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.
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.
As a result, they ended up in a drafty auditorium in some bohunk burg with the crowd clamoring for “Chewy Chewy” and had to flee the stage because they didn’t know how it went! They could have been killed by a mob of angry pre-teens, Weapons style! And there are even rumors, which I suspect are apocryphal, that Kasenetz-Katz had SEVERAL Ohio Expresses on tour at the same time. Is that great or what? You could call a distant cousin and say, “Guess what? I saw the Ohio Express in Sausalito last night!” To which she would reply, “I saw ‘em last night too! In Toledo!”
All of that said, The Music Explosion was an actual band, even if there are questions about who played what on their records, and (we’ll get around to this) in most cases the songs on their one and only album were, in one shape or another, blatant acts of music piracy. To the nth degree. But here’s the thing—unlike many of their fellow bubblegum dupes, The Music Explosion’s 1967 LP Little Bit O’ Soul is not only worth listening to, but it’s also worth owning.
The Music Explosion was one of the first of Kasenetz-Katz’s victims, which could explain why the band maintained as much control (read not much) input into what was being put out under their name as they did. They were a real band, they toured, and if the music on the records wasn’t always theirs, it was always lead singer Jamie Lyons laying down the vocal tracks. All of which gave them more artistic cred than just about any act on the bubblegum circuit.
Although aside here, and a mystery I’ve been unable to solve, Jamie also recorded a couple of solo tracks for K&K’s Laurie Records, one of which, “Soul Struttin’,” would become a Northern Soul staple. But, and this is where things get weird, on one of the photos of the single I’ve seen, there’s a black guy’s face on it! And Jamie was as pale as they come, a tall and twitchy gawk with Art Garfunkel hair! So who really sang it? This is the glorious thing about bubblegum music. To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, “It is a riddle, wrapped up like Bazooka Joe bubblegum, inside an enigma.”
The Music Explosion was one of the bands that made up the “48-man supergroup” the Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus, which was never a group at all—basically, Kasenetz and Katz released an album (the first of two) featuring their roster of Super K Production bands playing their songs at a concert at Carnegie Hall. Of course, there was no concert—the songs weren’t even recorded live. The album featured ten studio tracks, and the album’s producers could only be bothered to add canned audience applause to two of them, one being “A Little Bit O’ Soul.” Lyons is featured introducing the bands, of which there were eight, only three of which you’ve ever heard of, and one (the St. Louis Invisible Marching Band) that never released a single song I’ve ever heard. I’m 99 percent sure there never was a St. Louis Invisible Marching Band. And that’s as bubblegum as it gets.
Who wrote the songs on Little Bit O’ Soul? It depends on where you look. According to some, most of the songs were written by Kasenetz and Katz. Elsewhere, most of them are credited to the British songwriting team of John Carter and Ken Lewis. They’re definitely responsible for writing “Little Bit O’ Soul” in 1964. Others are credited to songwriter/producer/Ket Records founder Eliot Chiprut, the guy who gave us The 1910 Fruitgum Company’s immortal “Simon Says.” At least one, and it was probably only one, the band themselves brought to the table: “I See the Light.” If it’s a sign of what they were capable of, it’s a pity they didn’t bring more.
Shenanigans, shameless song looting, and outright inexcusable violations of industry practice abound on Little Bit O’ Soul. Let’s deal with the most egregious cases first: “Love, Love, Love, Love, Love,” “One Potato Two,” and “96 Tears.” On all three, Kasenetz and Katz simply lifted the instrumental tracks wholesale from previously released songs and had Lyons sing over them. The first was by Terry Knight and the Pack. The last, of course, was by ? and the Mysterians.
The very bubblegum nursery-rhyme-titled “One Potato Two” is particularly interesting. It appropriates wholesale the instrumental track of the Nightcrawlers’ “Little Black Egg,” but get this—not content to swipe it for “One Potato Two,” The Music Explosion also released a cover of “Little Black Egg,” once again using the Nightcrawlers’ instrumental track, and actually released their version as a single. The miracle is that Kasenetz-Katz didn’t include both “One Potato Two” and “Little Black Egg” on Little Bit O’ Soul. It tells me the surgeons missed a scruple or two. But the kids probably wouldn’t have even noticed!
As for the songs themselves, “96 Tears” adds nothing to the world. “Love, Love, Love, Love, Love” is a more than decent garage rocker that Lyons puts everything into, and it boasts a cool organ riff that The Music Explosion had nothing to do with (they didn’t even HAVE a keyboard player), but who cares? It’s been said the whole song is a blatant rip of The Yardbirds’ “I’m a Man,” but guess what? “Love, Love, Love, Love, Love” is the better song by far, and The Yardbirds can go fuck themselves. Most overrated group ever!
As for “One Potato Two,” it’s not chewy chewy enough to stand as a chewing gum classic, but it has its charms. The guitar riff is pure happy, it’s got some great tambourine going for it, and Lyons sings it in a cheesy, clipped, fake British accent that has to be heard to be believed. And it features one awesome kazoo.
I seem to be working backwards here, and saving the best for last, so let’s keep it that way. “Good Time Feeling” is all rinky-dink music hall piano and kazoo, and Lyons keeps singing about jug music, but I don’t hear any jug! It’s forgettable novelty fare, and the album’s low point, although I like the way Lyons sings about losing his girl to a guitarist in a jug band, which has to be a first—what self-respecting female would lower herself to dating a guitarist lame enough to play in a jug band? And miracle of miracles—the song doesn’t appear to have been filched from anybody.
“Everybody” begins as a note-for-note rip of The Who’s “I Can’t Explain,” then morphs into a soul shouter, and the effect is so confounding it takes you a while, or rather took me a while, to realize I actually liked the song. Lyons is a real soul garage force of nature, even does some screaming, and the guitar solo is carport fabulous.
In a similar vein, “Let Yourself Go” may be (as Mark Prindle points out) a ridiculous mash-up of “Tobacco Road” and “Shout” (always thought there was an exclamation mark at the end, but there isn’t!), but the “Tobacco Road” rip isn’t blatant and I give the song bonus points for the raw power of the guitar and Lyons’ heroically snotty vocals. The song founders in the end under the weight of its debt to “Shout,” which is too bad. Lyons sounds like the kind of drooling-with-lust post-juvie sleazeball you’d ship your daughter to the other side of the country just to keep her away from.
“Can’t Stop Now” is a muddy and murky blue-eyed soul number with horns that sound like they were recorded underwater and a great opening guitar riff, swanky organ, and pop appeal. Lyons sings himself hoarse on lines like “I’m so hungry I can taste it!” and the backing vocals are soul to a T, but I gotta say, as a fan of all things lo-fi, that this one is TOO lo-fi, which can be said for many of the songs on the LP. (“Let Yourself Go” sounds like it was recorded in the basement BENEATH the basement where The Rolling Stones recorded Exile on Main Street.) And as somebody somewhere pointed out, the song is a complete ripoff of “Up and Down” by John Fred and His Playboy Band, the folks who brought us the bubble-burster great “Judy in Disguise.”
“What Did I Do to Deserve Such a Fate?” is decent fare with a foreboding Rolling Stones-school guitar riff and a great chorus on which everybody sings, and it has some cool nonsense singing too. I’ve seen the song credited to Carter and Lewis, and to their credit, it doesn’t sound like a shameless ripoff of any song I’ve ever heard, but who knows? The real problem is you don’t much care.
But on to the songs that make Little Bit O’ Soul more than a shameless bubblegum shuck and cash-in. Let’s start with the song that The Music Explosion actually brought with them, “I See the Light.” It’s a very San Francisco Summer-of-Love treat and sounds like what you’d get if you’d packed the Grateful Dead AND the Jefferson Airplane into a tiny garage in suburban Ohio and put Lyons behind the microphone. It features a very groovy and mysterioso guitar riff, has to be at least 80 percent LSD, and listening to it, that garage becomes a ballroom where everybody’s passing the Acid Test—with flying colors! Say what you will about The Music Explosion, they had layers, man, layers.
The folk-garage small-town shuck “Patches Dawn” is generally credited to Elliott Chiprut, but I don’t care who wrote it—it’s great, a real grow-on-you, tambourine- and guitar-driven number about going from small town nobody to rock star and back with a fetching melody and great lyrics. It’s a cautionary tale that unites garage rock tropes (“my girl up and left me like I was a disease!”) with lyrics that could have come straight from the Basement Tapes-era Bob Dylan. Take the chorus:
“Hey Waldo, they tell me
Stop losin’ your head
You have a short future
So maintain your bread.”
What can I say besides open the door, Homer?
As for “(Hey) La, La, La” it’s every bit as bang-shang-a-lang bubblegroovy as you’d expect, a real soul shouter done real run-Joey-run quick. Sure, Lyons sounds like Archie Bell of Drells fame when he talks, but other than that, he’s a goddamn madman, screaming and shouting “Hey! Hey! Hey!” until he’s hoarse. And when he says, “I intend to blow your mind,” he means it. “Can you feel it?” he screams. Yes, I can! And I simply can’t summon up the words to describe the brilliance of the guitar solo, because it’s buried so deep (at least fifty feet) in the mix, I can barely make it out! This song is a lost classic, a Solid Gold record that never was because Kasenetz and Katz never saw fit to release it. Not even as a B-side! No wonder K&K were basically extinct by 1969!
I’ve saved the crown jewel for last. The title track is bubblesoul at its very best. Written by Carter and Lewis, and first recorded by Coventry band the Little Darlings in 1965 (their version lacks pizzazz), “Little Bit O’ Soul” is pure joy from its opening guitar riff. The organ riff is Munsters-rific, and Lyons gives it just the right amount of grit—he holds back, restrains himself, and it gives it just that much more pre-teen squeal appeal.
And if you don’t swoon when Lyons sings, “And when you raise the roof with your rock ‘n’ roll/You’ll get a lot more kicks with a little bit o’ soul,” there’s something seriously wrong with you. And the same goes for the lines that follow: “And when your party falls ’cause ain’t nobody groovin’/A little bit o’ soul and it really starts movin’, yeah.”
“Little Bit O’ Soul” is pop perfection, bubblegum as good as God. If you’re as old as I am, you’ll remember Gold Rush bubblegum, little golden nuggets that came in a miniature burlap sack like you’d just panned them from a stream atop Big Bubblegum Mountain. And that’s what this song makes me think of—it’s a shiny golden bubblegum golden nugget. That will make you feel filthy giddy rich!
The Music Explosion came and went, had one hit, rose and fell (most likely) for the same reason—they put their fate in the hands of the “Unscrupulous Two,” as Music Explosion bassist Burton Stahl once described Kasenetz and Katz. Without the perfidious pair, they’d have never recorded “Little Bit O’ Soul.”
On the other hand, who knows what The Music Explosion might have become had they never crossed paths with K&K? They were a garage rock band to be reckoned with, and if Stahl’s to be believed, so were Ohio’s other big bubblegum acts the Lemon Pipers and Sir Timothy & the Royals (who also hailed from Mansfield, and were soon to be renamed Ohio Express). All will be remembered. But at the cost of having been folded, spindled, and mutilated by Super K Productions.
I love everything about bubblegum music. I love the machinations, the shady practices, the manipulations, amputations, and smoke and mirrors. I love everything about it, but the toll it took on bands like The Music Explosion, who walked away without their integrity or a single red cent. No lines are truer than the ones in “Patches Dawn”: “You have a short future, so don’t lose your head.” But so many did.
Bubblegum music is a jukebox guillotine!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
