"The band covered
'Little Bit O’ Soul' on its 1983 album 'Subterranean Jungle.' The ever-arty Talking Heads gave their own disjointed spin to '
1,2,3, Red Light' while performing in their early years at CBGB, the Bowery club that was a cradle of punk rock. No less a rock purist than Lester Bangs, the storied gonzo critic, eventually gave bubblegum its due in the 1992 book 'The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.' 'The basic bubblegum sound could be described as the basic sound of rock ’n’ roll,' he wrote, 'minus the rage, fear, violence and anomie that runs from Johnny Burnette to Sid Vicious.'"
So ends the obituary
"Jerry Kasenetz, a King of Bubblegum Pop Music, Dies at 82/With his producing partner, Jeffry Katz, he made lightweight ditties like 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' that soared up the charts in the late 1960s" (NYT).
The links in the text go to the Ramones and Talking Heads covers, but here's a Spotify playlist I made of the original version of those 2 songs along with all the other Kasenetz and Katz songs named in the obituary. It's all great stuff — 9 songs, 22 minutes:
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27 comments:
I love to get a chance to use my Lester Bangs tag. It is a tag with a distinction: the only tag used in a post written on the first day of this blog, January 14, 2004, that is the name of a person. It's on the 4th and last post of that day, a post about bangs and you only see that it's a reference to Lester Bangs if you click on a link in that post. I was being terse and enigmatic, inventing a style for the blog on the fly.
Homer missed the moon landing because he was rockin out to Yummy Yummy Yummy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1WBovlerZk
CC, JSM
I remember when my old friend Chip, who had gone off to New York City to seek his fortune as an artist, came back to Eugene to visit, and was talking about "punk rock" and "CBGB's" and especially "The Ramones". And he played one of their songs, on a tape deck, and the guitar was just noise. I'm like, "They went into a studio and recorded that?"
Artfully play a broadcast tape of radio Shakespeare backward while listening to "Yummy Yummy Yummy" and most people today would not be able to tell it apart from the Beatles.
In the Future Everyone will be the Walrus for Fifteen Minutes.
I am Laslo.
Yummy yummy yummy I got yellow matter custard in my tummy.
I am Laslo.
@Jupiter Listen to the Ramones cover of 'Little Bit O’ Soul' that is linked in the post. It's very close to the original and perfectly clear and coherent.
As corny as they sounded back then, amongst all that crazy good music, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed hearing most of these songs the last 4 decades.
Can't let Spotify's listing of the Barbarians' "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" pass without noting their only other charting single, "Moulty, Moulty." It's the story of how the group's drummer ended up with a hook for a hand, but didn't let that crush his drumming ambitions. Bob Dylan's backing band, The Hawks (aka The Band) backed up Moulty on this 1966 track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25x3aIWs76E
123 is a cute song, altough i can only get through about 60 seconds.
"Yummy, yummy, yummy
I got love in my tummy, and I feel like a-lovin' you."
====
When I was in junior high school my older high school sister worked as a waitress in a diner called The Dew Drop Inn. I would often go there after school to have a malted milkshake (in which she added lots of extra ice cream -- I actually left her a tip), and then put a nickle or dime in the jukebox and played that song. Those are good memories.
was talking about "punk rock" and "CBGB's" and especially "The Ramones"
A fair amount of Ramones tunes, particularly the non-hits, were very 50's/doo-wop sounding (which makes some sense given that they were only a generation later).
For those of you who are too young to remember this silly but memorable (at least to me) pop song, here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmL7GmHTDRU
A little bit of soap
Will wash away your lipstick on my face
But a little bit of soap
Will never never never ever erase
The pain in my heart, and my eyes
As I go through the lonely years
A little bit of soap
Will never wash away my tears .
Oh, Soul. Nevermind
After all these years, I thought Yummy was a Monkeys hit.
The first time I heard "Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl" by the Barbarians was in a small album demo cubical in 1965, I was 15, at Wallachs Music City in Lakewood Calif. My friends and I would go there in the evening and listen to demo albums. This one always stuck in my mind for some reason along with "Having A Rave Up" by the Yardbirds and Knockers up by Rusty Warren.
"Yummy, yummy, yummy
I got love in my tummy, and I feel like a-lovin' you."
Don’t keep folks in suspense, lonejustus… 9 months later, was it a boy or a girl?
Amazing
There’s some great stuff there, but my opinion of Yummy, etc. has not changed since 1968. Annoying as a song can be.
I remember most of those. Imagine releasing a song called "Indian Giver" today.
I wanna be sedated
The Archies don't seem so innocent after Hollywood has been milking the comic book franchises for 20 years. I never saw the "Dark Archies" series "Riverdale." It seemed like a truly horrible idea.
Lester Bangs....one of my favorite movie quotes (I hope it is real, but who knows), from Almost Famous, "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when your uncool".
Ohio 1910 Fruitgum Company were dreck. We were listening to The Allman Bros, 10 Years After, Ritchie Havens, The Band, Grateful Dead, etc., et al.
IMO “Little Bit of Soul” was covered best by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on the awesome Live from Fillmore East album recorded during their 2-week residency there in 1993 (writing from memory so…). I mentioned that album before (Thunderclap Newman discussion) because TP&HB performed a lot of covers in that run and I believe it was Steve Ferrone’s debut as their drummer replacing the original drummer.
Poor Ron whiffed another one. That was The Archies as Lazurus noted just above. I too had misattributed some of these gummy hits that tickle the old memory banks.
Heartless Aztec
My music too. I liked the Ramones. The original version of Layla. Muddy Water, etc.
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