Dr. Hook &/or the Medicine Show: Classic? ... or DUD?

A band that gets little discussion anymore (if they ever did). ILM-watchers eagerly await your verdicts and comments.

One of my favorite live clips on youtube:

"Sylvia's Mother" is great, too.

From Rolling Country 2007:

DR. HOOK, Greatest Hooks -- I voted for this in my #5 reissue spot in my Nashville Scene ballot, even though their coked-up schmaltz is frequently unbearable. But "Cover of The Rolling Stone" is one of the funniest songs ever written anywhere and therefore what Nickelback's "Rockstar" (which has nonetheless been growing on me even more since I saw its goofy video) should be, and "Sylvia's Mother" is like OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" only better, and I honestly think Dr. Hook's later country-disco sellout-sleaze period (best exemplified by "Sexy Eyes" and the very funkily riffed "Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk", though the Ray Parker Jr. imitation "Girls Can Get It" is cute too) may stand up as a completely original hybrid that should have turned into its own genre but somehow never did. Otherwise, "A Little Bit More" appears to concern sexual stamina, "Sleeping Late" appears to concern masturbating, and "A Couple More Years" appears to concern being older than your partner (not that she's a little teenage blue-eyed groupie or anything of course.) But I'm pretty sure she dumps him anyway.

Scott Woods, on his blog a few days ago, on a song that Greil Marcus surprisingly includes in the appendix of records he considers great in the back of Stranded:

Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, “Carry Me, Carrie” (1972) - Over-emoted fragile-voiced rock gospel bombast that reminds me of "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" (which, oddly enough, the group also recorded). Curious choice. It's okay, but I prefer "Sylvia's Mother."

I also figured a couple months ago (talked about this a lot on a recent thread on '70s German K-Tel albums) that the supposed '70s glam band Smokie sounded a lot like Dr. Hook and the gang.

Also, they used Shel Silverstein like Blue Oyster Cult used Richard Meltzer, which is obviously cool.

And Dr. Hook's eyepatch predated Bushwick Bill's by decades at least as much as "I Got Stoned And Missed It" predated Afroman's "Because I Got High". (Back cover of the band's '70s Greatest Hits LP and front cover of Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks On Me" 12-inch look hilariously alike, with all the other band members standing, surrounding the eyepatch guy in the band who is sitting on a chair facing southwest.)

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f185/PappaWheelie/momuspatch.jpg

"Sylvia's Mother" is one of the most horrid songs ever recorded. Band is 90% dud, saved only by the truism "When You're in Love With a Beautiful Woman, It's Hard."

this video was one of the most hysterical things I've ever happened across on VH1 Classic:

Supposedly, in their early days, they occasionally glammed up and disguised themselves as their own terrible opening band, and to be regularly booed offstage! Any stunt like that would put any band halfway to "classic" right then and there. And that nonsensical guitar solo in "...Stone" clinches it.

Great band, no doubt. Like xhuxk says, "Sexy Eyes" almost invents some fantastic genre of its own tho I'm not sure if that's more about the dissonance between the way they look and the way they sound. No doubt that Smokie copped some of their moves, either, at least from the "Sylvia's Mother" period. Still, there's something about the sound of "Sexy Eyes" and "When You're in Love" that's timeless to me, a brightness and lightness of touch on the groove that means if those records don't put a smile on your face then you might as well admit to yourself that you hate fun.

No doubt that Smokie copped some of their moves, either, at least from the "Sylvia's Mother" period.

Especially in "Living Next Door To Alice," I think.

Also occurs to me that Dr. Hook and the Tubes might make up a genre (not sure who else would be in it) -- absolutely over-the-top and unserious to the point of visual and musical insanity semi-successful '70s rock acts who wound up giving in to the biz and laughing all the way to the MOR bank in the early '80s. I get the idea they both really enjoyed selling out.

I think the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver sort of fit here too.

I got into these dudes bcz of the Shel Silverstein factor. I really liked Shel's songs and I was knocked out when I found out Shel wrote 'Rolling Stone.' I got the best of for free, actually – the dude at the record store was so embarrassed I wanted to buy it that he was like, "Here, just take the damn thing." This band is so much fun.

I've never seen a photo of these dudes. I always imagine them looking like the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

Xhuxk - I'd add latter-day Three Dog Night ("Brickyard Blues") to that genre.

Recently posted on Rolling Country about Lisa Rogak's bio, A Boy Named Shel. The maestro gets tired of living near-simultaneously in Sausalito, Chicago, Nashville, Key West, Martha's Vineyard, with random global hits, so decides he'll also set up non-housekeeping in Wodstock, and have a band. Not start one, and not perform with it (though he did sometimes), but write all the songs and supervise the records. So his contacts among the lumberjacks locate Hook, set up an audition in Jersey. " 'It was a really sleazy bar,' said Shel. 'There was a revolving red light for psychedelic schmaltz and a fairly naked go-go chick shaking her ass around to 'Last Morning,' which was a personal, sensitive song I wrote for the movie. Even in that atmosphere, they brought it off.' " The movie was Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying All Those Terrible Things About Me?, starring Dustin Hoffman. Hook and Shel appear in it, and the book includes pix of mustachioed Dustin and massively bearded Shel (who in one shot sports a great wig on his fuck-the-60s shaved dome), making musique and soireeing with two ma'mselles who should have been on the cover of Rolling Stone, if not Oui. How it all ended up with Hook? You'll have to read the book! (Somebody on some other thread mentions that Dennis L. "still tours England every year.")

After really listening to "Cover of the Rolling Stone" the other day, I realized that (in that song, at least) they sounded exactly like the Electric Mayhem:

http://www.sssesamestreet.com/images/SS.jpg

Or I guess the Electric Mayhem wound up sounding exactly like them. Either way: classic.

They must have had an album come out when I was really small, because I remember they were all over tv and Dr Hook's eyepatch kind of creeped me out

Something about their sleazy soft rock really appeals to me. "Sylvia's Mother" is almost too pathetic to be tolerable but "Sharing The Night Together" conjures up airport lounges and terrible singles bars in a way that makes me happy.

I got the best of for free, actually – the dude at the record store was so embarrassed I wanted to buy it that he was like, "Here, just take the damn thing."

Wow this has never happened to me and I've bought some embarrassing stuff! New life goal.

Also it looks like i need a Dr. Hook antho, stat

huh this is a weird band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H5CkRND3Zc

Weird that this thread pops up the same day this appears on Gawker.

not really, i read that article and then started listening to some of their music. great article.

first '45 i ever bought (i was ten) was by these guys ("only sixteen"). 20 years later i move to a san francisco apartment and my actual next door neighbor is Rik (the guy on the top right three posts up)(!!). he's got some kinda folky country thing now - Gayle Lynne and the Hired Hands. who cares

That article is amazing. Thanks for the link.

i posted it on the great music writing thread but no one talked about it with me so i revived this thread too

and on facebook. i'm pretty obnoxious.

wow yeah this is fantastic!

It is absolutely stellar.

Just ordered this dvd after reading the article. awesome stuff.

Heard "The Cover of the Rolling Stone" for the first time in ages today. Two sublime touches: "The" Rolling Stone, instead of just Rolling Stone, and the way Ray Sawyer (I guess? I always just thought of him as Dr. Hook) says "Aaaah, that's beautiful" after the intentionally hideous guitar solo.

There are a couple of other concerts on youtube now, from the same time as the 1974 German TV show. The one filmed in Copenhagen in 1974 is possibly even better than the Musikladen performance. The antics similarly swing from chaotic to amazingly accomplished but the big difference is that there is a live audience so their schtick is given it's proper context. They have a lot of fun performing some of the most kitch, maudlin' material ever - the opening number about a soup stone being a perfect example. Love this band now.

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

Oh, and at one point they strip off and sprint across the stage naked.

unrelated sidebar: i knew shel sylverstein wrote Cover of the Rolling Stone but I never realized he did Sylvia's Mother too

Just read about this the other day and was watching the Silverstein-fronted Dr. Hook clips from the movie:

In 1970, their demo tapes were heard by Ron Haffkine, musical director on the planned Herb Gardner movie, Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?. The songs for the film were written by the cartoonist, poet and songwriter Shel Silverstein, who determined that Dr. Hook was the ideal group for the soundtrack.

...

Silverstein wrote the songs for many of Dr. Hook's early albums (including their entire second album), such as "Freakin' at the Freaker's Ball", "Sylvia's Mother", "Everybody's Makin' It Big But Me", "Penicillin Penny", "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan", "Carry Me Carrie", "The Wonderful Soup Stone" and more, some of which were co-written with Locorriere and/or Sawyer.

Silverstein seemed way more comfortable and natural fronting Dr. Hook than Hoffman did pretending to play guitar with Dr. Hook.

Except for one scene with Barbara Harris (enough for an AA nomination), I found it close to unwatchable; C. Grissom likes it.

Cinema Center Films Poll

I watched that Copenhagen set last night and it's basically the Live of Leeds of dudes goofing off on stage. Awesome.

"sexy eyes" is one of my favorite songs of all time, its godly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6WutGHAFZM