Author Archives: Michael H. Little

I’m trying to write something about the late Stewart Lupton, for the second time, the first time being an article for the Washington City Paper that never got published about his big comeback that never happened, and I’m finding it difficult because Stewart was this remarkably sensitive and poetic soul who radiated deep pain, and frankly writing about him—and the sad trajectory of his life—hurts.

Lupton should have been a big star with Jonathan Fire*Eater, the can’t-miss mid-nineties art-garage NYC band that combined youth, charisma, great music, good looks, impeccable fashion sense, and a whopping topping of hype. They seemed slated to become what The Strokes would become several short years later—the post-punk band that put the Big Apple back on the map.

But it all went to shit, largely because Stewart had a big bad drug habit and Jonathan Fire*Eater’s much-vaunted album for DreamWorks (who won a big-money bidding war against the likes of Seymour Stein) only sold a piddling ten thousand copies or so. The hype—which included Calvin Klein trying to corral the boys into doing some modeling—backfired on them in the end.

Too many people resented the band’s privilege (they were elite prep schoolers all), good looks, impeccable fashion sense, and arrogance (they knew they were good and weren’t inclined to false humility) and wanted them to fail, and when their DreamWorks debut (1997’s Wolf Songs for Lambs) finally hit the streets the critics turned out to be the wolf and Jonathan Fire* Eater the lamb. More importantly, nobody bought it. In the end, the band’s buzz never extended much further than Alphabet City.

Read More »

I don’t write about holiday albums much, Merry Christmas being depressing words to me because of a terrible tragedy that befell my family on Christmas Eve many years ago, but I’m making an exception for The Felice Brothers’ self-released 2015 EP “Felice Navidad” because Ian Felice is one of the best songwriters in the world, period, an authentic goddamn Great American Poet with heart to spare and a bittersweet view of life that means he isn’t going to sugarcoat the Holidays—he knows they can rip your heart right out of your chest and eat it.

Thing is my family drove off a sheer thousand-foot cliff on a foggy Christmas Eve, me in the backseat with my siblings, and I’ll tell you more after I tell you that the music of The Felice Brothers is the absolute best thing to come out of the Catskill Mountains since Bob Dylan and the Band produced the greatest music ever made in the basement of the house they dubbed Big Pink at 6 Parnassus Lane, West Saugerties, New York.

I first saw The Felice Brothers in Woodstock, after making a pilgrimage to Big Pink, and while I’d never heard their music before in my life (my ex- and I had gone to see Bobby’s son’s band The Wallflowers) I knew a connection had been made, that The Felice Brothers had that same divine spark in them that produced The Basement Tapes. It was a glorious night.

Ian Felice is a songwriter with an incredible range. The rawbones raucous “Frankie’s Gun,” the spiritually powerful “We Shall Live Again,” and the flat-out amazing “Take This Bread” prove he can keep things folk simple. More complex and sophisticated songs like “Fire at the Pageant,” “Back in the Dancehalls,” and “Jazz on the Autobahn” have a more cutting-edge bent, while numbers like “Money Talks” take the band in a direction so surreal no one could have anticipated it.

Read More »

Celebrating Bill Nelson on his 77th birthday. —Ed.

Some people are just in the right place at the wrong time. But few have been as unfortunate as Bill Nelson, the frontman of English rock band Be Bop Deluxe.

Be Bop Deluxe put out a miraculously good debut LP, 1974’s Axe Victim, which suffered due to circumstances beyond its control. To wit, it was a glam record released at around the same time as David Bowie’s final stab at glitter rock, Diamond Dogs. This shouldn’t have been a big deal; England was awash in glam bands at the time, many of them enormously successful. No, what really did Nelson and Be Bop Deluxe in was the fact that Axe Victim bore a more than passing resemblance to the work of Mr. Bowie, which led critics to lambast Be Bop Deluxe as mere copycats.

As a result, Axe Victim has never gotten its fair due as a great glam album, on a par with Brian Eno’s “rock” albums, Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes, or the four albums attributed to Ziggy Stardust and the other personae Bowie adopted during the Glam Age, when it seemed every wild young thing in England was sashaying about in glitter-encrusted platform boots and home-made space suits that screamed, “Look at me! I’m from Venus!”

Nelson founded Be Bop Deluxe in 1972 in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. A little history—Wakefield was dubbed the “Merrie City” in the Middle Ages, and “the perfect place to lose an eye” during the height of football hooliganism in the 1980s. (Okay, so I made that last part up.) The band was composed of Nelson on lead vocals, guitars, and keyboards; Ian Parkin on rhythm and acoustic guitars and organ; Robert Bryan on bass; and Nicolas Chatterton-Dew on drums, backing vocals, and incredibly pretentious name. Together they set about ingratiating themselves into the glam scene that was all the rage at the time, and they hit all the right notes on Axe Victim, which benefitted greatly from Nelson’s virtuosity on guitar.

Read More »

Celebrating Tony Hicks on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

When it comes to scrumptious English pop confections, it’s hard to top the fluff produced by The Hollies on the Epic and Imperial labels during the mid-sixties. While their contemporaries were producing big psychedelic statements, these Mancunian lads were whipping up irresistible little ditties that were pure froth. “Carrie Anne” is one of the most innocent and loving slices of pure popcraft ever recorded.

And 1973’s The Hollies’ Greatest Hits offers a wonderful–if inherently limited–overview of the Hollies’ not-so-grand ambitions. These proud lightweights adhered like superglue to the format of the 3-minute pop song–“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” is a serious outlier at 4 minutes, 19 seconds–but they knew how to make those 3 minutes count. A whole hell of lot happens in “Dear Eloise,” and the deliriously dizzy-making “On a Carousel” contains gorgeous multitudes. When it comes to great songwriting teams, the names of Allan Clarke, Tony Hicks, and Graham Nash should never be forgotten.

It goes without saying that this compilation will not appeal to existentialists, hard rockers, or people who recoil at the word “cute.” That said, the LP doesn’t play up the cute as much as it might have. I can certainly understand why such post-Nash compositions as 1969’s heavy-on-the-soul “He Ain’t Heavy,” 1972’s lovely but lugubrious “Long Dark Road,” and that same year’s surprisingly hard rocking “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” are included herein, but they don’t feel much at home; a comp that focused solely on the Nash-era Hollies would sound more of a piece, and would provide more pure pop pleasure to people looking for frothy pop thrills.

I also wish this greatest hits didn’t jump back and forth in time in a craven effort to put the more recognizable hits up front; side two starts with a song from 1969 followed by three songs from 1967, then fast forwards to two songs from 1972. But hey, that’s show business, and I can only presume that the folks who put the comp together–and omitted some great U.K.-only hits in the process–knew best.

Read More »

Here I spent decades, hell, most of my life, thinking Eddy Grant’s synth-fueled, hard-rocking, reggae-flavored, let’s dance dawn-of-the-eighties MTV anthem “Electric Avenue” was about having a good time. I guess it would have helped to listen to the lyrics.

Because, and you probably know this, my lyrics-conscious brothers and sisters, it’s actually about a riot, the Brixton Riot of 1981 to be specific, and Eddy isn’t heading on down to Electric Avenue to have a good time, as I spent decades believing. He’s going to light shit up, and I’m not talking electricity. And it wasn’t the first protest song by the Guyanese-British musician–he’d been on the front lines since the mid-sixties as guitarist of the Equals, the UK’s first major interracial rock group, for whom he wrote the incendiary tracks “Police on My Back” (which the Clash culturally appropriated!) and “Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys.”

The Equals were a top-notch rock/soul/reggae/pop act, and their most popular songs were apolitical, from their first (and biggest) hit “Baby Come Back” (1967) to “Viva Bobby Joe” (sample lines: “Bobby Joe and his funk machine, yeah, yeah/Everybody’s gonna see a sensation, a sensation”).

They had some bubblegum in them too; “Michael and the Slipper Tree” must have resonated with the kiddie crowd, ditto “Rub a Dub Dub” (the Equals Jamaican-born lead vocalist Dervan “Derv” Gordon wants to smell like a rose for his baby). And “Laurel and Hardy” is kiddie novelty rock at its most blatant. “Honey Gum” isn’t as chewy chewy as you’d expect, but it still has bubble-blowing appeal. Why, they even recorded a cover of The Music Machine’s bubblegum standard “Little Bit of Soul.”

Read More »

It’s true, the old saying—give 50 monkeys electric guitars and sooner or later they’ll write “Louie Louie.” And the proof lies in one of the greatest unsung bands of the bubblegum music era, Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution.

How unsung? They don’t even merit a chapter in the 2001 Feral House Bubblegum Bible Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth. Or a mention even. And this despite the fact that Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution were real live chimpanzees! Who played cool kiddie punk songs like “Sha-La Love You” and “Magic Feeling”! And looked even cooler playing them!

Could it be because playing rock and roll wasn’t Lancelot Link’s day job? Link spent the bulk of his time foiling the evil plots of C.H.U.M.P.’s nemesis, such as Baron von Butcher, Creto (his chauffeur), and Ali Assa. Seen on ABC Television’s Saturday morning all-live-chimp Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. Being a secret agent is a time-consuming gig, which could be the reason why Lancelot Link and band only released one LP, 1970’s Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution. That or the TV show got cancelled after one season.

Here’s a fun fact—the chimpanzee actors on Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, were given chewing gum to get them to move their mouths so that human voices could be dubbed over them. You can’t get any more bubblegum than that! You didn’t have to give the guys in the 1910 Fruitgum Company chewing gum to get them to sing “1,2,3 Red Light”! The poor bastards were working for peanuts!

Read More »

Remembering Dickey Betts in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

When it comes to your bad karma and shitty luck, The Allman Brothers Band is a tough act to follow. And no, I’m not just talking about the tragedy that was Allman and Woman. I’m talking about the motorcycle accidents that claimed the lives of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley; rampant infighting and supernatural drug use; and a big-time cocaine distribution bust that led Gregg Allman to testify against his road manager in order to save his own ass. But despite the deaths, the duplicity, and even Cher and Man, The Allmans remain the most influential Southern blues-rock band of all time, and next to Lynyrd Skynyrd, the best damn band to hail from south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

But here’s the thing about the Allmans; I can honestly say I never much cared for them until Duane Allman took that fatal spill on his motorcycle. Because Duane, God bless his totally rad facial hair, was a blues player, and the fact is I despise the blues. As The Simpsons’ Bleeding Gums Murphy immortally said, “The blues isn’t about feeling better. It’s about making other people feel WORSE.” Don’t get me wrong; I can handle them if they’ve been radically tweaked, freaked, warped, or twisted. But Duane, a traditionalist, played ‘em old school, making me the dick at the party who ran out screaming every time somebody put on “Statesboro Blues” or, even worse, “Stormy Monday.” As for “Whipping Post,” it’s way up there on my Shit Parade alongside “Midnight Rambler,” “People Have the Power,” and the entire recorded output of The Clash.

The bottom line? One man’s tragedy is another man’s blessing, and Duane’s untimely demise had the ironic effect of transforming The Allman Brothers Band into a group whose music I actually like. 1972’s Eat a Peach had a few great songs, such as “Blue Sky” and “Melissa,” that took the band in a non-blues direction, but it also included the infamous “Mountain Jam”—really, did the world really need a song so long it took up two sides of a double LP? It took the advent of guitarist/vocalist Dickey Betts as the Allman’s de facto leader to produce 1973’s Brothers and Sisters, which emphasized a unique hybrid of country rock over the blues, and threw in some good-times boogie for good measure.

Read More »

Celebrating Dennis Dunaway on his 79th birthday. —Ed.

Ten bonus points and a dead baby if you can tell me which album John Lydon called his favorite of all time. All time! That means he likes it more than KC and the Sunshine Band’s The Sound of Sunshine or the Eagles’ Hotel California even! Unimaginable! Well, if the dead babies reference didn’t tip you off, which it certainly should have, the former Johnny Rotten’s favorite rock album in the whole wide world, including the Sammy Johns record with “Chevy Van” on it, is Alice Cooper’s Killer.

1971’s Killer followed hard on the heels of that same year’s breakthrough LP for the band, Love It to Death. Which I prefer to Killer, but who cares? I’m not John Lydon. Anyway, Killer cemented the band’s reputation for writing songs of macabre weirdness, which they milked for all they were worth with a live show that included decapitations, gallows, giant snakes, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, 7,000 showgirls wearing glitter-encrusted Nazi jackboots and porcupine-spike bras, a full-scale reenactment of the crash of the Hindenburg, and an elderly Dr. Josef Mengele playing cowbell.

Okay, so I exaggerate. But the band’s gory and fantabulous live show delighted teens while deeply disturbing parents, who were convinced that Cooper’s magically morbid extravaganzas were going to instantaneously transform their kiddies into wild-eyed axe murderers. Which made the kids love it even more!

I’ve said before that the perfect LP would have combined the first three tracks of Love It to Death—in which guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce play like men possessed by the Devil—and the first two tracks and “Dead Babies” from Killer. But that’s not the way it went down, and I have to (resentfully) live with it. I suspect they had slave-like contractual obligations with their record label that obligated them to put out two albums in 1971, when they’d have been much better served by only releasing one. That was how things were often done back in the day, when record companies behaved much in the same way as antebellum southern plantation owners.

Read More »

Remembering Gregg Allman, born on this day in 1947. —Ed.

You can say what you want about yours truly, but you’ve got to grant me this much; not knowing jack squat about a thing has never stopped me from writing about it. No, I am not one those lily-livered sorts who let something as minor as complete ignorance stand in the way of stating an opinion.

Take the Allman Brothers. I’ve been a detractor for years, based largely on an LP (1971’s At Fillmore East) I’ve never actually listened to. But the way I see it, I don’t have to listen to it; it’s enough for me to know that it contains such interminable blues numbers as “Whippin’ Post” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” for me to write it off out of hand. The road, as Gregg Allman sang, may go on forever, but that’s no reason a song should.

But the recent passing of brother Gregg inspired me to give the Allmans another listen. I mean, ignorance may be its own reward, but sooner or later you have to suck it up and learn something, as unpleasant as that is. That said, I lacked the intestinal fortitude to give At Fillmore East a spin. But 1972’s double-LP Eat a Peach, why not??

And so I did. And I’m here to say that actually listening to the Allman Brothers mostly corroborates what I already believed about the Allman Brothers; to wit, they’re a powerful blues band when they keep things short, and they’re a great band when they write songs that break out of the blues idiom, but set them loose to meander and they’ll wear out your patience, and then wear it out some more.

Indeed, on “Mountain Jam” they wear out your patience to the tune of exactly 33 minutes and 38 seconds. You actually have to take Side Two off and put Side Four on to listen to “Mountain Jam” in its entirety, which cannot be an easy thing when you’re as stoned as you have to be to want to listen to “Mountain Jam” in its entirety. Many an argument must have taken place over which wildly tripping hippie was going to stagger to his feet and do the album turning. Well I say kick out the jam, brothers and sisters. Kick it right off the LP.

Read More »

Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz met at the University of Arizona, started producing bands, and went on to create a bubblegum music empire in the form of Super K Productions. Their stable of artists included the likes of the Music Explosion, The 1910 Fruitgum Company, and Ohio Express, and their “practices” were morally dubious at best.

Kasenetz and Katz were capable of anything, and anything reached its peak with the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus, a supposed “supergroup” made up of ALL of the members of the above bands as well as those of lesser-known Super K Productions acts as Lt. Garcia’s Magic Music Box, which bequeathed us the racist but catchy “Latin Shake,” which if you check out the single on the Kama Sutra label you’ll see it has a photo of a pudgy-faced geek on it. And then there’s J.C.W. Rat Finks, who gave us the “Hong Kong Flu.” On which the singer says he’s got it and wants to give it to you. Because he loves you. Be grateful he doesn’t hate you.

The Kasenatz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus’s 1968 eponymous debut captured a live show at Carnegie Hall on June 7, 1968. How K&K and their despised stable of bubblegum acts managed to score a gig at prestigious Carnegie Hall remains a mystery. For the longest time, I thought the concert was just another K&K invention, and I’m not alone. But a look at the Carnegie Hall website confirms—they were actually there!

Their second album, the very title of which is hard to discover, was a low even for K&K. It featured the band’s three “name” acts as well as the past-their-prime Shadows of Knight and Professor Morrison’s Lollipop, which gave us perhaps the worst-ever bubblegum kiddie anthem ever in “Itchy Itchy.” It’s so catchy you’ll want to see your dermatologist.

Read More »

Remembering Rick Buckler in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

I missed most of England’s post-punk music—was too busy doing my taxes or drugs or something—and what I did hear (New Order, er, New Order) simply confirmed me in my mad conviction that I wasn’t missing much. What can I say? As a great man once said, Youth is wasted on the young.

The Jam are one of the many bands I snubbed back in the day. Why? Because I heard “Town Called Malice” exactly once and thought it was bouncy pop tripe, that’s why. It’s a piss-poor reason to write off a great band, but that’s the way I am. I was in an ugly mood back then and I needed ugly music to put me in the proper ugly frame of mind to think ugly thoughts about all the ugly things in the world. It was an ugly time.

The sad thing is I missed a lot of excellent music. The good thing is I’m getting a second chance to catch up, and what better way to catch up than by basking in the brilliant pop glow of 1980’s tres smart and musically adventurous Sound Affects? I used to smirk when people called Paul Weller a genius. Mark E. Smith—now there’s a genius, I would say to myself. And I will always prefer Smith to Weller, if only because I prefer off-kilter rock cranks with odd ideas on how to build songs to pop savants, Elton John and Eric Carmen excepted. But Weller is a Wunderkind no matter how you cut the liverwurst, and on the Jam’s fifth studio LP he outdoes himself.

Weller—who has gone on record as saying he thinks Sound Affects is the Jam’s best LP—cited the Beatles’ Revolver and Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall as key inspirations. I certainly hear the Beatles; Jackson not so much. Okay, so I suppose I do hear Jacko in the funky bass line that harbors “Pretty Money,” and on the heavy funk bass and drums that propel the altogether strange (the band basically natters away the first minute before launching into a herky-jerky ska beat) “Music for the Last Couple.” As for the Beatles, they’re all over “Start!” And amongst the unreleased tracks from the Sound Affects sessions are covers of “Rain” and “And Your Bird Can Sing.” The unreleased “Liza Radley” and “Dead End Street” both have Paul McCartney’s fingerprints all over them as well.

Read More »

Talk about your gross miscarriages of justice—here, Feral House put out an entire book, encyclopedic (if idiosyncratic) in scope, about bubblegum music, and other than one small mention, it has nothing to say about Mansfield, Ohio bubble-garage greats The Music Explosion. Who bequeathed us the great “Little Bit O’ Soul!”

I swear, I scoured 2001’s Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop, from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears, and nada!

Which I find inexplicable, because like many of your great bubblegum acts, the Music Explosion were signed, produced, and shamelessly manipulated by evil bubblegum Uber-producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffrey Katz, whose legendary machinations under the auspices of Super K Productions swept the whole concept of artistic integrity into the dustbin of music history, where it belongs! Both of these shysters, and I’ve seen the medical records, underwent scruples-removal surgery before they got into the record biz. At least today’s seniors have boomerbenefits.com to decode Medicare, which is more guidance than Super K Productions ever gave its disposable pop stars.

Their most famous antics involved The Ohio Express. The songs were written Brill Building style and recorded by studio musicians. There was no Ohio Express. But, and this is the great part, a band of ringers toured as The Ohio Express, and communications between Kasenetz-Katz back at Shyster Central and the touring band were so poor that the latter didn’t even know they had a hit single (the great “Chewy Chewy”) on the charts because they’d never heard it and nobody had bothered to tell them.

Read More »

Remembering Gary Rossington, born on this day in 1951. —Ed.

It is my unreconstituted thunk that Lynyrd Skynyrd is America’s second greatest rock’n’roll band, right behind the Velvet Underground. Hyperbole? Mebbe. But during the four short years before fate shot their airship down, the Southern rockers produced a veritable shitload of immortal (and yes smart) tunes that I, for one, have been listening to with pleasure for decades.

1975’s appropriately titled Nuthin’ Fancy isn’t the best Skynyrd LP out there. It may even be the worst of the five albums the original Lynyrd Skynyrd—which is the only Lynyrd Skynyrd that matters—recorded between 1973 and 1977. It lacks the sublime touches that make Skynyrd’s first and second albums rock landmarks, and the assortment of to-die-for songs (“That Smell,” “One More Time,” “All I Can Do Is Write About It”) scattered throughout the two LPs that came after it. The way I see it, Nuthin’ Fancy only boasts two songs—I’m talking about “Saturday Night Special” and “Am I Losin’”—that are truly indispensible.

The biggest problem lies in the songs, natch, and the problem with the songs is that they were written in a rush, in the studio between tours. I’ll stand Ronnie Van Zant up against any American songwriter (exceptin’ B. Dylan) ever, but when it came to Nuthin’ Fancy he simply didn’t have the same amount of time he’d had to write such immortal tunes as “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Tuesday’s Gone,” or “Simple Man” from 1973’s (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd) and 1974’s Second Helping. (Indeed, he’d never again have the time to sit down and do some leisurely songwriting during his lifetime, which is why Lynyrd Skynyrd was never able to top the transcendental brilliance of its first two LPs.)

Read More »

Celebrating Eric Bloom on his 81st birthday. —Ed.

Blue Öyster Cult’s 1978 live album Some Enchanted Evening is a devil’s bargain. Unlike the band’s live 1974 two-fer On Your Feet or on Your Knees it includes the absolutely essential “Godzilla” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” but unlike the latter album it’s short on classics—it has to be, seeing as how it only has seven songs and two of them are covers. The result is an album that despite its great songs is lacking in ambition, and the miracle is it remains the band’s biggest seller.

The entire Blue Öyster Cult Konzept was an elaborate shuck, right down to the cryptic band name, hilarious umlaut and utterly cool logo. The band’s “Career of Evil” persona was a goof, conceived by the high-spirited inmates of a group house at Long Island’s Stony Brook University. One of them was rock critic Sandy Pearlman, who was quickly named the band’s manager and contributed lyrics, and from the very start they exploited the kinds of dark imagery and subject matter (Nazi fighter jets, Altamont motorcycle gangs, dominance and submission) designed to induce a sense of menace. And this from a group of friendly Jewish guys from the nation’s first suburb whose collective notion of evil probably consisted of sneaking free food from the university’s dining hall.

But the masses bought it—hell, I bought it—and this despite such dead giveaways as songs like “She’s As Beautiful as Foot,” the lyrics of which were penned by noted rock scribe and band associate Richard Meltzer, who would go on to contribute the lyrics for “Burnin’ for You.” Blue Öyster Cult created a mock mythology for itself, which made the band one of rock’s most mysterious bands and greatest put-ons, although they probably wouldn’t have made it out of Long Island had it not been for the fact that guitarists/vocalists Eric Bloom and Donald Roeser (aka Buck Dharma), keyboardist Allen Lanier, bass player/vocalist Joe Bouchard, and drummer Albert Bouchard knew their way around their instruments and had a knack for writing powerful but melodic songs with gnomic subject matter. Take “7 Screaming Diz-Busters.” I’ll be damned if I know what a diz-buster is, and if you do I’d appreciate your letting me know.

Read More »

The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” is more than just the greatest rock and roll song ever recorded by wingless bipeds with workable thumbs—it’s the Zapruder film of rock and roll.

Recorded in Portland, Oregon some seven-plus months before the Kennedy assassination, “Louis Louis” attracted the same intense scrutiny as the 26.6 seconds of standard 8 mm Kodachrome II safety film recorded by Abraham Zapruder on his Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera as he stood on a concrete pedestal along Elm Street in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

And from the same people. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. To say nothing of the Federal Communications Commission and the National Association of Broadcasters. And for all I know, the Central Intelligence Agency. And for the same reason: the powers that be smelled conspiracy, a criminal plot, some foul rot that could bring down the edifice of our entire American Way of Life, and they were looking for hard evidence to prove it.

But unlike the Zapruder film, the Feebees weren’t interested in what was right there, apparent to the senses. No, FBI technicians wearing headphones in windowless rooms in field offices across our Great Land spent some thirty-one months trying to parse the seemingly indecipherable words coming out of Kingsmen vocalist Jack Ely’s mouth, because in the minds of the kids who loved the song and the purple-with-apoplexy prudes (some of whom were upright decent teens themselves) who saw it as a vile portent of the end of Western Civilization, those words were so patently obscene they would bring a blush to the face of the most foul-mouthed tar ever to traverse the Seven Seas.

Read More »