Bubblegum University - David Smay

Candy Flavored Lipgloss: Glam & Gum

Wed, 03 May 2006 22:03:38 -0700

by David Smay

Pity the American child of the seventies, denied the spectacle of Marc Bolan on Top of the Pops, the Sweet lip-syncing on The Old Grey Whistle Test, and completely ignorant of Supersonic. The flashiest, trashiest, popcultiest of all rock genres, glam rock sparked more epiphanies on the telly than it ever did on Radio London. But television�s place in the history of the glam era is just one of the many parallels between glam and bubblegum.

We can parcel out glam rock into several loose packets. On the arty end of the aisle, you have Bowie, Roxy Music and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. Smartypants art-rock, heavily dependent on the Velvet Underground and the amusing notion that Pop Music offers many choice poses and costumes for the aesthete around town. This wing of glam dallies little with bubblegum. Still, Bowie�s assertion that the Spiders From Mars made better fake rock and roll than the Monkees reveals much of his method, and Roxy knocked out mutant pop songs like �Do the Strand� with casual ease. (Mott the Hoople were barely glam and never bubblegum. The fact that Bowie handed them glam rock�s anthem ranks as a brilliant mistake in their career aspiration to wed Bob Dylan with the Rolling Stones.) At the far other extreme from the art students lurked the prole brigade headed by the hard-rocking Slade, a group strongly associated with their boot-boy audience and fostered by ex-Animal/ ex-Hendrix handler Chas Chandler. Two facts already become clear: the high-degree to which most glam acts depended heavily on sixties musical veterans, and the profound influence of the mods on glam. Have you seen any mid-sixties photos of Bowie, Marc Bolan, Roy Wood? Mods the lot of �em. Back to our glam taxonomy, we find the middle ground occupied by the groups that owe the most to bubblegum. T. Rex and Gary Glitter belong here, and the bands produced by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn (The Sweet, Suzi Quatro and Mud).

Marc Bolan reinvented himself and invented glam with the singles �Ride a White Swan� and �Hot Love.� Hooking his fey, fairy folk music up to sturdy Eddie Cochran riffs (but keeping the conga drums), Marc caused a sensation in the UK. He shoved hippie crap off the charts and handed rock and roll back to the kids. And the Crash Street Kidds loved the glittery eyeshadow and platform shoes and the satin jackets and the overdetermined hairstyles. T. Rex perfected (then exhausted) their formula with a run of hits like �Get It On (Bang a Gong),� �Jeepster,� �20th Century Boy� and �Children of the Revolution. Despite Bolan�s brilliance as a singles artist, the disposable nature of his hits, and even the fact that he ended his career hosting a television show aimed directly at the bubblegum market, T. Rex is not really a bubblegum band. T. Rex did, however, mate rock and roll back with pop music and, perhaps more importantly launched a Pop Moment.

Into that moment stepped the makers of the gummiest of glam music, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. Discovered by sixties pop veteran Mickie Most (Herman�s Hermits, Jeff Beck, Lulu), Aussie Chapman hooked up with Nicky Chinn and their earliest chart success was with a band named New World (later disgraced for rigging votes on the Star Search-like British show, Opportunity Knocks. You can already sense a barely checked ambition in their approach to chart success).

Chinn and Chapman soon turned their energies solely to songwriting, and linked up with a band formerly known as Sweetshop to turn out a slew of pure, no-mistaking-it bubblegum. �At the time there was a record called 'Sugar Sugar' by the Archies and it'd sold zillions, it'd sold about seven or eight million records worldwide. And I thought: wouldn't it be great to tap into that pop bubblegum market?� recalls Phil Wainman. These early singles by the Sweet�written by ChinniChap, produced by Wainman, and played by Wainman�s session crew�included �Co-Co,� �Chop Chop,� �Wig-Wam Bam,� �Little Willy,� �Tom Tom Turnaround� and �Funny, Funny.�

Sweet�s early singles charted (and were charming bits of bubblegum in their own right), but the band was allowed to express themselves on harder rocking B-sides. You can see the trouble brewing, since the band saw themselves as another Deep Purple, yet were having hits in an entirely Archies-influenced mold. Phil Wainman�s approach undoubtedly added to the tension: �I made as many enemies as I made friends because I'd upset other musicians, I'd upset other producers that I was working for. �Cause I put my team in: 'The only way you're gonna make that a hit is book my guys, we'll turn up and work out your songs.�

Sensing the potential in both the group and the emergence of glam, Chinn and Chapman stole the riff to �I�m A Man� (as recorded by the Yardbirds ) and produced �Blockbuster.� It�s worth noting that Bowie stole that same riff for �Jean Genie� (as did the Nashville Teens on �Tobacco Road.�) Chapman said, "It's a good thing to revive riffs from the past because you know kids like it.� To which Nicky added, �We get a lot of criticism from people saying we�re getting money for old rope, but it�s not easy to write plastic songs.� The Sweet actually had more hits and wider worldwide sales than T. Rex or Gary Glitter with Top 10s "Hell Raiser," "Ballroom Blitz," "Teenage Rampage," and "The Six Teens."

Mickie Most discovered Suzi Quatro in a Detroit club in 1970 and brought her to England. There Chinn and Chapman poured her into a black leather jumpsuit (searing the fantasies of spotty boys across the U.K.) and pushed �Can the Can� up the charts. Suzi�s subsequent singles closely aped the same formula (closer in spirit to Gary Glitter than the Sweet with their dependence on a HUGE tribal beat) until it was milked dry. To most Americans, she�s better known as Leather Tuscadero, the rockin� little sister of Fonzie�s true love, Pinky Tuscadero.

ChinniChap�s third major glam act sported the least glamorous name imaginable, Mud. Barely known in the U.S. but much loved in the U.K., Mud scored eleven Top 20 hit singles and a trio of #1s: �Tiger Feet,� �Lonely This Christmas� and �Oh Boy.� Their best single might be �Dynamite� which went to #4 and showed off lead singer Les Gray�s Presleyan (Elvis, not Reg) vocals. Like the Sweet, Mud were a veteran live act that simply suffered for lack of material Chin and Chapman redressed that problem successfully.

One of the odder features of the glam movement was its fifties fetish, evident not only in Les Gray�s voice, but in Alvin Stardust�s paunchy rehash of Gene Vincentisms, the otherwise inexplicable band Showaddywaddy, the ubiquitous return of saxophones and those D.A.�s Roxy Music sported on their first album. This was consistent with the same nostalgia wave that put Sha-Na-Na on TV and made American Graffiti a huge hit. In Britain, however, a conscious desire to recapture the initial impact of American rock and roll in the fifties drove glam�s fascination with the era.

Gary Glitter began life as Paul Gadd, made several unsuccessful runs at the charts in the sixties as Paul Raven and was a pot-bellied, leftover never-was when he hooked up with Mike Leander. Leander was (yet again) a respected music veteran from the sixties, best known for arranging the strings on Marianne Faithfull�s early singles and scoring the Ultra-Mod movie Privilege. Seizing the glam opportunity, Leander (who played all the instruments except the horns) crafted pop singles with a gargantuan drum sound (inspired by John Kongos �Tokoloshe Man� and Dr. John), catchy singalong chorus and hammering guitar riffs.

Dressed like a Space-Vegas Liberace, plump, stately Gary Glitter ascended the hit parade and, implausibly, became an enduring British pop icon. Plus, he bequeathed �Rock and Roll, Part Two� to stadium sound systems into perpetuity. His trademark sound became an important and much cited influence on British new wave acts like the Human League and Adam Ant as well as on glam fan Joan Jett. On a gummier note, the Spice Girls heroically covered �The Leader of the Gang� in Spiceworld.

Glam�s biggest contribution to bubblegum (arguably after the Sweet) would be the Bay City Rollers. Curiously replaying Tommy James� breakthrough, the Rollers recorded and released �Saturday Night� during the height of the glam era, several years before it inspired Rollermania. Tam Paton cobbled the group together from several Scottish bands (including the Saxons) and brought in the Sweet�s engineer Phil Wainman to give the Rollers that hit-ready sound. Paton then recruited the songwriting team of Phil Coulter and Bill Martin who provided the tartan-clad teens with their first hits. Wainman took over after Coulter and Martin left, and actually allowed the boys to play on their own records, squeezing out a few more hits before the mania evaporated.

A handful of other glam acts successfully charted during the heyday, including such noteworthy (and listenable) cuts as �I Love Rock and Roll� by Arrows (famously covered by Joan Jett), �New York Groove� by Hello (less famously covered by Ace Frehely), and �Angel Face� by the Glitter Band. Then there was a ton of appalling crap by people like Barry Blue and the Rubettes and Alvin Stardust.

Roy Wood�s (ex- of the Move) venture into glam rock produced the nightmarish vision of a bearded hippie with an excess of eye shadow. Wizzard�s singles had elements of �50s rock, Beach Boy harmonies, heavy metal guitars and a Phil Spector-like density of production. Fascinating in their own right, and certainly a product of the glam era, Wizzard owe little to bubblegum. Bubblegum or not, �Ballpark Incident� and �See My Baby Jive� are recommended listening.

T. Rex brackets the glam era, from its first revolutionary singles to the sad sight of Marc Bolan toppling off the edge of the stage on his afternoon, kid-aimed TV show, Marc! Weirder still, it was the final episode of his six-show run with Granada and featured Marc jamming with old friend and rival David Bowie. Marc died shortly after that ignominious tumble.

Glam�s immediate influence turned out to be in new wave music, where Mike Chapman successfully put Blondie and the Knack on the pop charts and Phil Wainman worked with Generation X and XTC. Like bubblegum and disco, glam was primarily a producer�s genre and the sleek, radio-ready, hook-heavy hits still sound brilliant today.

The Yummies

Mon, 01 May 2006 23:48:00 -0700

The Yummies, interview with Les Fradkin
by David Smay

The Yummies (AKA Les Fradkin) had a regional hit in October 1970 called "Hippie Lady," a single on Sunflower Records. Hundreds of bubblegum one-shots ricocheted off the charts without doing any lasting damage. Here we get the inside scoop on how one such act, the Yummies, came to be.

David Smay: How did you first get signed to MGM? Did you submit a demo tape? Were you a studio singer/musician that they thought they could spin into a solo act?

Les Fradkin: I was brought over to MGM by Randy Edelman, another songwriter who I befriended at April-Blackwood Music (CBS), where I was already signed as a staff writer. He bolted over to MGM where the "grass looked greener" and suggested that if I was looking for a solo deal (which I was), to give them a try (which I did). My "demo" consisted of a live audition with my acoustic 12-string guitar for Eddie Deane and Wally Schuster (Leo Feist Music) who signed me to a long-term production and songwriter agreement. They thought they could spin me into a solo act due to my involvement with Edison Lighthouse, where I had never had the opportunity to contribute as a writer. Plus I had the endorsement of John Hammond Sr. from my tenure at CBS and I guess that meant something in those days.

DS: Who produced the sessions for the Yummies? Who wrote the songs? Who played on the sessions?

LF: The sessions were produced by myself, Eddie Deane and Steve Katz (our engineer). The sessions took place at Sound Exchange Studios in NYC in the early fall 1970. This situation evolved because I was already signed to Sunflower/MGM Records as a solo artist ("Fearless Fradkin") and I was keen to prove myself as a producer to the powers that were. So, brazenly, I asked for the shot. They said, "do something on your own and, if we like it, we'll buy the master!" I already had a single out as Fearless Fradkin (SUN #101: "Song Of A Thousand Voices" b/w "You Can Cry If You Want To"). This record was given a Billboard Top 60 pick and superficially sounded like the Brotherhood of Man type style. The song was successful on the MOR charts (#12) but never made it higher than #87 US. BUT… Mirielle Mathieu recorded it for Philips and had a massive hit with it in 1971 where it hit #1 and sold really well. I talked endlessly about this possible independent production project to Steve Katz. He was very supportive of the idea to do a bubblegum record, since it was still quite popular on the charts at that time. So we went to the record shop and bought every bubblegum record we could lay our hands on and proceeded to "dissect" the "formula." His boss Bob Morgan (who produced Bobby Vinton and owned the studio) was given a piece of the deal to get the time booked. I basically wrote both songs with a little help from Eddie Deane on lyrics. Steve and Bob were given co-credit although they really had nothing to do with the writing. More political perks, I guess. Since we didn't want to spend much money out of pocket, I played all the instruments on both sides of the record. We "borrowed" a Farfisa organ (an important sound to use) and I played acoustic and electric guitars, bass AND drums to a click so I could keep accurate time. Eddie and Bob helped with endless handclap overdubs. I sang all the lead vocals. Eddie and I did the backgrounds. The single that we originally planned was "Patty Cake." We even cut an acetate with the B-side consisting of the A-Side played backwards! They said, "we want a real B-side!" Back we went. Out came "Hippie Lady"--a kind of "Bo Diddley" bubblegum piece. To our surprise, they like that side even more than "Patty Cake." So "Hippie Lady" became the A-side of Sunflower #103. It was released October 1970.

DS: Did the Yummies ever make any live performances, or were they only a studio creation?

LF: The Yummies were intended, at first, as just another studio group. But the record hit in a couple of regions, which necessitated our "employing" some of my friends to assist in a couple of TV spots to lip-sync it.

After The Yummies, Les continued to record for MGM, though his solo album was never released. As a producer he worked on an unreleased Left Banke album for Bell in 1972, and birthed (Lester Bangs’ favorites) the Godz’ two albums for ESP. In the late ‘70s, Les joined the original cast of Beatlemania, left to write jingles and compose for soap operas, only to return to Beatlemania for the entire nineties. Today, Les is again working as a producer.

Ron Dante induction

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 23:10:47 -0700

Ron Dante inducted by Canned Hamm with a speech by David Smay:

Tonight we honor the career of Ron Dante, and in so doing, we may have doomed the Earth itself. The facts are clear � whatever Ron Dante has attempted he has accomplished with panache and tremendous success. Not content with mere pop stardom, Ron conquered literary publishing and Broadway production. He produced records that sold millions, and wrote jingles that sold a million burgers. The man does it all. So as we selfishly bask in his reflected glory, we must admit to ourselves we may be cheating the world of advances in brain surgery by keeping Ron here. Milk production in Wisconsin is probably falling right now simply because Ron isn't there. The cows miss him, and who can blame them. Global warming? Our fault. Admit it! It is because we are such greedy music fans that we can't leave Ron alone to fix the ozone layer.

It's Ron's fault, however, that we sometimes overlook his tremendous ears as a producer, or his fine songwriting skills. It's the voice. Being greedy little music fans, we can't resist it. It's one of the great pop voices ever, with more stylistic range than anybody. How did this Italian kid from New York turn into a one-man Beach Boys? (And add to the long list of Ron's overlooked gifts, his superb skills as a vocal arranger.) But he could be bluesy when he wanted, pure as a choirboy or gritty and soulful as the song required.

Ron was lucky to find a perfect foil in Toni Wine. They're pop music's Emmylou and Gram, and it's pure joy to hear their voices twined together. And there's the rub. Joy is a rare commodity in any age, and fiendishly difficult to capture in song. But that's exactly what Ron did, again and again over the course of his career. We were lucky to have his music.

And so it is with the greatest affection and gratitude that we induct Ron Dante into the Bubblegum Hall of Fame. Pour a little sugar on it, Ron!

Toni Wine

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:25:36 -0700

Toni Wine
by David Smay

Listen to that voice soar, turning a single line into an unforgettable pop epiphany: �I�m gonna make your life so sweet.� Can you imagine a music scene where a child prodigy can wander away from her classical piano studies at Juilliard, stroll into 1650 Broadway and start selling hit songs? That was New York in the early sixties, which produced a seemingly endless stream of Nice Jewish Girl Pop Geniuses. That�s the story of Toni Wine, �the female demo singer of the sixties,� hit songwriter, Queen of Bubblegum.

As a teenager, Toni fell in with Don Kirshner�s Aldon Music and with Phil Spector. She formed a partnership with Carol Bayer to write �Groovy Kind of Love,� which became an international smash for the Mindbenders. Toni contributed to the tag end of the Girl Group and Girl Singer era, co-writing �You Came, You Saw, You Conquered� for the Ronettes, �Off and Running� (Lesley Gore), �Now That You�re My Baby� (Dusty Springfield), �Only to Other People� (the Cookies), and a handful of singles under her own name, like "A Girl Is Not A Girl". She gave Phil Spector one of his last hits of the sixties, co-writing �Black Pearl� for Sonny Charles.

In the late sixties, Don Kirshner recruited Toni for the Archies. To the distress of pop fans ever after, Toni�s tenure with The Archies was sadly brief. She appears on a few tracks on Everything�s Archie (most importantly, of course, on �Sugar, Sugar�). But she�s all over the Jingle Jangle album, swapping leads with Ron on the title track, swooping out from the back-up vocals, sweetening the harmonies, tossing off the �hey hey hey� on �Nursery Rhyme.�

Toni left the Archies in a monetary dispute after the worldwide success of �Sugar, Sugar.� At the time, Toni had more impressive writing credentials than anybody associated with the project excepting Jeff Barry. Despite this, Toni was frozen out of participation as a writer/ producer. Being a sharp cookie and a longtime veteran of the scene, it must�ve seemed like a waste of her talents to continue with the Archies when she had no chance to receive royalties on their hits. So Toni didn�t sing on the Archies� singles �Who�s Your Baby� or �Together We Two� � Donna Marie was brought in to replace her.

Toni then hooked up with Jeff Barry�s ex-wife and ex-partner, Ellie Greenwich. They recorded a demo for �Candida� with a lead vocal by a washed up teen idol turned A&R man, Tony Orlando. (Most accounts have the demo itself released as the single, meaning Toni & Ellie were the original Dawn.) Bell rewarded her by putting out a project titled Dusk (get it?) with Toni singing lead, but it didn�t hit.

After that, Toni married legendary Memphis soul producer, Chips Moman. Chips had just moved from Memphis to Atlanta and became the favorite producer of the nascent Outlaw Country movement of the �70s. Suddenly, Toni�s credits as a backup singer take on a Country Music Hall of Fame flavor, as she worked with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and sang on Townes Van Zandt�s Flyin� Shoes.

As with Jackie DeShannon, it's somewhat puzzling that Toni's talent didn't translate into stardom, but she seems content with her legacy and staying behind the scenes. Toni never did like to tour, and now she can settle back in Nashville with Chips and do what she does best, write songs and sing like a dream.

The Candy Ass Charisma of the Archies

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:21:10 -0700

The Candy Ass Charisma of the Archies
by David Smay

You can sneer at Britney, scorn Christina, mock 'N Sync, and snicker quite openly at Backstreet Boys but you don't mess with the Archies�not unless you want to wind up at the bottom of a lemonade vat with a pair of sticky pink boots. The Archies are the cr�me de la creampuff. Through the brief aperture of their existence, the Archies focus the entire history of rock into a laser beam of scintillant pop, refracting out through the spectrum of all musics, ushering in feminism, re-establishing diplomatic ties with Red China and bolstering the Consumer Price Index by .0374%. All to a groovy little dance beat. But perhaps I understate their importance.

In 1968, while a batch of hippies blew themselves up in Weatherman labs, a generation of 13-year olds came of age jonesing for a hook. Two men understood this need, this terrible teen craving for a meaty beat slathered sweet. On the East Coast, Neil Bogart reigned as head of Buddah Records, ringing up Top 40 hits like a carnival game, with one Kasenetz-Katz shadow-band supplanting another on the radio. On the West Coast, Don Kirshner sat brooding over his ouster in The Great Monkees Coup, plotting his vendetta carefully. He'd make his own group, and this time he wouldn't make the mistake of using actual humans with their tedious desires for autonomy.

Though seemingly carved out of a solid block of suet, Kirshner had a mind as devious as an untenured English professor at a small state university. He brought on Jeff Barry to head his bubblegum triad. That's Jeff Barry of the songwriting credit Barry-Greenwich ("Be My Baby," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Leader of the Pack")�a musician whose influence in rock and roll is more pervasive than herpes (and whose songs are twice as catchy). Cast Andy Kim as the second-in-command, the grooviest Lebanese popstar to ever write two number one hits. And singing lead for the Archies, Ron Dante, a man so talented that chart-topping singer is only the fifth most successful career on his resume. Toni Wine ably abetted the Archie core, giving voice to Veronica and Betty and sending ecstatic shivers down the spine of many a listener.

These were professional hitmakers, my friend, not some pimply-assed pack of garage rockers. They had one job and one job only: create the absolutely irresistible pop song. Again and again and again. Together the Archies isolated the genetic strand of the perfect pop hit and replicated it like a honey-dipped virus. This pop genome worked its way deep into your brain, beneath the higher functions of the cerebral cortex, burrowing down into the primitive lizard brain which craves only sex, junk food and the pure cane syrup of pop music boiled down to 7 inches of black vinyl spinning at 45 revolutions per minute.

And yet, for all their clinical pop competence no band so perfectly evokes the happy hippy daydream of 1969 than the Archies. No San Francisco band ever came close to the Archies� suburbatopian vision of picnic blanket sex in a grassy park, radiantly sunlit in an afterglow of everlasting sweetness. At least, that's the way it sounded to kids at the end of the sixties. A generation too young to care about Altamont heard the Archies, latched onto the sugartit of late-American capitalism and got a buzz that would last a decade. Other bands promised a revolution, but the Archies saw the future, and it looked a lot like the Seventies.

The first Archies single, "Bang Shang-A-Lang," skimmed into the charts at #22 in 1968, roughly a year after Kirshner got the boot as the Monkees� puppetmaster, and coincident with the Monkees slow fade from the charts. You don't need a protractor to draw a line from "Da Doo Ron Ron" to "Bang Shang A Lang." Lyrically, the Archies pick up where Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich left the Ronettes, spinning self-conscious teen mumbles into a poetry of giddy do wah diddy ron ron. The main difference being that the Ronettes sang with voracious yearning and the Archies sing from exultant satiation. That being the difference, of course, between Top 40 before The Pill and after The Pill.

The songs Jeff Barry and Andy Kim wrote for the Archies park themselves squarely in Freud's Oral Phase where lickin' is lovin' and there's not much distinction between candy corn and cunnilingus. In this infantile orality all the pleasures of the world enter through the mouth: sex, candy and "slices of sunshine" (the inevitable oblique drug reference from "Sugar and Spice"). Still, this is not the famously fellated songbook of Kasenetz-Katz ("Chewy chewy chew me out of my mind"). Due to Andy Kim's enlightened loverman lyrics, Archies songs are surprisingly girl friendly and rife with early morning pillow talk (like the giggly-lewd spoken intro to "Who's Your Baby"). The Barry-Kim songbook never suffers from the sadness of a swinger stranded on a Saturday night, so common in Boyce & Hart's records which "trail off into hopelessness and disconnection." (Kim Cooper, editrix and B&H chronicler). In "Jingle Jangle," Veronica boldly invites Archie to "Sing me, sing me baby" and put his mouth where her moneymaker is. Sung as a duet: [him] �so darling don't be weeping/ and please don't be a' sleeping / when I come a' creepin' down the hall / to sing you [her] sing me sing me, baby (groaning).� This is bubblegum that Erica Jong could sink her teeth into.

Sonically, the Archies lacked the oomph of Spector's Wall of Sound, but neatly rip off the bubbling bottom from Motown and the joyous vocal surge of the Beatles. Chuck Rainey laid more hooks in the bassline than anyone this side of James Jamerson. And the drummer on "Sugar and Spice" (Buddy Saltzman? Gary Chester?) commits some of the most savage cymbal abuse since Keith Moon demolished "I Can See For Miles." Cotton candy harmonies spun out over a bassline chewier than Red Vines, a rock candy beat, and Veronica's organ spread like a thin layer of marzipan holding it all together: Is that rock and roll? "The basic bubblegum sound could be described as the basic sound of rock and roll�minus the rage, fear, violence and anomie that runs from Johnny Burnette to Sid Vicious." (Lester Bangs, "Bubblegum," The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, 2nd edition). By Lester's definition, three-fourths of the bands that ever came out of Scotland are bubblegum.

Consider Jeff Barry's credentials as the one true Messiah of Gum: he co-wrote "Hanky Panky," for Tommy James in 1966; he produced "I'm A Believer," for the Monkees in 1967; he co-wrote and produced "Sugar Sugar," the biggest selling single for all of 1969 in both the U.S. and the U.K.; and he co-wrote "Da Doo Ron Ron" which was Shaun Cassidy's only hit. And those are just the Number One Hits.

Jeff Barry is nothing less than The Omnipresence of Pop. Pick the hardest band imaginable, the very antithesis of bubblegum as you know it and we'll play a quick round of Six Degrees of Jeff Barry.

Archies to the Melvins: Jeff Barry co-wrote "Sugar Sugar" for the Archies; which was covered by Mary Lou Lord; who famously gave Kurt Cobain a blow job; Kurt produced the Melvins. (From Kurt it's only two bed-hops to Nine Inch Nails. In fact, Courtney's underwear is second only to Hal Blaine's drumming as a hub for making musical connections.)

Archies to Einst�rzende Neubauten: Jeff co-wrote "I Can Hear Music" covered by the Beach Boys; Glen Campbell played with Beach Boys; Glenn had a hit with "Wichita Lineman;" Nick Cave covered "Wichita Lineman;" Blixa Bargeld played with Nick and Einst�rzende Neubauten. (One more hop from the Bad Seeds gets you to the Gun Club or the Cramps.)

Archies to Public Enemy: Shangri-Las record Jeff & Ellie's "Leader of the Pack;" Shadow Morton produces Shangri-Las; Shadow produces second NY Dolls album; Sonic Youth covers "Personality Crisis;" Chuck D. guests on Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing."

(If you want to continue playing you can easily hook Jeff Barry up to Miles Davis, Merle Haggard, or Run-DMC in less than five jumps.)

In 1969 Ron Dante hit number one with "Sugar Sugar" and simultaneously sang lead on the Cuff Links hit "Tracy" (#9 on the charts). For most people, having two songs in the Top 10 at the same time would be a career peak, but most people are not Ron Dante. After the Archies, Ron hooked up with a jingles writer and now he owns one tiny corner of your brain: they wrote "You Deserve a Break Today" for McDonald's. Then he produced that jingle writer's first eight gold albums�Barry Manilow. Then, straining all credulity, I came upon this fact: "In 1971 [Ron Dante] became publisher of the literary magazine The Paris Review." (The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, 1995.) That's right, two years after "Sugar, Sugar" Ron Dante was publishing Gide, Foucault and Susan Sontag. Itching for new challenges, Ron decided to bankroll Broadway shows (a quick way to lose your life savings): "Children of a Lesser God," "Whose Life Is It Anyway" and "Ain't Misbehavin'."

Paradoxically (considering his successful solo career), Andy Kim remains the most enigmatic of the Great Pop Troika, a pseudonym, wrapped in a stage-name, within a missing ethnicity. In one of the kookier double-blind show biz switches, Andy Kim obscured his Hispanic roots by changing his name from Andrew Joachim. Except, he didn't have Hispanic roots. He was born Andre Youakim in Montreal and he was Lebanese. Clearly a complex man with many layers, Andy now performs under the name Baron Longfellow. No, not as a porn star. Think of a cross between Tom Jones and Neil Diamond and you'll grasp Andy's current incarnation. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Jeff Barry groomed Andy Kim for stardom concurrently with the Archies. Through 1969 and 1970, Jeff and Andy wrote the majority of material for the first three Archies albums, the last Monkees album, Changes, and put out five Andy Kim albums on Jeff's own Steed Records. One imagines them screeching into a Sunset Boulevard boutique parking lot, snatching up a pair of multi-stripe hip-huggers and a realllly wide leather watch band, shooting the gate-fold photos for Rainbow Ride and racing back to the studio for their third session of the day. When you write nine albums worth of material in two years you've got to have a system. The Archies formula was to cook the sixties down to one sticky popcorn ball: Brill Building songcraft, girl group innocence, Beach Boy harmonies, a touch of folky jangle, Motown handclaps, a dollop of psych.

While the pop cognoscenti track down obscure Hudson Brothers records, Emitt Rhodes longplayers or Michael Brown's work with Stories, Andy Kim's early solo career molders in the "K" bin. And that's shameful, because Andy's turn-of-the-decade work outshines his peers in hooks, production, danceability and mild bouts of loopiness. Almost any cut off Rainbow Ride or How'd We Ever Get This Way would enhance a Poptopian band's setlist. Andy's early solo records on Steed feature Jeff Barry's distinctive production touches like the ringing, son-of-"Last Train to Clarksville" guitar figure on "Rainbow Ride," the psychedelic drench of "When You're Young," the rack of exotic rhythm instruments on "How'd We Ever Get This Way," and the infectious Bubble-Gospel of "Love That Little Woman" (a favored genre they also exploited on the Archies classic "Get On The Line"). Andy's tender lyrics reach a goofy political pinnacle on "Tricia Tell Your Daddy"�a protest song addressed to Tricia Nixon. To achieve the desired teen-idol/castrati effect, they tape-manipulated Andy's voice up to a higher pitch (a fate which David Cassidy also suffered). His natural range can be heard in the gruff, Neil Diamond-like growl he affects on his proto-Disco smash, "Rock Me Gently."

Ritchie Adams produced the fourth and last Archies album, This is Love�a labored and self-conscious effort, lacking the effervescent charm of its predecessors. The Barkan-Adams songs try too hard to whip up some kinderpop vibe and miss the distracted artistry of the Barry-Kim songs. Jeff and Andy rarely wasted more than 32 seconds on a set of Archies lyrics, content to slip a few subversive lines to the kids, and going back to work on one of Andy's solo records. Perhaps I�m too hard on Barkan-Adams songbook; they bop along beautifully and sport some of the weirder subtexts in the Archies catalog. One Barkan-Adams song bears particular note, "My Little Green Jacket." Ostensibly a tune about a stud donning his chick-magnet wardrobe, the song reveals more than this ladies-man intends� I reach into my closet/ and slip my secret on/ I sashay out the door..." Closet? Secret? Sashay?

It's clear in retrospect that the Archies caused the �70s. While other musicians drifted across the airwaves with the flicker of public taste, the Archies ran on TV every Saturday morning from 1968 to 1978. The effect was profound. The Archies molded the taste of a whole generation of pre-teens before their runny little brains had a chance to gel. Not only did it infect these kids with the pure, viral distillate of Pop, it taught them to presume instant gratification as their birthright: Glam, Disco, Cocaine, Inflation, Rapacious Sexual Indiscretion, and Flaky Enlightenment followed inevitably.

A Brief History of Boy Bands

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 11:56:25 -0700

A Brief History of Boy Bands
by David Smay

Boy Bands rule the world and they always have. (And by �always� I mean �since Beatlemania.�) You wouldn�t think pubescent girls had that much power, but you underestimate sexual hysteria at your own peril (cf. The Bacchae by Euripedes. Any right-thinking director would update the play by setting it at a Backstreet Boys concert.)

I wound up digging both the big Backstreet Boys hits [of 1999], but those guys' problem is that they're not bubblegum enough: They're way too indebted to the adult-oriented ballads of Boyz II Men. I couldn't imagine Betty of the Archies shaking a tambourine to their music. (Chuck Eddy, Pazz & Jop, Village Voice)

Are Boy Bands even bubblegum to start with? It�s tough to draw a clean line between bubblegum and teen idols. Some pop fans take a hard stance here insisting that true bubblegum bands don�t have teen�only faceless studio bands or cartoon creations qualify. Sifting through the pop dig of the sixties and seventies, however, it becomes clear that this facile bit of taxonomy can�t hold. The Monkees sold on their faces (Davy foremost). The teen idol of the Seventies, David Cassidy, sang lead in the canonically bubblegum Partridge Family. Tommy Roe, Mark Lindsay, Dino, Desi & Billy, Tommy James�they all did hard time on planet Tiger Beat. When the quintessential bubblegum voice, Ron Dante, put out his solo album (essentially an extra Archies record with the same musicians and pool of songwriters) he angled for that teen mag audience right down to his photo insert.

The history of boy bands takes many a wayward turn beyond even the most generous definition of bubblegum. But be patient, I�ll keep it brief and on point and you�ll see how Boy Bands partake of the gumly wafer while staying something less than devout.

The Beatles

While brother acts and vocal harmony groups pre-date Vaudeville, the Boy Band as we know it first emerges with the Beatles. Their non-threatening cuddliness (quite a makeover by Brian Epstein on a bunch of working class speed freaks from Liverpool) was one of their big selling points and the band notably sold below the puberty line. Subject to outright scorn and dismissal when they broke in America, the band grew up and took their pre-teen fanbase with them. The mop tops left a motherlode for bubblegum musically (and their Pronoun Phase of early hits rarely rises above bubblegum standards lyrically). But it was their image as four complementary cuties that gave us the working model for Boy Bands ever after. Prior to the Beatles nobody gave a damn who the Belmonts were. Okay, after the Beatles nobody cared who Dion was (their loss), but the point is that in the post-Beatles era you sold your group as a merry band of (artificially and narrowly typed) lads.

The Monkees

When building a Pre-Fab Four it�s best to stick to the blueprint. Hence, Mike equals John as The Smart One. Substitute Davy for Paul as The Cute One. Micky is their Ringo, The Funny One. Peter stands in for George as� Hmmm, the somewhat mystically other one. The Oddball, one supposes, prone to non-sequiturs and prompting eye-rolling and blank takes from his comically tolerant mates. Now note, these types have but the faintest resemblance to the actual persons. Mike and John were certainly smart, but so was Paul McCartney before he baked his synapses in THC. And you typically wouldn�t put The Funny One as the lead vocalist, except Micky had the best voice. [Authorial bias noted here: Ringo & Micky are my favorite Beatle and Monkee respectively. In the Boy Band universe it�s vital to stake your identity to your chosen one and make it known. The fact that I also prefer Charlie Watts & Keith Moon should not be construed as a drummer bias but simple good taste.] Are the Monkees bubblegum? I say unequivocally� Sometimes. Really, it�s absurd to insist on an either/or definition. Every time Jeff Barry or Boyce & Hart handled them they were undeniably pink and chewy and popping.

The Jackson 5

Berry Gordy did not become the most successful music mogul of the sixties by missing trends. Berry saw the Monkees, the Kasenetz & Katz acts, the Archies and quickly sussed that Motown could do that and do it better. And they did. But more importantly (as we�ll see) the J-5 are indirectly responsible for the current teen pop explosion. Berry worked the bubblegum angle through the Jacksons� early recordings and backed it up with the hottest tracks ever recorded. The early Jackson 5 singles have no peers in pop thrills. But even in the J-5 cartoon we find an only partially successful effort in differentiating the boys. Sure, Jermaine was The Pretty One and Michael was The Prodigy. But Marlon? I�m drawing a blank on Marlon. And Tito was� well, Tito had The Hat. Despite this failure in product branding, the Jackson 5 still got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Osmonds

Operating on Sam Phillips� dictum that if you just find some white kid to sing like those black kids you�ll make a bundle, the Osmonds were quickly foisted on a suspecting public. Showbiz vets, the Osmonds started on The Andy Williams Show and were cooling their heels between gigs when the market niche for a white Jackson 5 opened up. The Osmonds are sorely underrated in today�s pop market and their Mormon Anomalousness has been overshadowed by Michael Jackson�s unslakeable ambition to embody Every Conceivable Celebrity Oddity. But snappy Osmond hits like �One Bad Apple� and �Yo Yo� deserve a new audience, and besides, Donny sang his ass off. Sure, he wasn�t Michael Jackson but he had a freakishly soulful style for a white kid from Utah. (Donny�s George Michael inspired comeback attempt in the �90s was not such a stretch.)

The Osmonds passed on the usual N.Y. musicians who played on so many bubblegum classics, nor did they use the Wrecking Crew in L.A. Instead MGM prexy Mike Curb, sent the boys to Muscle Shoals. In Memphis, George Jackson, one of Rick Hall�s staff writers, gave them �One Bad Apple� and they were on their way. Admittedly, recording in Memphis was the pop move to make in the late sixties, but aside from Dan Penn�s work with the Blue-Eyed BubbleSoul of the Box Tops it�s rare to hear the Muscle Shoals rhythm section on a bubblegum record.

Frankly, The Osmonds are ripe for a full hipster reevaluation. Not only did they pull off a credible Glam Rock gesture with �Crazy Horses� but they�ve got an Apocalyptic Mormon Concept Album (The Plan) simply begging for Lisa Suckdog�s exegesis and a Money Mark remix. Their heavy metal rewrite of The Book of Revelations, �The Last Days� successfully exceeds any satire that Spinal Tap could muster.

Bay City Rollers

The Rollers occupy a weird space in the pop continuum. They are equal parts bubblegum, Glam Rock and Boy Band. Rollermania proves once again that the durable Boy Band formula transplants beautifully to any number of locales. Scotland, Puerto Rico, Orlando, Florida�it doesn�t matter. The Rollers� music holds up well due to the careful pop craftsmanship of Phil Coulter (�I Can Only Give You Everything�), Bill Martin and Phil Wainman (the Sweet�s engineer). Their earliest hits (as with so many �70s Teen Idols) rehashed Brill Building staples, but they struck gold when they recorded Coulter & Martin�s �Saturday Night.� Tartan shock waves rolled through the popverse with striking and unintended consequences.

I hate to blow the mystique, but at the time we really liked bubblegum music, and we really liked the Bay City Rollers. Their song �Saturday Night� had a great chant in it, so we wanted a song with a chant in it: �Hey! Ho! Let�s Go!� �Blitzkrieg Bop� was our �Saturday Night.� �Joey Ramone

TV shows followed both in Britain and in the U.S. (Krofft produced, no less) but �creative differences� and the pressure of Rollermania itself ended their brief reign. The Rollers� post-fame slide ranks with M�tley Cr�e for Behind the Music fodder: child molestation and child pornography, vehicular manslaughter, suicide attempts, AIDS, financial mismanagement and fraud. Inevitably, Courtney Love optioned their story to be made into a movie.

Duran Duran

There�s a huge gap in Boy Bands between the Rollers and New Edition. In between (from a teen pop/Top 40 perspective), you�ve got the Disco era and the early MTV groups of the �80s. Disco gives us nothing Boy Band. Well, the Village People might qualify as a Boy Band on Christopher Street, but the Bee Gees were far too old and hairy and dentally intimidating to play the brother act for pre-teens. While neither a Boy Band nor particularly bubblegum, Duran Duran did efficiently plug this gap in the pop cultural psyche. They made danceable hits, the boys were cute (and distinct enough to allow a variety of favorites � a staple of Boy Band dynamics) and young girls had to be hosed down after their concerts. Further, Duran Duran�s avowed ambition to cross the Sex Pistols with Chic differs little from the formula advanced by the Backstreet Boys of grafting Boys II Men harmonies onto Gap Band grooves. It�s a Pop Funk thang.
One further fascinating but tenuous connection between Duran Duran and bubblegum involves the men who directed their early revolutionary videos, Godley and Creme (�Girls on Film,� �Hungry Like The Wolf�). When Graham Gouldman contracted with bubblegum kings Kasenetz and Katz, he recruited his buddies Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, with Eric Stewart, to record one of the last Ohio Express singles, �Sausalito.� Whatever happened to those guys? They formed 10cc, of course.

New Edition

Maurice Starr is a genius and Ving Rhames ought to be lining up the rights for a film bio before Courtney Love moves in. Maurice got his start with the second tier funk band ConFunkShun but didn�t make his mark until he and his nephew, Michael Jonzun grasped the import of the cheap synthesizers popping up on New Wave hits and more significantly, Afrika Bambaataa�s Electro landmark, �Planet Rock.�
Soon under the moniker the Jonzun Crew they crapped out the endearingly rinky-dink �Space Cowboy� and techno forerunner, �Pack Jam.� Thus bankrolled, Michael spotted some kids at a local talent contest (they came in second) and Maurice decided the market was ready for a new Jackson 5 (hence, they were the New Edition).

What was so great about New Edition was their irresistible blend of bubblegum pop and sweet soul, the kind responsible for hits like "Popcorn Love" and "Candy Girl" (guided, of course, by the hand of producer Maurice Starr, who went on to recycle these songs for white-bread clones NKOTB)... Who could have known they would go on to dominate the world of hip-hop and R&B in the '90s? �Rebecca Wallwork, All-Music Guide

New Edition slipped through that narrow doorway Maurice opened for them, pulled themselves out of Roxbury and remade R&B into their own image (New Jack Swing). Bobby Brown, Ralph Tresvant, Johnny Gill, Bel Biv Devoe all went on to score #1 R&B hits as solo artists, and Michael Bivins produced Boys II Men�s (who took their name from a New Edition song) influential first album. Boyz deserve a note here for their over-arcing influence on the contemporary Boy Bands. They provide the immediate touchstone back through the vocal group tradition that includes the Temptations, the Miracles, Five Satins, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

New Kids On The Block

Operating on Sam Phillip�s dictum� does this sound familiar? In a satisfying twist, Maurice exploited his own legacy after New Edition dumped him. He just moved one neighborhood over from Roxbury to Dorchester to find his New Kids. The teen pop market exploded in the late �80s and New Kids on the Block were the Kings of �80s bubblegum. Maurice wrote catchy hooks (he once claimed to write ten songs on the plane from New York to Boston) and saved on session musicians by recording all the instrumental tracks himself. Low overhead, high return. In truth, most �80s bubblegum sounds as dated as last year�s synthesizer. The hooks are there, but the cheap production gives it a brittle edge that hasn�t aged well.

By 1987 Debbie Gibson and Tiffany grappled for the Teen Queen crown, Jem & the Holograms brought cartoon rock back to television, and Menudo worked the Latin Market. The NKOTB phenomenon pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars (largely through their concert appearances) and they established the boilerplate for contemporary Boy Band shows with their frenetic, choreographed hip-hoppity dance moves. What makes Maurice Starr�s achievement even more spectacular is that he didn�t have the combined talent pool of Nickelodeon and Disney that Lou Pearlman works with to draw from. Both Jordan Knight and Joey McIntyre managed to scrape back onto the charts after more than a decade�s absence which must be some kind of record for perseverance in the Boy Band universe. And without NKOTB we wouldn�t have Mark Wahlberg�s fine career as a supporting actor.

Menudo

Menudo fascinate as a conceptual art project. The sheer ruthlessness of taking some poor kid, making him a star, and ejecting him from the group at 16 takes your breath away. Pygmalion as written by DeSade and Warhol. It ranks right up there with Kirshner�s cartoon band revolution for Master of Puppets genius. Like the Bay City Rollers, Menudo suffered a sex scandal within its management. (Running a boy band seems to rank right behind Priest and Scoutmaster on the NAMBLA job board.) Of course, Menudo�s most famous alumni is the hip-swiveliest pop star since Elvis, the King of Latin Pop, the toothiest grin since Donny Osmond, the most fey disavowal of his sexuality since George Michael: Ricky Martin.

Take That

America will never grasp the import of Take That. When Boy Bands died a grunge-related death in the early �90s, the cause was taken up in the U.K. Modeled directly on NKOTB (right down to the uneven talent distribution) Take That first gained acceptance on the gay club circuit.

Take That�s Greatest Hits... tells only half the story, since mere records cannot convey the exciting hairstyles, Howard Donald's arse, or depict the lads dressed as deer, but it's compulsive enough. Their hectoring �Do What U Like� debut merely scraped the Top 10, yet the remainder is peerlessly bright, intelligent pop full of joyfully plastic brass, and naturally stars �Back For Good,� Gary Barlow's one truly fantastic song. �Danny Eccleston
Take That's boyish good looks guaranteed them a significant portion of the teenybopper audience, but in a bizarre twist, most of their videos and promotional photos had a strong homosexual undercurrent � they were marketed to pre-teen girls and a kitschy gay audience simultaneously. �Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All-Music Guide

Just as Take That seemed on the verge of bringing Boy Bands back to the U.S. they split. Other British Boy Bands like East 17 and Boyzone soldiered on, but the Spice Girls quickly moved in for the kill and absorbed both Take That�s U.K. market and the world domination which had eluded the lads.

Backstreet Boys

They�re out there taking dance classes in stripmalls in Louisiana, singing Boys II Men songs in the school hallways in Kentucky, appearing at county fair talent shows and roller rinks. They�re southern showbiz kids and they�ve all converging on Orlando. O-Town, home to The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Trans Continental Records. In the �90s, The Disney Channel remade The Mickey Mouse Club and somebody had an eye for talent. That show alone gave us Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Keri Russell (Felicity) and half of �N Sync (Justin & JC). But first came Backstreet.

Lou Pearlman, a man Time magazine labeled �florid� (that�s code, get it?) made his money in shipping and then bought the Chippendale dancers. Lou founded Trans Continental and set the Backstreet Boys up with Johnny Wright, NKOTB�s road manager. Johnny took the Boys to England where the market was much more hospitable to teen pop in the early �90s. After Hanson and the Spice Girls softened stateside resistance to bubblegum, Backstreet popped and locked their way back home to unprecedented chart dominance. Both Hanson and the Spice Girls sadly flopped in their 2000 follow-ups while in contrast BSB closed in on one billion dollars in total revenue. One Billion. The brain boggles. The music? Unlike their NKOTB predecessors, everybody in Backstreet sings well enough to be a solo act. When they settle into a dance groove they rely heavily on a mid-�80s Gap Band vibe. But they make their money with the gooey ballads and that�s where Boy Bands look a lot more like Teen Idols than bubblegum.

�N Sync

Backstreet�s only challenger for current Boy Band supremacy are the just as Orlando-based, just as Lou Pearlman launched, just as litigious, just as pretty, label-mates on Jive Records, �N Sync. BSB were not happy to have their biggest rivals making the same leap from Trans Continental to Jive Records. The most notable things about �N Sync are: their successful escape from their Trans Continental contract; that they broke all sales records with No Strings Attached, selling 2.5 million in a week (doubling the previous record by BSB. Take that, indeed); their ubiquity; Justin Timberlake�s ascension into Heaven solely on the basis of his puss; that Justin dates his Mickey Mouse Club co-star Britney Spears; and �Bye Bye Bye� and �It�s Gonna Be Me� are ace pop songs.

That�s the history of Boy Bands up to the minute. A discerning eye might�ve caught that thread of gay impresarios that runs from Brian Epstein forward. And Boy Bands do have a gay audience. Cynical observers can�t help wondering what boys would be doing on backstreets, and noticing that everybody calls Lou Pearlman �Big Poppa.� But a front-page story in The Advocate in 2000 gives some credence that it�s less a matter of chickenhawks than young gay men tentatively approaching their sexuality and finding a safe, creamy, hairless (non-threatening) chest to obsess on. Just like the girls.

Are Boy Bands bubblegum? Sometimes they are and it's not a tough call: "Candy Girl," "Saturday Night," "ABC," "I'm a Believer," "Bye Bye Bye," "One Bad Apple" to cite just the obvious examples. Bubblegum is an undeniable strand through Boy Bands, but so are Teen Idol ballads, and more recently dance music and the vocal harmony tradition. Bubblegum remains only one part of the Boy Band formula, but we contend it's the best part.