019s Music Machine to separate him from the original band name).<\/span><\/p>\n Tommy James and the Shondells<\/span> – James grew up in Niles, Michigan and got his first break when a local DJ at WNIL, Jack Douglas, formed a small record label called Snap Records.\u00a0 Using the WNIL studio for a base, he recorded some local bands and the Shondells had a local hit with a cover of a Jeff Barry – Ellie Greenwich song called <\/span>Hanky Panky <\/span><\/i>(1964).\u00a0 Lacking resources to promote his label, the song was soon forgotten, at least until 1965 when Pittsburgh dance promoter Bob Mack started spinning the song at his clubs. A bootlegged copy of <\/span>Hanky Panky <\/span><\/i>sold enough units (80,000 in ten days) to take it to number one on the Pittsburgh radio stations.\u00a0 Mack and his talent booker, Chuck Rubin met with James and the three headed for New York City to find a record deal.\u00a0 All the major labels politely turned them down and they found out why.\u00a0 Roulette Records head Morris Levy had called all the other labels and scared them off by telling them, \u201cThis is my freakin\u2019 record.\u201d\u00a0 Levy had well known mob connections so James signed with the only option, Roulette Records.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The original Shondells had broken up so Tommy made the rounds singing with various bands at Mack\u2019s clubs until he found the perfect fit with a band called the Raconteurs.\u00a0 They became the new Shondells and by July of 1966,\u00a0 <\/span>Hanky Panky<\/span><\/i> had claimed the top spot on the national record charts.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0More hits would follow and there were only three things James did wrong in his early career.\u00a0 Levy\u2019s connections to the Genovese crime family made Roulette Records basically a money laundering operation.\u00a0 James estimates they stiffed him for somewhere between $30 and $40 million in royalties.\u00a0 The second \u2018oops\u2019 was not accepting an invitation to perform at Woodstock.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t totally Tommy\u2019s fault as he was in Hawaii when the Roulette secretary called him and relayed Artie Kornfeld\u2019s invitation to, \u2018play a show at a pig farm in upstate New York\u2019.\u00a0 James declined the offer to travel 6,000 miles for the gig as described, saying, \u201cIf I\u2019m not there, start without us, will you please?\u201d\u00a0 The third involved his drug use which caused him to collapse on stage during a concert.\u00a0 Though he was pronounced dead at the scene, he survived and took it as an omen it was time to retire to the country and take a break from the music biz.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0James moved on into solo work and after a warning from Levy about what was about to happen, he was working in Nashville when a bloody mob war broke out in NYC.\u00a0 His connection to Levy brought death threats.\u00a0 Tommy\u2019s future problems with the mob were averted when he was finally allowed to leave the Roulette label in 1974.\u00a0 James waited until all the major figures from the Roulette label had passed on before he wrote his own account that was published in 2010 (<\/span>Me, The Mob, and The Music<\/span><\/i>).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Over 300 artists have recorded Jame\u2019s songs and he still performs from his home base in New Jersey.\u00a0 Since 2018, he has hosted a weekly radio program on Sirius XM (<\/span>Gettin Together with Tommy James<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/p>\n The Ohio Express<\/span> –\u00a0 To explain the existence of The Ohio Express, we need to get back to Kasenetz and Katz whom we mentioned in connection with The Music Explosion.\u00a0 Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz owned Super K productions and the best way to describe their operation is to call it a \u2018Bubblegum Music Factory\u2019.\u00a0 They K-boys used as many as 25 different musicians to crank out radio friendly BPM (Bubblegum Pop Music) hits.\u00a0 These were fed to a live band who played them at gigs and appeared in the pictures on the record sleeves.\u00a0 For the most part, the musicians who played in the live band (Sir Timothy and the Royals who were renamed The Ohio Express by Super K) rarely played on the actual recordings.\u00a0 In a few cases, the touring Ohio Express band were not even aware they had a new song climbing the charts until fans requested them during shows.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Singer\/songwriter Joey Levine was the voice behind their biggest hits after The Ohio Express moved on from Super K to a label known for their bubblegum pop records, Buddah Records.\u00a0 Levine\u2019s demo recording of the BPM staple <\/span>Yummy, Yummy, Yummy<\/span><\/i> caught Buddah head Neil Bogart\u2019s attention and he rushed that version into print.\u00a0 It took all of two months for the single to reach R.I.A.A. gold disc status (one million copies sold).\u00a0 The die was cast and between 1968 and 1970, the \u2018group\u2019 scored three more top 40 hits (<\/span>Down at Lulu\u2019s, Chewy Chewy, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Mercy<\/span><\/i>) with Levine\u2019s vocals and nary a note provided by the touring band.\u00a0 The touring Ohio Express did appear on a few album tracks but there is no record of Levine performing live with the band.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the post-Levine years, the band continued but never reached the top 40 again.\u00a0 The band was quietly retired in 1972 but that doesn\u2019t mean they went away.\u00a0 The records continued to bring in revenue as they cycled through a myriad of compilations like the <\/span>Nuggets<\/span><\/i> series.\u00a0 Classic Rock radio usually avoids bubblegum tracks but they still spin the Ohio Express hits because they moved a lot of records back in the day.\u00a0 As happens with bands composed of interchangeable parts, various members kept touring as The Ohio Express including a Las Vegas residency and occasional reunions of various \u2018original\u2019 members.\u00a0 Drummer Tim Corwin has taken over lead vocals fronting all new members and this line-up still tours the oldies circuit\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The 1910 Fruitgum Company<\/span> – As label mates of The Ohio Express, the Fruitgum Company started out as Jeckell and The Hydes in New Jersey circa 1966.\u00a0 They joined Buddah Records in 1967 and released five LPs before disbanding in the 1970s.\u00a0 Their first hit single, <\/span>Simon Says<\/span><\/i> used the same head nodding singalong template employed by the other Super K bands and reached No 4 on the <\/span>Billboard Hot 100.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>They toured as openers for major acts like The Beach Boys and had another top ten hit with <\/span>1-2-3 Red Light <\/span><\/i>(#5 in the U.S.).\u00a0 Like the Ohio Express, they can count more than 20 musicians who have gone through their ranks.\u00a0 Original members Frank Jeckell and Mick Manseueto reformed the band in 1999 and as of 2019 were still performing their own hits as well as other songs from the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n The Electric Prunes<\/span> – yet another band with a rotating cast of more than twenty, so we won\u2019t even try to bring you up to speed other than to say vocalist James Lowe is the only constant member.\u00a0 They came together in Los Angeles in 1965 as a garage surf-rock outfit called the Sanctions.\u00a0 They became Jim and the Lords when they recorded a 12 track demo in a home studio in March of 1965.\u00a0 The record remained unreleased until Heartbeat Productions put it out in 2000 under the title <\/span>Then Came the Electric Prunes.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>A real estate agent introduced the band to a sound engineer from RCA Studios named Dave Hassinger.\u00a0 He had recently worked on the Rolling Stones album <\/span>Aftermath <\/span><\/i>and was looking for a band to produce.\u00a0 Hassinger suggested a name change and according to Lowe, The Electric Prunes moniker started off as a joke.\u00a0 He\u00a0 convinced them to use it anyway:\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s the one thing everyone will remember.\u00a0 It\u2019s not attractive, and there\u2019s nothing sexy about it, but people won\u2019t forget it.\u201d\u00a0 Having come close to joining a band named The Self Winding Grapefruit in 1967, I never blinked an eye at the name because I had the Prune\u2019s first single in my stack of practice 45s as soon as it came out.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What separated The Electric Prunes from the rest of the Top 40 bands?\u00a0 They were one of the first to embrace the use of electronic elements in their songs.\u00a0 The opening of <\/span>I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night <\/span><\/i>is a good example.\u00a0 Lowe explained how they discovered the sound when they were still recording at the home studio:\u00a0 \u201cDave cued up a tape and didn\u2019t hit \u2018record\u2019 and the playback in the studio was way up [producing] an ear-shattering vibrating jet guitar [sound].\u00a0 Ken had been shaking his Bigsby wiggle stick with some fuzztone and tremolo at the end of the tape.\u00a0 [Played] forward it was cool.\u00a0 Backward it was amazing.\u00a0 I ran into the control room and asked \u2018What was that?\u2019\u00a0 They didn\u2019t have the monitors on and hadn\u2019t heard it.\u00a0 I made Dave cut it off and save it for later.\u201d\u00a0 When they used it on <\/span>I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night, <\/span><\/i>it caught the listener’s attention and helped propel the track to No 11 on the <\/span>Hot 100 <\/span><\/i>chart.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Wiki defines their first album as, \u201cexotically combined effects, and violin-like guitar riffs, mixed with a diverse, if uneven, selection of pop songs.\u201d\u00a0 Lowe was married and working at the rocket engine design firm Rocketdyne when the band was formed.\u00a0 After the original Prunes disbanded, he worked in music production with Todd Rundgren\u2019s band The Nazz and MTV darlings Sparks.\u00a0 When the 1990s brought a re-interest in his old band, they re-convened and still perform on occasion.\u00a0 My lasting impression of The Electric Prunes was James Lowe cradling a Zither when they made appearances on the various youth oriented music shows.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t many pop bands that made it to the top of the charts utilizing an ancient instrument like a zither.<\/span><\/p>\n The Prunes pioneering use of electronic sounds and explorations of early psychedelia made them trailblazers and yes, nobody forgot their name.<\/span><\/p>\n The Grass Roots:<\/span>\u00a0 Yes, there is still a touring version of The Grass Roots out there but it no longer has any original members (the list of past members soars past 50).\u00a0 The last touchstone to their 1965-75 heyday, bassist\/vocalist Rob Grill, passed away in 2011 but even he was a third generation member of the original group.\u00a0 The songwriter\/producer team of P.F.Sloan and Steve Barri had written several songs for a band project they called \u2018Grassroots\u2019.\u00a0 They were trying to cash in on the newly emerging folk rock scene and the two recorded a demo of <\/span>Where Were You When I needed You.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 The demo (now attributed to The Grass Roots) was sent to several San Francisco Bay area stations where the song drew moderate interest.\u00a0 Next, they went in search of a group who could perform as The Grass Roots.\u00a0 A band that had won the Battle of the Bands at a Teen Fair in San Mateo, CA fit the bill.\u00a0 The new Grass Roots (nee – The Bedouins) recut the song with their vocalist Willie Fulton (who would later become a member of Tower of Power).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The band began getting airplay in Southern California in late 1965 and Dunhill Records owner Lou Adler began using them as a backup band for The Mamas and The Papas and Barry McGuire.\u00a0 They also served as the house band at a Hollywood nightclub called The Trip.\u00a0 They broke away from Dunhill when the label would not let them record their own songs.\u00a0 They\u00a0 returned to the Bay area and kept gigging as The Grass Roots until Dunhill ordered them to cease.\u00a0 As <\/span>Where Were You\u2026<\/span><\/i>peaked in the Top 40, Dunhill set out to find a new Grass Roots.\u00a0 A Wisconsin band Sloan and Barri had worked with were offered the chance but they declined.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Many consider the GRII band to be the classic, hit-making version of the band.\u00a0 They were called 13th Floor when they submitted a demo to Dunhill and the rest was, as they say, history.\u00a0 Rob Grill was a guitar player who got the GR bassist gig when the 13th Floor\/GRII bassist was drafted.\u00a0 The band went through two replacements before Sloan heard Grill sing and knew his voice was perfect for the Grass Roots material.\u00a0 My formative drum playing years included a healthy dose of Grass Roots songs and one of the first times I played in front of a crowd was at a block party my folks hosted in our basement.\u00a0 I bashed along to <\/span>Let\u2019s Live for Today<\/span><\/i> and did a little showing off with what the 13 year-old me considered to be fancy cymbal fills.\u00a0 Having the neighbors clap gave me a lot of confidence I might be able to drum in a real band one day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This little trip down memory lane only scratched the surface at 8 groups.\u00a0 No doubt we will need to revisit the \u2018Whatever happened to . . .\u2019 files again.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 The Electric Prunes performing their big hit – Zither (or Autoharp if you prefer) in hand!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The title of this FTV started as a mental exercise of me trying to make a \u2018Top Ten\u2019 list of bands I liked to listen to back when I was first learning to be a rock and roll drummer.\u00a0 I thought, \u201cMaybe it would be fun to follow up on some of them and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3108"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3111,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions\/3111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}