S&D, C/D: Post-bubblegum Super-K productions

Well, obviously there was Ram Jam. One hit ("Black Betty," 1977) and two Epic albums, back when that label was INFESTED with hard-rock bands (Molly Hatchet, Ted Nugent, Mother's Finest, etc.). IMO, the first self-titled Ram Jam album is the better of the two.

Other latter-day Kasenetz-Katz productions with a hard-rock edge:
- Ohio Ltd., "Wham Bam" (Buddah, 1974)
- Canyon, "Top Of The World" (Magna Glide, 1975)

Both are singles.

Also, you might want to track down a couple of CD's that came out on Collectables in 1994, volumes one and two of THE SUPER K COLLECTION. Not everything on these discs are in the heavy vein, but there's enough of that spread across the two CD's, like Octopus'"Overloaded," which was later covered note-for-note by Ram Jam for their debut LP.

Cool, thanks, Rev. I once scanned through what I'm guessing was the first volume of "The Super K Collection" over headphones in a record store shortly after it came out, but you can probably imagine how my memory has faded since then. Anyhow, the Ohio, Ltd., Canyon, Octopus are some good starting points... many thanks!

From googling, I'm getting the impression that you've touched most of the key bases here, unless, say, the Fat Man's Music Festival track is some great unearthed treasure.

I have a Fat Man's Etc. single on Scepter (and I think they're on those two comps I told you about), but I haven't played either in a while, so I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Both volumes of that Super K comp are good, but not all of it was hard & heavy.

ha, wow, you go deep on the Super K stuff if you have a FMMF single. That's great! What are your opinions regarding the Crazy Elephant LP?

I like it 'cause it's so damn schizoid! You can tell which ones were sanctioned by K&K (the more "gummy" tracks) vs. the ones where the band is going for themselves (the psychy-type tracks).

And I gotta say, Crazy Elephant is one of the few rock bands I can think of THAT DOESN'T HAVE A GUITAR PLAYER (look closer at the lineup on the back cover). The guitar is prominent on the poppier cuts, but when they stretch out, I think it's the keyboards that take the lead (if I remember correctly). What do you think of it?

And since you're looking for K&K's hard-rockin' underbelly, you DO have the 1910 Fruitgum Co.'s HARD RIDE, right?

xpost

I should have mentioned that the bubblegummish songs on Crazy Elephant's album are probably studio guys...

Yes, exactly, that's what I love about the Crazy Elephant record! (the schizoid-ness)! Par for the course, I guess...easily compared, I suppose, to the Ohio Express, Lemon Piper offerings...but as opposed to their non-gummy stuff, I am way into the Crazy Elephant stuff, across the board! The organ running throughout all of the tracks wins. There's a seamlessness which seems to be lacking in the other classic Buddha full-length dashed-up offerings.

Plus, isn't there some Joey Levine-vocal offering of "Gimme Gimme Good Loving" to be found in some context? God knows I love Joey Levine, but, the "classic", original version of that song slays! And I love how they reprise the weird stutter-y guitar solo on at least two or three songs on the LP!

"Hard Ride" I have limited experience with, but I should probably re-visit it. My memory of it(and in large part this is predicated on some genius article that was in Chicago(?)-based zine "Rocktober" in the late nineties), is that "Hard Ride" veers into Blood, Sweat and Tears/Ides of March horn-rock territory...which didn't captivate me then, particularly...but, now I am ready.

Full disclosure: I wrote that Rocktober article (later reprinted in the book BUBBLEGUM MUSIC IS THE NAKED TRUTH)...

...and as much as I love Joey Levine, I cannot see his nasally voice navigating "Gimme Gimme..." It would just take all the air out of it.

That HARD RIDE elpee by the Fruitgums does veer off into horn band territory, but it sounds less like Blood, Sweat & Tears and more like what would happen if Pink Floyd (w/Syd Barrett) rented a horn section.

It's not a K&K project, but if you liked the schizoid sound of Crazy Elephant's album, you should seek out that weird 1970 album that the Gentrys did on the Sun label. At this point, the band was a long ways away from their "Keep On Dancing" heyday in '65 (only one original member left), and released an album they sounded like they couldn't make up their minds whether to be the Grass Roots or Johnny Winter And. I think I remember reading somewhere that the album wasn't meant to be a coherent statement, it was just supposed to be a Memphis bar band showing off their versatility, hence the weird moodswings. At least they apparently played the instruments themselves, unlike Crazy Elephant.

...for more opinions, search the archives for a Crazy Elephant thread that ran a year and a half ago.

Full disclosure: I wrote that Rocktober article (later reprinted in the book BUBBLEGUM MUSIC IS THE NAKED TRUTH)...

Wow! Congratulations on a job well done, then! That is one of my favorite pieces of music writing ever, no joke. My copies of the book and the Roctober magazine are in storage now, but I just re-read the article on the B.U. website...the paragraphs about Crazy Elephant never fail to make me laugh out loud (though, if I'm not mistaken, one of your lines about how Robert Spencer's vocals make it plain that he is not stopping by just to borrow a cup of sugar, was sadly omitted in the version that ended up appearing in the book). Anyway, I love that article!

...and as much as I love Joey Levine, I cannot see his nasally voice navigating "Gimme Gimme..." It would just take all the air out of it.

Yeah, I don't know if I've actually heard such a version, or if I am imagining it. Obviously, it gets confusing when there are multiple versions of some of those Buddah songs; f'rinstance the 1910 Fruitgum Co. songs floating around which feature Levine's vocals rather than Mark Gutkowski's...

That HARD RIDE elpee by the Fruitgums does veer off into horn band territory, but it sounds less like Blood, Sweat & Tears and more like what would happen if Pink Floyd (w/Syd Barrett) rented a horn section.

Wow, I'll have to check that out properly, then!

Thanks for the Gentrys record recommendation. Sounds great.

...for more opinions, search the archives for a Crazy Elephant thread that ran a year and a half ago.

Oh man, I thought I had already searched for such a thread and came up empty. I actually came close to starting a thread with the exact same title! ("Where is the LOVE for Crazy Elephant?")

Hey, thanks for reading!

As far as the multiple versions of Buddah bubblegum hits...a good rule of thumb is that if Levine's distinctive voice is on it, it's usually the Ohio Express (or the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus). Somehow or another Levine doesn't appear on the Fruitgums' records.

Gotcha.

It's weird, my listening trajectory w/that stuff is that I was obsessed with it over a decade ago, and then running across yr Roctober article got me totally excited once again, esp. as you managed to cover some of the more neglected corners of the phenomenon within the space of your writing...and then the Kim Cooper book came out when I was sort of wearied by all of that stuff...but in the last few days, as I mentioned in my initial post, I happened to d/l a ton of the Bubblegum MF comp stuff, which has re-ignited my interest.

I guess that's par for the course as far as personal listening habits, re-re-discoveries of things go, and so forth...

In that same issue of Roctober, there was a great David Allen Coe article, as well. I still don't know his stuff from a hole in the wall, but it piqued my interest nonetheless. You guys were obv. all about some good music journalism stuff.

Also, I managed to get a hold of the Ohio Ltd. track. It's pretty great; sounds like a shoulda-been a Kiss song...so I look forward to hearing the Canyon track at some point!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, yr breakdown of the Crazy Elephant stuff in the initial Roctober piece still makes me lose it. THERE AIN'T NO DARK SIDE OF MY UMBUMPO! or something (/dell)

It's just there are so many weird corners of that whole phenomenon. Late to the party garage stuff (or worn out their welcome garage stuff)---> classic gum stuff but with all of Joey Levine's double-entendre nasally-delivered material---> K&K trying to bank years later on the Grand Funk Railroad or whatever tip, but still retaining the goofy bubblegummy names in the acts signed...not to mention the detours on the Lemon Pipers records where the "real" band tries to do their thing and ends up sounding like sub-doors psychedelia, or, even more bizarrely, they do straight-up bubblegum on a song like "Rainbow Tree", with the "time and space/is only something your mind creates" lyrics. wtf.

I personally think that Joey Levine's creative peak was on some of the songs on the K&K Super Circus record. "Log in Fire", "I'm In Love with You", "New York Woman", "Up in the Air"...not to mention "Let it Take You" from the Ohio Express "Chewy Chewy" LP. I also have a soft spot for the Fruitgums' "Goody Goody Gumdrops" record, e.g., the theremin-embellished track "Mr. Cupid", or "Please Me, Tease Me". Wow. And the fact that both records featured the same cover-art ripping off Mad Magazine-- coincidence??? I think not!

"It's just there are so many weird corners of that whole phenomenon. Late to the party garage stuff (or worn out their welcome garage stuff)---> classic gum stuff but with all of Joey Levine's double-entendre nasally-delivered material---> K&K trying to bank years later on the Grand Funk Railroad or whatever tip"

"Late-to-the-party" garage and pseudo-Grand Funk - that's a pretty apt description!

I guess that's why I kinda like the hard rock acts (mostly from Ohio) that K&K produced - no matter how heavy they got, they still had a definite pop sensibility. Look at Ram Jam - the songs on that first album, as "stoopid" as it is, had more hooks than a coatrack! You don't have to hear "Too Bad On Your Birthday" more than once for it to stick in your mind! The second one, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG RAM, is far more undistinguished, I don't know what happened there, but the first self-titled LP sounds like what you'd expect a hard rock (not metal) band produced by a couple of bubblegum titans to sound like, and it's not surprising that something as catchy as "Black Betty" took off like it did.

As far as late-era garage...if K&K had toned down the cartoon angle, a lot of their songs would be prime NUGGETS material.

"not to mention the detours on the Lemon Pipers records where the "real" band tries to do their thing and ends up sounding like sub-doors psychedelia, or, even more bizarrely, they do straight-up bubblegum on a song like "Rainbow Tree", with the "time and space/is only something your mind creates" lyrics. wtf."

The Lemon Pipers weren't a K&K act, but since they recorded for Buddah around the same time, are often lumped in with the Fruitgums and all the rest. I love the poetic liner notes to the JUNGLE MARMALADE album, which strongly hint that their bubblegum recordings were a fluke and they considered themselves more progressive than that.

I personally think that Joey Levine's creative peak was on some of the songs on the K&K Super Circus record. "Log in Fire", "I'm In Love with You", "New York Woman", "Up in the Air"...not to mention "Let it Take You" from the Ohio Express "Chewy Chewy" LP. I also have a soft spot for the Fruitgums' "Goody Goody Gumdrops" record, e.g., the theremin-embellished track "Mr. Cupid", or "Please Me, Tease Me". Wow. And the fact that both records featured the same cover-art ripping off Mad Magazine-- coincidence??? I think not!

xpost - that last paragraph was accidentally reprinted from Dell's post!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16kh-AP4OCU

"Late-to-the-party" garage and pseudo-Grand Funk - that's a pretty apt description!

to be honest, I probably osmosified at least part of that from your original article

The second one, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG RAM, is far more undistinguished

ha, what a classic stupid album title

As far as late-era garage...if K&K had toned down the cartoon angle, a lot of their songs would be prime NUGGETS material.

Well, I read a relatively recent interview w/Joey Levine where he says something like, "to be truthful, I've always considered myself to be a soul singer". I don't know about that, but I think that the man definitely had a gift for something (beyond the bubblegum stuff) that was never fully realized.

The Lemon Pipers weren't a K&K act, but since they recorded for Buddah around the same time, are often lumped in with the Fruitgums and all the rest.

Oh, okay. I don't know if I ever even realized that such was the case.

Also, I don't know why I've never thought of doing this previously, but I recently delved into youtube videos of bubblegum stuff. There is some hilarious/bizarre Lemon Pipers and Fruitgum stuff to be found there.

You guys know much more about this stuff than I do, but there's a great Super K 45 by one "Mark" called "Good 'n' Plenty" that's a fab meld of gum and white soul. B-side is the master run backward. Title: "It Could Set You Back a Year."

Written by K&K.

You guys know much more about this stuff than I do, but there's a great Super K 45 by one "Mark" called "Good 'n' Plenty" that's a fab meld of gum and white soul. B-side is the master run backward. Title: "It Could Set You Back a Year."

That's what I like about those K&K singles - the backwards B-sides!

Cool, I've never heard of that one. "Mark" is Mark Gutkowski, who sang, and I think also (legitmately) played keyboards on most of the early Fruitgum stuff. I have a "Mark" 45 called "Good Night" which is not an especially interesting listening experience, but I will definitely seek out the "Good 'n' Plenty" record.

"Dark Part of My Mind" has been doing it for me as of late. I think that I am a sucker for all manner of ersatz psyche.

Oooh, thanks for the info, dell. I can mail you an MP3, if you like. Someone sent it to me 'cause my 45 was beat as hell. Be glad to pass it along.

"As far as late-era garage...if K&K had toned down the cartoon angle, a lot of their songs would be prime NUGGETS material."

quick joey small wins my prize. so beautiful.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1OiljaInq4g

Hey, If Timi...

I would love for you to send me an MP3 if you feel so inclined. I have a working email address if you click on my name. I can try to compensate in turn if there is anything that you are esp. burning for. Most of it is probably slsk-able, but to be honest, I also have a bunch of bblgum and non-bblgum vinyl in storage that I could easily part with at this point, and could send you through snail mail, seriously...

Great name, btw... Timi, yeah.

quick joey small wins my prize. so beautiful.

intrsting. to be honest, my favorite joey levine compositions are the tracks i mentioned upthread, like summa the stuff on the K&K super circus lp or some choice tracks on the Ohio Express "Chewy Chewy" record. Quick Joey Small has always left me cold.