S/D: The Turtles

"don't know anything"

LP produced by Ray Davies any good...?

I AM A FAN. WE HAVE MET. CAPSLOCK UNINTENTIONAL

I haven't heard the album Davies produced (being a Turtle neophyte myself), but I do recommend the fairly solid/often silly Battle of the Bands ("Elenore," "You Showed Me").

Elenore fucking rulz

Cheif was a break from way back in the days before rap records too, but ath Steady B Serious remix has recontextualized that track forever in my mind.

Great band. You need to meet more people Shakey.

c) played a pivotal role in the T. Rex sound

You mean Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman's backing vocals, I presume? In which case you might have added:

d) played a pivotal role in the destruction of whatever cred Frank Zappa still had at the start of the 70s

hey this Battle of the Bands album is awesome! and really funny. love the use of "you're my pride and enjoy, etcetera" in Elenore, the food song with the brownie recipe, "Surfer Dan".... good shit

and omg that I Am Chief Kamawamalea break - teh awesome

Destroy : Outside Chance ... for inventing Ocean Colour Scene.

eh?

you don't think it sounds like the template for the 3rd-rate fag-end of britpop? not that i'm seriously blaming the Turtles for those crimes of course.

maybe I just don't have a good idea of what Ocean Colour Scene really sound like, but to me Outside Chance is just a fairly generic 60s garage band type track.

...which happened to be written by a pre-fame Warren Zevon.

I got to see Flo & Eddie w/the newest editon of the Turtles a couple years back. Fun show. They did the expected hits, plus a bit of comedy and some trivia, like a song they wrote when they were staff writers for Strawberry Shortcake. Afterwards they joked about all the subliminal messages they stuck into that and other shows they worked on. ("We've been messing your kids up for years!")

"you don't think it sounds like the template for the 3rd-rate fag-end of britpop?"

i thought it was "you showed me" that invented bad brit 90's trippop? i actually liked the lightning seeds cover. but it's nowhere near as brilliant as the original:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ANPGyzmgvk4

and sorry to be a broken record, but the album that everyone needs:

The Turtles Thread (Cuz I Couldn't Find One) A.K.A. I Finally Heard Turtle Soup.

i mean, i love the first album and i love battle of the bands, but turtle soup is just flat-out amazing. near perfect. "hot little hands" is my jam of jams.

actually i don't even know if it aint me babe is their first album. but i like it. and i like happy together. and i really need a vinyl copy of you baby. i just found a nice mono copy of happy together.

I am currently searching for Turtle Soup... lolz it took me at least three or four listens before I got the filthy little pun in I'm Chief Kamanawanalea

*cough*

yeah grabbed that earlier - hurray for blogs

'Outside Chance' is a brilliant track. If only Ocean Colour Scene had been half as good...

Someone had to ask: would it be accurate to say that this band is completely misrepresented by "Happy Together"?

wow scott totally OTM abotu Turtle Soup - grab that shit yo

altho kinda annoying that it includes several songs from Battle of the Bands. I hate when bands do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqN3ZTuq5CA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZm96qtzePY&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyx7vizXJ6w&feature=related

Seek: "Goodbye Surprise," which sounds more like Uriah Heep than anything else.

Also seek: the Top 20 hits "She's My Girl" and "You Know What I Mean," two of my very favorite songs of all.

can't get enough of these guys lately. their "20 greatest hits" compilation is incredibly solid, perhaps more so than 99% of 60s pop acts. even "happy together", which has been utterly exhausted by years of oldies radio and advertisements, sounds incredibly fresh when placed among its family. these guys were genius arrangers. "you baby", "you showed me", "she's my girl"..."love in the city" is a lost masterpiece!

One of my first-ever 45s was "Sound Asleep," and I was OBSESSED with the flipside, "Umbassa The Dragon." In no way the "worst record ever made' as youtube claims, but it is pretty deranged/drug addled...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99mzGJpy9g0

i love, love, love the Turtle Soup outtakes. 'The Owl', 'The Last Thing I Remember' and 'If We Only Had the Time' in particular are amazing tracks. better than any of the offical album tracks, imo.

better than hot little hands!?? i'll be the judge of that! um, if i can find them somewhere. i'll look on youtube.

there's a song on their first album called "... suburbia" (can't remember, i'm at work now). truly hilarious wimpy "ballad of a thin man" rip-off. check it out.

i love, love, love the Turtle Soup outtakes. 'The Owl', 'The Last Thing I Remember' and 'If We Only Had the Time' in particular are amazing tracks. better than any of the offical album tracks, imo.

I dunno if they're better but they're definitely equal, especially "The Owl."

'If We Only Had the Time' has two distinct halves, and the second half totally reminds me of another song. Is it Blood, Sweat and Tears, maybe?? The first half is the better half anyway. Love the part with the lyrics about how 'isn't it nice, how little we have to say?/and how nice it is to say'. Although this kind of needs to be heard to be read right.

damn "hot little hands" smokes

I love The First Thing I Remember

last thing I remember

Tons of great songs!! "Outside Chance" is prolly my favorite, but they had a lot of winners.

Enjoying Michael Shelley interview(s) with Howard Kaylan but not sure if I want to read his entire book.

in-laws are tight with Kaylan. last year for Xmas they gave me a 45 of "You Showed Me" autographed by him and Volman!

... and yet five years ago:

I know anything about their actual output, nor to my knowlege have I ever met a fan

They'll be inviting you to join them next!

things have changed a lot in 5 years lol

Enjoying Michael Shelley interview(s) with Howard Kaylan but not sure if I want to read his entire book.

― Oulipo Traces (on a Cigarette) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 11:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heard one of these, it was really great. I love Flo & Eddie

the '65-'66 stuff is pretty hit and miss (so many similar covers etc.) but man was this band on a roll from '67 on.

agree the Turtles rule. good harmonies and good songs. Battle of the Bands is a lot of fun to listen to.

Howard Kaylan is a fantastic singer too.

they were the perfect fit for the Care Bears. hearing them sing and talk about a magical land of fluffy clouds and stuff just feels natural.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Dinner_with_Jimi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynu7b0diFJU

They were on a horrible record company who pressurised them to come up with hits and basically ripped them off, so "Elenore" was kind of a fuck you to them. Also it was on "Battle of the Bands" where they were doing songs in different styles as different bands, so it's a self-parody or a satirical version of what the record company thought the Turtles should sound like - which begs the question, why were people ever surprised that Kaylan and Volman ended up working with Zappa? To return to the unlikely youthfulness of Howard Kaylan, the band were all minors when they signed the contract with the record company, or rather when their parents did.

Yeah, come to think of it, I think I did know that "Elenore" was a put-on. Even with "Happy Together," though--which I count as a perfect distillation of everything ecstatic and sunshine-y about 1967--it walks a fine line between a gentle send-up of that mood and the thing itself.

Surely 'Happy Together' is about the 2 guys from the Turtles (Kaylan and Volman, I presume) who are inseparable friends and sing that song to each other every day.

Heh, that’s what I always thought too, at least in the back of my mind, in some dark corner that they and FZ were intent on shining a flashlight upon.

Didn’t they have to start recording as “Flo and Eddie” because their evil manager OWNED THEIR ACTUAL BIRTH NAMES?

Never thought about that but probably. Did they have the same manager as Moby Grape?

No MG had the Jefferson Airplane guy

Everyone should listen to the Andrew Hickey podcast ep on Happy Together he just did btw

This video will explain all their complicated business problems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=183OPk7-eK4

Flo and Eddie were friends with my parents back in the day. My dad was in The Leaves who shared a bad player with them (Jim Pons he played with FZ too) my mom says Howard and Mark shared a house in Lauren Canyon that had a room with a wall to wall waterbed lol.

Bass* not bad he was not bad he was very good

that is amazing that your dad was in the leaves.

dim memories of a syndicated flo & eddie radio show that was picked up by my beloved wlir in the 70s. they would only play the songs until the first appearance of the hook, which meant they could fit in a lot of songs. i remember one episode that was centered around the beau brummels. a quick search pulled this up:

https://archive.org/details/TurningTheTables061FloEddieByTheFiresidePt1Jul82017

Beloved WLIR? Oh right of course. Did you read Richard Neer’s book FM, TSF?

i have not read that book but thanks for the tip. wlir is known -- if it's known at all -- for being one of the first on the new wave tip. there was even a documentary called "dare to be different." but they were great even before that, with weekly live concert broadcasts, first from their own studios, then later from local venues like the calderone and my father's place. the concerts from their ultrasonic studios are legendary.

Right. Although in the pre-New Wave days and even after I seem to recall an element of Southern Rock as well. Feel like I can hear Larry the Duck Dunn saying something about Molly Hatchett in my head whilst riding an express bus to Jones Beach.

But yeah, there’s that one live Big Star album recorded there in 1974, for example.

a couple classic little feat performances, lou reed, dr john, incredible string band, holy modal rounders, gentle giant, frampton...they were all over the place.

I liked the old WLIR and the New Wave WLIR but my um, first love was the year and change of New Wave WPIX.

oh yeah that was a good one too. meg griffin!

Right. And Joe from Chicago, Joe Piasek, I think, her husband at the time maybe. Along with Dan Neer, Richard’s brother. Some of these people would migrate back and forth to and from the next spot on the dial at WNEW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHOZSNRFVdI

I should probably take this stuff over to the Lou Reed WPIX thread.

Heh, found this book about The Clash I never heard about until yesterday that mentions all those people which I probably have to read.

Howard Kaylan’s autobiography is a fun read- basically the exact opposite of Mike Love’s. I recall there being good Zappa stories in it.

i swear to god this song is the songwriter (al nichol) clocking a trans woman and being shitty about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc2QWTeLAQw

al don't knock it till you've tried it, that's all i got to say about that

More like the TERF-les on that particular number

does really bring to light how much transphobia is fundamentally rooted in patriarchy, though. al nichol makes a pretty poor excuse for a radical feminist!

Tambourine Magic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXgDtRPzO4E

RIP

RIP :(

RIP Mark. Howard Kaylan was 27 in that video btw!

... actually 29, but you get the picture.

He was portly, and he was maroon. R.I.P.

Turtles were the most underrated popular LA band of the time. I especially like Battle of the Bands, and Turtle Soup, which was produced by Ray Davies. Their version of Judy Sill's Lady-O is so good. I guess Frank Zappa knew them back in the day when they were doing their surf band, the Crossfires, and Flo and Eddie were a perfect fit for him between their hamminess and incredible voices.

They were also managed by Herb Cohen. I like pretty much everything the Turtles ever put out!

RIP Mark Volman

Underrated Flo and Eddie appearance: the bgds for Love My Way by the Psychedelic Furs. Rundgren brought them in and the effect is expertly layered in the mix. But once you hear them, you can’t unhear it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGD9i718kBU

Great story from a friend's FB:

There was also the time, after David Bowie played the Universal Amphitheater during is the Diamond Dogs tour in 1974, that I had a close encounter with Volman. I had gone to the concert by myself. No one else I knew wanted to go. I bought a brand new brown velvet suit to wear. After the concert I went to Rodney's English Disco to see if there was some sort of celebration going on, but it was very quite there that night. As I was getting ready to leave, Volman and his musical partner, Howard Kaylan approached me. "Hey! Didn't we see you at the Bowie concert?" they asked. I just about had a heart attack. I told them YES and then told them how much I love the Turtles. They asked what I thought about the concert and we talked for a while about that. Then they said that they were going to get a late dinner across the street and ask me if I wanted to join them! We walked across Sunset to the House of Pancakes where we talked a lot more and had dinner (on their dime)! I was on Cloud Nine!
And now one of them, Mark Volman, is dead, and I'm extremely sad. RIP Buddy. Thanks for being one of the nicest and most talented people I ever met.

such sad news! RIP mark

Wow at that FB post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujb_Lw1zJAM

Love classic Turtles and “Turtle Soup” and absolute gods on those T Rex records. Rest In Peace.

^^Cosign. It can't be overstated how important their work as the "Incredivoices" was to those T.Rex records. A match made in heaven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q48jqaJWToc

Turtles were the most underrated popular LA band of the time. I especially like Battle of the Bands, and Turtle Soup, which was produced by Ray Davies. Their version of Judy Sill's Lady-O is so good. I guess Frank Zappa knew them back in the day when they were doing their surf band, the Crossfires, and Flo and Eddie were a perfect fit for him between their hamminess and incredible voices.

― encino morricone (majorairbro), Saturday, September 6, 2025 7:09 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Battle of the Bands is amazing. i always wondered if that album packaging inspired the fake bands in YLT's ICHTHBAO packaging

Sorry, you're going to have to decode YLT's ICHTHBAO.

Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One

Sorry, a band I saw live once and quite liked but have never heard so much as a second of otherwise.

speaking of which

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXee4xGMos

The Turtles don't get enough credit for, esp by the time of Battle of the Bands doing exactly the kind of subversive, humorous pop/rock music that the Mothers always claimed be to doing

RIP to a great voice

mind totally blown by the info that flo & eddie were singing on those T. Rex records!!!