Podcasts about Hoyt Axton

This week, we're strumming along to 1972's "The Legend of Hillbilly John." We get charmed by this Appalachian fairy tale of sorts and talk about Hoyt Axton, Hedges Capers, and one very ugly bird. Listen now.

Matt Axton is an Americana and Roots singer-songwriter who comes from an illustrious musical family. His father was Hoyt Axton, who wrote some of the biggest hits of the 1960's/70s including “Joy To The World” and “Never Been To Spain” for Three Dog Night, “The No No Song” for Ringo, and “The Pusher” for Steppenwolf. His mother Donna was the pianist in his dad's band and is a professor of music. And Matt's grandmother, Mae Boren Axton, co-wrote “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis's first million selling single.My featured song is the live version of “Hey Jake” from the album East Side Sessions by my band, Project Grand Slam. Spotify link.---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.—----------------------------------------Connect with Matt:www.mattaxton.com—----------------------------------------ROBERT'S RECENT SINGLES:“ROUGH RIDER” is Robert's latest single. It's an instrumental with a Cool, ‘60s, “Spaghetti Western”, Guitar-driven, Tremolo sounding, Ventures/Link Wray kind of vibe!CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL VIDEOCLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS—--------------------------------“LOVELY GIRLIE” is a fun, Old School, rock/pop tune with 3-part harmony. It's been called “Supremely excellent!”, “Another Homerun for Robert!”, and “Love that Lovely Girlie!”Click HERE for All Links—----------------------------------“THE RICH ONES ALL STARS” is Robert's single featuring the following 8 World Class musicians: Billy Cobham (Drums), Randy Brecker (Flugelhorn), John Helliwell (Sax), Pat Coil (Piano), Peter Tiehuis (Guitar), Antonio Farao (Keys), Elliott Randall (Guitar) and David Amram (Pennywhistle).Click HERE for the Official VideoClick HERE for All Links—----------------------------------------“SOSTICE” is Robert's single with a rockin' Old School vibe. Called “Stunning!”, “A Gem!”, “Magnificent!” and “5 Stars!”.Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------“THE GIFT” is Robert's ballad arranged by Grammy winning arranger Michael Abene and turned into a horn-driven Samba. Praised by David Amram, John Helliwell, Joe La Barbera, Tony Carey, Fay Claassen, Antonio Farao, Danny Gottlieb and Leslie Mandoki.Click HERE for all links.—-------------------------------------“LOU'S BLUES”. Robert's Jazz Fusion “Tone Poem”. Called “Fantastic! Great playing and production!” (Mark Egan - Pat Metheny Group/Elements) and “Digging it!” (Peter Erskine - Weather Report)!Click HERE for all links.—----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com

Rockshow Episode 208 Three Dog NightThree Dog Night is an American rock band that gained popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s. Known for their rich vocal harmonies and dynamic stage presence, the band was formed in 1967 by vocalists Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron, and Cory Wells. The group became famous for their ability to reinterpret songs written by other artists, turning them into major hits.Key Facts About Three Dog Night:• Genre: Rock, pop rock, soft rock• Years Active: 1967–present• Origin: Los Angeles, California, USA• Notable for: Three lead vocalists, strong harmonies, and a mix of rock, pop, and R&B influences.Biggest Hits:1. “Joy to the World” (1971) – Written by Hoyt Axton, this became their signature song, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.2. “Mama Told Me (Not to Come)” (1970) – Written by Randy Newman, this song topped the charts and showcased their ability to make songs their own.3. “One” (1969) – Originally by Harry Nilsson, their version became a Top 5 hit.4. “Shambala” (1973) – A feel-good song that became one of their most enduring tracks.5. “Black and White” (1972) – A song about racial harmony that also reached #1.6. “An Old Fashioned Love Song” (1971) – Written by Paul Williams, this ballad became another fan favorite.Band Name Origin:The name “Three Dog Night” reportedly comes from an Australian Aboriginal expression. It refers to cold nights in the desert when people would sleep with dogs for warmth—a “three dog night” being especially chilly.Legacy:Three Dog Night was one of the most commercially successful bands of their time, with 21 Top 40 hits, including three No. 1 singles and 12 gold albums. Even though their original run slowed down in the late 1970s due to internal struggles and changing musical trends, the band has continued to tour with various lineups.Danny Hutton still leads the group today, though founding members Cory Wells (2015) and Jimmy Greenspoon (2015) passed away, and Chuck Negron tours separately.https://www.threedognight.com/https://youtube.com/@threedognightmusic?si=mzY94yjNyRnFggxqhttps://www.facebook.com/share/15kxCffsfJ/?mibextid=wwXIfrhttps://www.instagram.com/threedognightofficial?igsh=MW42bGhzMTdjdmwzcg==https://x.com/threedognight?s=21&t=Mzw5de5zsR-SDDbhyzH0Lghttps://www.chucknegron.com/#ThreeDogNight #ClassicRock#70sMusic #RockLegends#MusicHistory #OldiesButGoodies#RockAndRoll #JoyToTheWorld#MamaToldMeNotToCome#OneIsTheLoneliestNumber#Shambala #BlackAndWhite#AnOldFashionedLoveSong#DannyHutton #ChuckNegron#CoryWells #MusicMemorabilia#VinylRecords #RetroMusic#ConcertVibesPlease follow us on Youtube,Facebook,Instagram,Twitter,Patreon and at www.gettinglumpedup.comhttps://linktr.ee/RobRossiGet your T-shirt at https://www.prowrestlingtees.com/gettinglumpedupAnd https://www.bonfire.com/store/getting-lumped-up/Subscribe to the channel and hit the like button This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rob-rossi/support https://www.patreon.com/Gettinglumpedup

En el episodio 12 de esta temporada hablaremos de la película "GREMLINS" ('Gremlins', 1984). Dirigida por Joe Dante, esta comedia de terror cuenta la historia de un joven que recibe como mascota a un extraño ser llamado Mogwai, acompañado de tres reglas fundamentales que no deben romperse. Cuando las normas se incumplen, desata una ola de caos provocada por unas traviesas y peligrosas criaturas. Producida por Steven Spielberg, el filme cuenta con las actuaciones de Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates y Hoyt Axton. *Sintonía de entrada: Lucidator de Saggitarius V.

Check out a new nostalgic animated holiday special Christmas With Grubbs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chCV9cuLpVY It's Christmas AND it's been 40 years since Gremlins came out. Let's see what Nostalgia Critic thinks of this "kinda" Christmas classic. Gremlins is a 1984 American comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo, the main mogwai character. It draws on legends of folkloric mischievous creatures that cause malfunctions—"gremlins"—in the British Royal Air Force going back to World War II. The story follows young man Billy Peltzer, who receives a strange creature as a pet, which then spawns other creatures that transform into aggressive, imp-like monsters that wreak havoc on Billy's hometown during Christmas Eve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a text“Great, now I have another reason to hate Christmas…The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.” Happy Holidays! “Gremlins,” (D. Joe Dante 1984) Starring: Zack Galligan, Pheobe Cates, and Hoyt Axton. With our guest @jessicaerinmartin available on 12/24!**All episodes contain explicit language**Artwork - Ben McFaddenReview Review Intro/Outro Theme - Jamie Henwood"What Are We Watching" & "Whatcha been up to?" Themes - Matthew Fosket"Fun Facts" Theme - Chris Olds/Paul RootLead-Ins Edited/Conceptualized by - Ben McFaddenProduced by - Ben McFadden & Paul RootConcept - Paul Root

Happy holidays, everyone! It's time for winter, and it's time for another Joe Dante film. The year of Dante continues on! After daddy/the father (Hoyt Axton) sneaks off with a Mogwai from Chinatown, he gifts it to his son, Billy (Zach Galligan), just before Christmas. There are some rules that need to be followed for Gizmo (the Mogwai). Within a day, Billy amazingly disregards these rules, and now this once adorable cuddle fluff has multiplied into a horde of mischievous monsters running amuck within town. Somehow, Kate (Phoebe Cates) is forced to bartend these creatures. Kinda seems like a fun time. Meanwhile, Pete (Corey Feldman) and the rest of town try to defend themselves. RTS contemplates which gremlin can hang out on the podcast. La-Mar, Jeremy and Collin throw gremlins into pools with reckless abandon. These creatures might replace the family dog! Have fun and avoid BRIGHT LIGHT! BRIGHT LIGHT!

Welcome Back Everyone! Thank You for joining us once again!   1st Film: Johnnie's Christmas Pick Gremlins (1984) Directed by: Brian Levant Starring: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton and Howie Mandel as the voice of Gizmo 2nd Film: Tim's Christmas Pick Jingle All The Way (1996) Directed by: Joss Whedon Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson and young Anakin Skywalker, Jake Lloyd Thanks for Listening! Email:   Strangerthanflicktion@gmail.com Twitters:  Podcast- @SFlicktion Joey - @SpaceJamIsMyjam Jacob - @Jabcup Johnnie- @Shaggyroaddogg Tim - @timbohh4l Time Stamps: Gremlins -  Rate and Review - 01:08:35 Jingle All The Way  - Review and Rate  -  01:48:50 Music Credits:  The Gremlins Theme Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGLoLphCeGI The Brian Setzer Orchestra - Jingle Bells https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc4RopO8G_Q&list=PLOKfQ2dxS6KL_7UsPLM068RSardmU9DbZ&index=1

Sure, they call it “THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR” but a lot of bad things can happen around the holidays and it can be very hard on folks. Today we hit up a worthy modern Christmas classic that was very formidable to our youth and introduced to us two absolute smokeshows that would influence our growth into maturity. We're talking about Gizmo and Phoebe Cates. We hit up Joe Dante last Halloween season so let us discuss his iconic 1984 Christmas horror-comedy “GREMLINS” starring Zach Gilligan, Phoebe Cates & Hoyt Axton. Mogwai's are extremely cute (don't look up what that word means in Cantonese) but they come with very strict rules that seem inevitable to be broken. Wet em and they multiply. Feed them after midnight Eastern U.S. standard time and they will transform into these little green maniacs that are annoying, sometimes deadly but often very funny. They're a very funny plague but could also destroy entire civilizations. Seriously, why aren't we culling these Mogwai dudes? I know they're cute as hell but the risks are too great. They do like movies though. That's a big plus with these guys. If only we could get one on the show. Subscribe to us on YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJf3lkRI-BLUTsLI_ehOsg Contact us here: MOVIEHUMPERS@gmail.com Check our past & current film ratings here: https://moviehumpers.wordpress.com Hear us on podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6o6PSNJFGXJeENgqtPY4h7 Our OG podcast “Documenteers”: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/documenteers-the-documentary-podcast/id1321652249 Soundcloud feed: https://soundcloud.com/documenteers Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/culturewrought

Vinyl records play a significant role in Jay and Deon's lives. They're 100% obsessed with music. But how did this madness all start? Well, episode 40 of LLR examines their origin stories. Ten classic artists who helped shape the Lickers' sonic identities are discussed while another crackin' mixtape is curated, created, and (hopefully) cranked. God gave rock and roll to us, Goddamn it! Put it in your souls already. Sonic contributors to the fortieth episode of Lightnin' Licks Radio podcast include (in order of appearance): Brothers Johnson, dialogue from Peter Pan Records' "G.I. Joe: Escape From Adventure Team Headquarters" storybook, DJ Sanz, James Todd Smith, Boy Meets Girl, Berlin, Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud, The Treacherous Three, T La Rock, Rick Rubin, Beastie Boys , NPR's A. Martinez - Kye Ryssdal - Leilah Fadel, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Dr. Pascal Wallisch, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Queen, Elvis, Tommy Durden, Wings, James Horner & Will Jennings, Celine Dion, Right Said Fred, Greta Van Fleet, Dave Brubeck, Mac Demarco, Moose Charlap & Jule Styne, Jerry Goldsmith, M.M. Knapps, library “space” music and read-along storybook dialogue, Arc of All, Jim Kirk, Casey Kasem, Van Halen, Dion DiMucci, Leif Garrett, Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich, Shawn Cassidy, Gregg Diamond, Andrea True Connection, Sir Reginald Kenneth Dwight*, Stevie Wonder, Bernie Taupin, Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, The Undisputed Truth, Perry-Perkins-Johnson, Honey Cone, TV adverts from Firestone Tires and Post cereal's Pink Panther Flakes, The Jackson Five, the Motown Players & the Funk Brothers, the King of Pop*, Cameron Crowe & Nancy Wilson, Still Water, Temple of the Dog, Sweet Water, The Dust Brothers, Afrika Bambaataa, Dudley Taft (brandishing his axe and ripping a bong), Black Sabbath, Dancefloor Destruction Crew, The Wrecking Crew, The Partridge Family, Wally Gold, Idris Muhammad, Led Zeppelin, Beastie Boys (again), Alice Cooper (band), Digable Planets with Wah Wah Watson, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Jimmy Buffett, Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy, Three Dog Night, Hoyt Axton, Randy Newman, Paul Williams, Russ Ballard, America, Rainbow, Cheap Trick, Freda, Argent, Wilson Pickett, Wu-Tang's RZA, Pinback, Three Mile Pilot, Lou Reed, Goblin Cock, Fruer, Black Sabbath (again), Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Jethro fucking Tull, the Source of Light and Power, DJT, Eric B., Soul Coughing, The Clockers. Love at First Listen mixtape [SIDE 1] (1) Sweet Water – King of '79 (2) King of Pop - GTBT* (3) Spearhead – Positive (4) The Partridge Family – Lay it on the Line (5) Pinback – Loro [SIDE 2] (1) Alice Cooper – You Drive Me Nervous (2) #6 Pop Hit W.E. 04_FEB_1984* (3) Jethro Tull – Two Fingers (4) Beastie Boys – Live at P.J.'s (5) Three Dog Night - Liar Thanks for Listening. Autumn has fallen. Do your best to not jump into a ravine. Please shop for your music locally. We suggest ⁠Electric Kitsch⁠. Drink ⁠Blue Chair Bay⁠ flavored rums. Feeling like jumping into a ravine? There's ⁠help⁠ available. *some details have been changed

Clearly, vinyl records play a significant role in Jay and Deon's lives. But how did this all start? Well, episode 40 examines their origin stories. Ten classic artists who helped shape the Lickers' sonic identities are discussed and another crackin' mixtape is curated, created, and (hopefully) cranked. God gave rock and roll to us, Goddamn it. Put it in your soul already. Sonic contributors to the fortieth episode of Lightnin' Licks Radio podcast includes (in order of appearance): Brothers Johnson, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Derrick Harriott, Townes Van Zandt, James Todd Smith, Boy Meets Girl, Berlin, Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud, The Treacherous Three, T La Rock, Rick Rubin, Beastie Boys , NPR's A. Martinez - Kye Ryssdal - Leilah Fadel, Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Dr. Pascal Wallisch, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Queen, Elvis, Tommy Durden, Wings, James Horner & Will Jennings, Celine Dion, Right Said Fred, Greta Van Fleet, Dave Brubeck, Mac Demarco, Moose Charlap & Jule Styne, Jerry Goldsmith, M.M. Knapps, library “space” music and read-along storybook dialogue, Arc of All, Jim Kirk, Casey Kasem, Van Halen, Dion DiMucci, Leif Garrett, Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich, Shawn Cassidy, Gregg Diamond, Andrea True Connection, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Bernie Taupin, Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, The Undisputed Truth, Perry-Perkins-Johnson, Honey Cone, TV adverts from Firestone Tires and Post cereal's Pink Panther Flakes, The Jackson Five, the Motown Players & the Funk Brothers, Michael Jackson, Cameron Crowe & Nancy Wilson, Still Water, Temple of the Dog, Sweet Water, The Dust Brothers, Afrika Bambaataa, Dudley Taft (brandishing his axe and ripping a bong), Black Sabbath, Dancefloor Destruction Crew, The Wrecking Crew, The Partridge Family, Wally Gold, Idris Muhammad, Led Zeppelin, Beastie Boys (again), Alice Cooper (band), Digable Planets with Wah Wah Watson, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Jimmy Buffett, Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy, Three Dog Night, Hoyt Axton, Randy Newman, Paul Williams, Russ Ballard, America, Rainbow, Cheap Trick, Freda, Argent, Wilson Pickett, Wu-Tang's RZA, Pinback, Three Mile Pilot, Lou Reed, Goblin Cock, Fruer, Black Sabbath (again), Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Jethro fucking Tull, the Source of Light and Power, DJT, Eric B., Soul Coughing, The Clockers. Love at First Listen mixtape [SIDE 1] (1) Sweet Water – King of '79 (2) Michael Jackson – Got to be There (3) Spearhead – Positive (4) The Partridge Family – Lay it on the Line (5) Pinback – Loro [SIDE 2] (1) Alice Cooper – You Drive Me Nervous (2) Elton John – I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues (3) Jethro Tull – Two Fingers (4) Beastie Boys – Live at P.J.'s (5) Three Dog Night - Liar Thanks for Listening. Autumn has fallen. Do your best to not jump into a ravine. Please shop for your music locally. We suggest Electric Kitsch. Drink Blue Chair Bay flavored rums. Feeling like jumping into a ravine? There's help available.

Join Dom, Q, and ILL in this episode of "Say What's Reel" as they take a nostalgic trip back to 1984 to review the cult classic *Gremlins*! From the adorable Gizmo to the mischievous and terrifying Gremlins, we explore the movie's unique blend of horror and comedy. How does this iconic film hold up after all these years? What are the unforgettable moments and hidden details? Tune in to find out, and don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more retro movie reviewsGremlins is a 1984 American comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo, the main mogwai character. It draws on legends of folkloric mischievous creatures that cause malfunctions—"gremlins"—in the British Royal Air Force going back to World War II. The story follows young man Billy Peltzer, who receives a strange creature as a pet, which then spawns other creatures that transform into aggressive, imp-like monsters that wreak havoc on Billy's town during Christmas EveFind the Say Whats Reel CrewSay Whats Reel Socials - https://linktr.ee/rmhproductionsDOM CRUZE Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itzdomw/Q Twitter: https://twitter.com/King_QuisemoeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/king_quisemoe/iLL - https://twitter.com/illest_thriller

Hooooooo doggies! LLR returns with another bonus episode featuring an eclectic mix of everything Jay and Deon have been f#@%ing with, sonically speaking. Library music with Library Mark? Check. Venezuelan psych rock? Check. German new wave? You betcha. Art rap, classic jangly American pop and egg punk? YOU KNOW THAT'S RIGHT! Join the fun. It was worth the wait. Promise. Sonic contributors to the nineteenth bonus episode of Lightnin' Licks Radio include:  Townes Van Zandt, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Black Midi, De La Soul, Ideal, Cal Tjader, Hoyt Axton, Steppenwolf, Blind Melon, Frances Lee McCain, Zach Galligan, Clarence Williams, James Tim Brynn, Dally Small, Alline Bullock, Ike & Tina Turner, The Doors, The Beatles, Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Rolling Stones, Jacko Peake, The Who, Merv Griffin, Saint Etionne, Uncle Ted Nugent, Iron Butterfly, Cheap Trick, Germs, The Clash, Steel Pulse, Elvis Costello, Sweet, Living Colour, Beatific Vision, DJ Magic Mike, The Baseball Project, Madlib, Karriem Riggins, Jahari Massamba Unit, Shawn Lee & Clutchie Hopkins. Deon brought to the dining room table the sounds of Nnamdi, Nina Simone, Alan Tew, and Denzel Curry. Jay suggested checking out Humpe Humpe, The Pets, The Rhythm Section, and R.E.M. Super-special-secret-friend Library Mark hipped Podcast America to Mannequin Pussy, Sheer Mag, Snooper, and The Courettes. Bonus #19 mixtape [A1] Snooper - Defect [A2] Denzel Curry - Ricky [A3] The Pets - El Entierro de un Hombre Rico Que Murio de Hombre [A4] Sheer Mag - Paper Time [A5] Alan Tew - The Rub [A6] Humpe Humpe - Yama-Ha [B1] The Rhythm Section - Waiting for the Sun [B2] Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven [B3] Nnamdi - let gO my egO [B4] The Courettes - Shake! [B5] Nina Simone - Funkier Than a Mosquito's Tweeter [B6] R.E.M. - Summer Turns to High [end] Thank you Library Mark and his record store of choice Electric Kitsch in beautiful Bay City, Michigan, USA. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/llradio/message

Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we are talking to Matt Axton, son of singer, songwriter, commercial pitchman and actor Hoyt Axton. If you're first thought is that Hoyt Axton was the dad in the film Gremlins, you'd be correct but you'd only be scratching the surface of this well rounded entertainer. We learn from Matt how his father wrote the smash hit “Joy To The World” made popular by Three Dog Night, how he became the house performer in the 1960s at the world famous Doug Weston's The Troubadour for close to a decade and how bands like Steppenwolf & The Kingston Trio recorded his songs before the general public ever really heard of the name Hoyt Axton. Matt also tells us about his grandmother Mae Boren Axton aka the “Queen Mother of Nashville” who was one of only two (yes you heard that right) in the music business in Nashville in the 1950s. She also penned more than 200 songs, got her undergraduate degree in journalism when most women simply did not go to college and she happened to be the person who introduced Colonel Tom Parker to Elvis Presley. Yes, you heard us correctly. But that's not even half of it. She wrote Elvis' first #1 hit song. Can you guess what that song was? Because you definitely have heard it. And that's still not even the whole story. It was great to talk to Matt, the third in his family to go into the entertainment business, as he also is a singer/songwriter and performer who talks to us about his own career on stage, the difference between how he, his father and grandmother toured and made records and how he's bringing his own “Joy To The World” by practicing what his dad preached. That was:  “Be a conduit for good music and hopefully you can also be the satellite dish that pulls in the songs as they come in.” This is the Rarified Heir Podcast. Everyone has a story.

By the end of 1970 Three Dog Night was in the middle of their most prolific and successful period of their career.  The group would land 21 Billboard Top 40 hits between 1969 and 1975 with three of these taking the top slot.  The group was formed by three vocalists in 1967 - Chuck Negron, Cory Wells, and Danny Hutton.  The other members of the band for this album are Mike Allsup on guitar, Joe Schermie on bass, Jimmy Greenspoon on keyboards, and Floyd Sneed on drums.  All of the instrumentalists in the band also provide backing vocals on at least one of the songs from the album.Naturally is the fifth album from the band and the second released in 1970.  Three singles from the album entered the Billboard top 20, with "Joy to the World" topping the charts.  As with contemporaries like the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, you get an abundance of vocal harmonies with Three Dog Night.  Given the origins with three vocalists, perhaps this is not surprising.Three Dog Night takes its name from the Australian Outback, and how the Aborigines would keep warm at night by sleeping with a dingo - dogs native to the continent.  A very cold evening would be known as a three-dog night.  While the group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2000, they have not yet been inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Much of their work was composed by others, and this has been used as an excuse for their lack of recognition.Three Dog Night continues to produce music today, though Danny Hutton is the only original member still with the group.  Wayne takes us through this album for today's podcast. One Man BandThe first single released from the album went to number 19 on the Billboard charts.  The lyrics describe a man who wants to be the only one for his lover - her one man band.  There are great close harmonies and work on the Hammond organ in this one.Joy to the WorldThe big hit from the album went to number 1 on the Billboard charts and remained there for six weeks.  It was not expected to be a hit, but was instead expected to just be a "filler" song for the album with nonsensical but catchy lyrics.  Singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor Hoyt Axton wrote the song.  Chuck Negron is the lead singer on this hit.LiarRuss Ballard of Argent wrote this song, and released it as Argent's first single off their self-titled album.  While that version did not chart, the Three Dog Night rendition went to number 7 on the Billboard charts, benefitting from its release after their number 1 hit with "Joy to the World."  The haunting lyrics describe a relationship in trouble.I Can Hear You CallingThis song leads off the album and appears as the B-side to "Joy to the World," but was never released as a single itself.  The funky grooves feature heavy use of the Hammond organ and a big drum beat.  The lyrics reflect a person who keeps getting called on the phone by a lover he has left behind.   ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Main theme from the television series “H.R. Pufnstuf”This odd children's show from Sid and Marty Krofft left the airwaves in October 1970.  STAFF PICKS:Fire and Rain by James TaylorRob starts off the staff picks with this soft rock hit.  Taylor wrote the song after the suicide of a friend.  It was the second single from Taylor's second album, "Sweet Baby James."   It peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.It Don't Matter to Me by BreadBruce brings us another soft hit.  Bread was a soft rock group formed and fronted by David Gates, along with Jimmy Griffin and Rob Royer.  Gates, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, ran in the same circles as Leon Russell in Tulsa bar bands before moving to California.  The song reflects an openness in the singer's relationship, wanting only the best for his love.Knock Three Times by Dawn Lynch features a group which would later be known as Tony Orlando and Dawn.  Orlando was working as an executive at April-Blackwood Music, and released the song without listing his name to protect his position from accusations of a conflict of interest.  The song went to number 1.  The lyrics reflect a secret romance between a man and his neighbor from the floor below.Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go by Bettye LaVetteWayne's staff pick is a bit of a James Brown song with a female voice.  Bettye LaVette came out of Detroit but was signed by Atlantic Records rather than their competitors in Detroit, Motown Records.  LaVette is a long time singer of blues, soul, and R&B starting in the early 60's and continuing today.  This song is about letting loose and having a good time living in the moment. COMEDY TRACK:Bridget the Midget by Ray StevensWe wrap up the podcast with the comedy stylings of Ray Stevens singing about Bridget the Midget, the Queen of the Blues. Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.

Scoot and boot! Childhood friend Jason Payne makes his fourth token appearance on NostalgiaCast for a discussion of Carroll Ballard's 1979 children's classic THE BLACK STALLION, starring Kelly Reno, Teri Garr, Mickey Rooney, and Hoyt Axton (or, as Jonny calls him, "the guy from GREMLINS"). Listen as Jason, Jonny, and Darin speak in awed reverence about the film's breathtaking cinematography, enveloping sound mix, and its uncanny ability to "speak" to kids and adults alike. Take the reins and join us!  

RMR 0243: Special Guests, Tessa Morrison and Mary Guest joins your host Chad Robinson for the Retro Movie Roundtable as they revisit Gremlins (1988) [PG] Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Holiday Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, Frances Lee McCain, Judge Reinhold, Dick Miller, Glynn Turman, Keye Luke, Scott Brady, Corey Feldman, Jonathan Banks, Edward Andrews, Jackie Joseph, Belinda Balaski, Harry Carey Jr.   Director: Chris Columbus Recorded on 2023-11-28

Our Christmas Series wraps up with one you wouldn't expect--Gremlins! The story begins with Oklahoma folk/country singer Hoyt Axton, playing inventor/two-bit entrepreneur Randall Peltzer. In a Chinatown antique store, Randall secretly buys a mogwai, or a cute, mischievous, fantastical creature, from the owner's grandson. This adorable furball has three big rules—don't expose it to light. Don't get it wet, and don't feed it after midnight. The former will cause it to reproduce like tribbles, the latter will cause it turn into a larger, more monstrous and destructive creature. Mr. Peltzer takes the mogwai to his 20ish son, Bill, played by Zack Galligan, as a Christmas present. Naturally, the three rules get broken, and all hell breaks loose.  Also stars familiar 80s actors like Phoebe Cates as Billy's coworker and love interest. And Judge Reinhold as Billy's asshole boss. Cates and Reinhold would previously co-star in another iconic 80s hit. Fast times at Ridgemont High.

En este, nuestro primer especial navideño de Pelis y Panolis, nos centramos en Gremlins: película de 1984 de género indescriptible que mezcla Qué Bello es Vivir con El Mago de Oz con Alien con E.T. y tantas otras referencias que nos duele la cabeza. Oscar analiza con cierto rencor la tradición de vestirse de Santa Claus para sorprender a tu familia, Dani recomienda fervientemente la película Krampus y Virginia pide auxilio a PETA. Todos nos preguntamos cuánto tuvo que pagar Furby tras la denuncia. Año: 1984. Duración: 1h 46min. Dirección: Joe Dante. Guión: Chris Columbus. Reparto: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton. Sinopsis Para Gente Normal: Un joven rompe inadvertidamente tres importantes reglas relativas a su nueva mascota y desata una horda de malévolos monstruos en un pequeño pueblo. Web ➔ ⁠https://www.pelisypanolis.com⁠ Instagram ➔ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/pelisypanolis⁠ Twitter ➔ ⁠https://twitter.com/pelisypanolis⁠ El Episodio Perdido ➔ ⁠https://www.pelisypanolis.com/regalo⁠ Club VIP ➔ ⁠https://www.patreon.com/pelisypanolis⁠ Arte ➔ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/CarabiasDibuja⁠ Revista Ilustrada Gratuita de Cine Español ➔ https://carabiasdibuja.com/pelis-y-panolis/ Música ➔ ⁠https://pixabay.com/es/users/grand_project-19033897⁠ Los derechos de propiedad intelectual sobre nombres comerciales, marcas registradas, logotipos, fragmentos de música, audio e imágenes de las películas comentadas en este podcast pertenecen a sus respectivos propietarios.

In a continuing salute to the Holidays, Jim discusses a beloved classic from Director Joe Dante and Produced by Steven Speilberg - 1984's "Gremlins," starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, Frances Lee McCain, Judge Reinhold, Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph, Keye Luke, Scott Brady, Corey Feldman, Edward Anderson,  Belinda Balaski and Harry Carey Jr. A young man receives a special Xmas present from his inventor Father which results in the unleashing of several mischievous and sometimes deadly creatures. Find out more on this episode of MONSTER ATTACK!, The Podcast Dedicated To Old Monster Movies.

Merry Bingemas continues with the Back To The Blockbuster team talking 1984's Gremlins, directed by Joe Dante and written by Chris Columbus. Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo. The story follows a young man who receives a strange creature as a pet, which then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive, mischievous monsters that all wreak havoc on a whole town on Christmas Eve.

In a continuing salute to the Holidays, Jim discusses a beloved classic from Director Joe Dante and Produced by Steven Speilberg – 1984’s “Gremlins,” starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, Frances Lee McCain, Judge Reinhold, Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph, Keye Luke, Scott Brady, Corey Feldman, Edward Anderson,  Belinda Balaski and Harry Carey … Gremlins | Episode 389 Read More » The post Gremlins | Episode 389 appeared first on The ESO Network.

We close out Dante's In Fer November with a movie that could not be better suited to Black Friday, an anti-capital, anti-consumerist screed with a sharp sense of humour that lands perfectly in that liminal space between Halloween and Christmas. It's 1984's Gremlins, directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Corey Feldman, Dick Miller, Judge Reinhold, Jonathan Banks, and featuring the voices of Howie Mandel and Frank Welker. Like Die Hard, it is perfect Christmas Eve alternative programming, but the movie is such a blast that you can watch it any time of year. It released in fact on June 8th, 1984 -- the very same day as Ghostbusters, as horror comedy was having a moment on that particular Friday. It's a J Mo favourite that Hayley had never seen, and was an easy nomination to be this month's entry into the podcast canon of classic films. Other works discussed in this episode include Fantastic Voyage, Small Soldiers, the concept of comfort movies, Hot Rod, Black Dynamite, Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, Dark Blue, Run This Town, Nightbreed, Hellraiser, Band of Brothers, Homeland,  Dreamcatcher, Plants & Animals, Super Mario RPG, road rage, It's A Wonderful Life, Furby, Back to the Future, Goonies, Super 8, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, secret nanomachines, and the rom-zom-com trifecta of Life After Beth, Warm Bodies, and Burying The Ex. If you'd like to watch Gremlins along with us before listening to the episode, it's currently streaming in Canada on Crave, Starz and Hollywood Suite at the time of publication. We'll be back next week to kick off A DePalmber to ReMalmber, a three-week series on the films of Brian DePalma, with 1983's Scarface, a film that can currently be found streaming on Netflix, Starz and Amazon Prime in Canada. Find us on Twitter @ADHDDVDpod for the full December release schedule!

David Jackson Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson What a delight music legend David Jackson is. No surprise. I was warned by his legions of loyal fans, most of whom are his brilliantly talented contemporaries. This was fabulous fun, topped perhaps by pre-fed stories with lots of misinformation which paved the way for the truths, which proved to make it all even more fun. So what if David wasn't actually at Columbia Studios when George Harrison hid the pot from the cops, he told great story! Who cares if David was with Cher in DC, not the Chateau Marmont when she got a call from Jimmy (President Carter), not Henry Kissinger, or when he was offered his own show after being a regular on The Andy Williams Show he didn't turn it down, it just… well… he tells it... and then some… and then some more. Great stories, all. We hear about Hoyt Axton and how they wrote Ringo's No No Song, and Three Dog Night's Joy To The World, and what happened to David in both, there's the Chambers Brothers, Bo Diddley, Jackson Browne, John Denver, Sonny, and Sonny and Cher, Glen Frey, Jimmy Buffett, a GREAT story about Roger Miller and Glen Campbell, The Bohemian Grove, what that gentleman's club is really all about, and his upcoming trip to Marrakesh to play and… play. What a life. Well lived, still living to the max. This man is damn delight. Top to bottom, start to finish. I can't wait for his return to the States and his Friday nights at The Write Off Room with The Deductions. Till then I'll be hitting his Bandcamp https://davidpjackson1.bandcamp.com/album/first-waltz?fbclid=IwAR1FNNSEtyXUFWpxRjACYgs2844fFTyteIwhZUcxmpW0YxaBvfMngJfS_nk. David Jackson has a new huge fan. *raises hand* David Jackson Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson Wednesday, Sept 27th, 5 PM PT, 8 PM ET Streamed Live on my Facebook Replay here: https://bit.ly/45ZpZ0l

Musician Matt Axton stops by the Oklahoma Today podcast to talk with the editors about how his grandmother Mae Boren Axton and father Hoyt Axton inspired and influenced his sound and the honor of playing the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, where they were both inducted. Plus, the editors have art on the brain in Question of the Week and help keep your calendars full with Podvents.  We hope you listen! The Oklahoma Today podcast is sponsored by Bravado Wireless.

HAPPY HOUR FLIX is a podcast all about the movies you love and love to talk about. A nostalgic look at what we grew up watching and how they still impact us today.What is it about that fuzzy...or rather furry, past laying eyes on sweet, dangerous Gizmo for the first time? Join us on this nostalgia trip as we rewind to the iconic 80s classic movie, Gremlins. Our special guest Amanda Fuller, a self-proclaimed Gizmo defender, takes us back to her childhood experience of watching this movie for the first time - at a drive-in no less! And of course, from our friends over at MISGUIDED SPIRITS, a unique concoction whipped up by Chadwick Sutton, the Gizmo Sour. Follow along and be sure to make one yourself!2oz  MISGUIDED whiskey.75oz fresh lime juice.5oz simple syrup ...or even maple syrup!that's it - now shake and strain or dirty pour into rocks glass (either way is fine)Garnish:2 dashes angostura bitters on topBut oops, you just got it wet...and so the trouble begins!Hey all, a quick reminder, no matter where you are listening to us, if you could rate us and drop us a review on Apple Podcasts, we'd be so grateful - it really helps us spread the good vibes. Thank you!Now back to the episode...we dive into the age old question of: is Gremlins is actually a horror film or a comedy? And yes, we wade into deep, deep waters. We dissect the characters, iconic scenes, and the history of the term 'gremlin'. We analyze the movie's intentional stylization, the villainous Mrs. Deagle, and the dubious logic of Hoyt Axton.  We delve into the potential connections to Little Shop of Horrors, the dark themes, and even a possible metaphor for living in New York City. And then there's Kate's emotional monologue about her father's death. And wait, there is a fountain in a candy shop??!!  And as always, some bonus trivia about Spielberg's cameo and Judge Reinhold's character. So, mix a Gizmo Sour, sit back, pop some popcorn...maybe not in that order... and join us for this lively chat about Gremlins.HAPPY HOUR FLIX is produced by James Allerdyce and Lori Kay, and hosted by Steven Pierce and Matt Mundy.Main Title is by Johnny Mineo.Happy Hour Flix | Movies You Love

On this episode it's Christmas in July! We celebrate the holidays early with a fan request episode all about Joe Dante's GREMLINS, the beloved holiday classic. Get the egg nog out, crank the AC down real low, then kick back and relax while Death By DVD does Gremlins. Merry Christmas in July! subscribe today for Death By DVD's official newsletter,  featuring updates on new episodes, merch discounts and more at www.deathbydvd.comHEY, while you're still here.. have you heard...DEATH BY DVD PRESENTS : WHO SHOT HANK? The first of its kind (On this show, at least) an all original narrative audio drama exploring the murder of this shows very host, HANK THE WORLDS GREATEST! Explore WHO SHOT HANK, starting with the MURDER!  A Death By DVD New Year Mystery  WHO SHOT HANK : PART ONE  WHO SHOT HANK : PART TWO  WHO SHOT HANK : PART THREE  WHO SHOT HANK : PART FOUR  WHO SHOT HANK PART 5 : THE BEGINNING OF THE END WHO SHOT HANK PART 6 THE FINALE : EXEUNT OMNES  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

A young man inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet and unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous monsters on a small town. This iconic holiday creature feature, which stars Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, and Hoyt Axton, celebrates a birthday on June 8th and we celebrate with a classic episode of Slashers & Screamers, with Billy Graves, The Memphis Maniac Rick, Final Girl Casey, and The Godfather of Droll James. If horror films are your jam, subscribe to Slasher Sports Cinema and catch Billy Graves among the rest of the SlasherSports team. You need a scary movie going into the weekend and he's bringing you the best horror movies to be found in theatres, on Netflix, Hulu, Tubi, Peacock, and VOD. Be sure to follow us on all our social medias and podcasts! You can also find Slasher Sports merchandise on RedBubble via our LINKTREE Find Billy, your host on INSTAGRAM or TWITTER We want to hear from you. Leave us your QUESTIONS/COMMENTS FOR THE HOSTS and we might play your audio on the show! Intro/Outro music by The Dave Avellis Project #horrormovie #horror #horrormovies #horrorfan #horrorfilm #halloween #horroraddict #movie #horrorcommunity #horrorfilms #horrorjunkie #film #horrorcollector #horrorart #movies #scary #instahorror #horrorlover #shorror #horrorfanatic #horrorgram #horrornerd #horrorgeek #slasher #horrorfans #cinema #fridaythe #horrorcollection #horrorfamily #horrorlife #creepy #art #s #michaelmyers #horrorobsessed #th #scream #terror #spooky #bluray #scarymovie #thriller #gore #jasonvoorhees #films #freddykrueger #scarymovies #classichorror #cosplay #bluraycollection #childsplay #horrorclub #chucky #dvd #moviereview #slashermovies #bluraycollector #stephenking #moviecollection #cinephile --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/slashersportscinema/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/slashersportscinema/support

Peter Sobczynski returns to update all the streamers on what is available on disc this week. They include a sadly all-too-timely Peter Bogdanovich film with Boris Karloff and early work from John Woo, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. Peter discusses one of his all-time favorite musicals and Erik recalls a disturbing scene he used to see on cable all the time in a film from an unlikely director. Meg Ryan is cast against type and there is some overlap between Mark Wahlberg and Jason Statham in some new releases. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin team up again for a better effort than 80 For Brady and finally Kino has some more Burt Reynolds for you including one of his more entertaining works newly in 4K. 0:00 - Intro 1:25 - Criterion (Targets, Branded to Kill 4K) 8:31 - Arrow (Hand of Death) 10:48 - Shout! Factory (Endangered Species) 16:08 - RLJE (Children of the Corn) 18:12 - Lions Gate (Moving On, Operation Fortune) 25:25 - Paramount (Italian Job (4K), Shooter (4K)) 30:00 - Mill Creek (In The Cut (20th Anniversary Director's Edition) 32:45 - Sandpiper (Absolute Beginners) 38:23 - Kino (Hustle, The Longest Yard (1974) (4K)) 48:50 – New Blu-ray Announcements 52:28 - Outro

Hanoi Rocks Legendary Guitarist On Jukebox Junkie And 21st Century Rocks!#hanoirocks #andymccoy #guitar #jukeboxjunkie #21stcenturyrocks #newalbum Famed Finnish glam rock heroes Hanoi Rocks were never shy about wearing their collective influences on their fishnet sleeves. Starting with their acclaimed debut album, the group frequently included surprising cover versions among their killer original songs – from the Carol King penned “Walking With My Angel” to the bluesy folk of Hoyt Axton's “Lighting Bar Blues” to the smoking hot take on CCR's “Up Around The Bend,” which currently rides the top of the band's most played songs on the Spotify platform. Now, HR guitarist Andy McCoy taps into the rich musical history that inspired him on his own full-length album of highly addictive covers entitled Jukebox Junkie!Pre-order the CD/vinyl: https://cleorecs.com/store/?s=andy+mccoy+jukebox+junkie&post_type=productPre-order/pre-save the digital: https://orcd.co/andy_mccoy_jukebox_junkieWhen the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the Earth from spinning for a few years, several musical projects unfortunately ended up lost in the shuffle. One of those projects was a killer studio album from Finnish superstar Andy McCoy called 21st Century Rocks. As McCoy explains, “the album came out shortly before they closed the borders due to the COVID situation. So we couldn't support the record with a tour, but we're happy to see it being re-released!” This month, in fact, the album is being reissued on all formats to give fans who missed it the first time around their shot at experiencing this magical release.Order the CD/Vinyl: https://cleorecs.com/store/?s=andy+mccoy+21st+century&post_type=productStream/download the digital: https://orcd.co/andymccoy_21stcenturyrocksWebsite: https://www.andymccoy.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andy_mccoy_official/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andymccoyofficial/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVGdOAX-6Jx36FDBMayuy3QThanks for tuning in, please be sure to click that subscribe button and give this a thumbs up!!Email: thevibesbroadcast@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/listen_to_the_vibes_/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thevibesbroadcastnetworkLinktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastTikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeuTVRv2/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheVibesBrdcstTruth: https://truthsocial.com/@KoyoteFor all our social media and other links, go to: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastPlease subscribe, like, and share!

En este episodio de Cineteca Perdida conversamos sobre la película del año 1984, “Gremlins” del director Joe Dante, protagonizada por Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates y Hoyt Axton.

This week, Aaron highlights music from a group originally from Antigonish, Nova Scotia while Brent looks at the career of a Los Angeles band formed by three distinct vocalists in 1967.Listed among the top 150 best-selling Canadian artists in Canada, Aaron picks out 3 songs from the Hamilton, Ontario band The Trews.With a catalog of songs that features contributions from names like Randy Newman and Hoyt Axton, Brent spotlights three songs from Three Dog Night.

Today, we are joined by Matt Axton. He is a California-based singer-songwriter, guitarist, and band leader. His music is a “humble slice of Americana,” with a mix of folk, roots, country, blues, and rock. As a youth, Matt was on and off tour buses with Matt Axton is a California-based singer-songwriter, guitarist, and band leader. His music is a “humble slice of Americana,” a mix of folk, roots, country, blues, and rock. His eclectic style was grown in the mountains of Tahoe and proudly honed in the heart of the Axton music legacy. Matt's grandmother, Mae Boren Axton, co-penned Elvis Presley's first million-selling hit Heartbreak Hotel and was known as The Queen Mother Of Nashville. Matt's father, Hoyt Axton, was a musical powerhouse in the folk-country-rock scene writing hits like Joy to the World, Never Been to Spain, and many more. Boasting over 300 original songs of his own, Matt Axton is making his mark in the West Coast music scene with a recent single and video release of his bittersweet and bright country love song Blue Sky Rain, followed by collaborations with Hollywood bluegrass, country and rock mainstays dad, Hoyt Axton and grandmother Mae "Queen Mother of Nashville. Matt shares his newest release Blue Sky Rain and stories from being on the road in this episode of The Set Up. - Meet Matt Axton Family history of musicians Folk Americana Songwriting New Release ‘Blue Sky Rain' On the Road and Touring ‘Making Good Music' - Check out his latest work ‘Blue Sky Rain' available everywhere! https://open.spotify.com/album/352TLEjLqRScZ8ZQQv6CWr?si=mA1MHGH_QPWmj4TvE1VMhg&nd=1 – If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 30 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! -- For show notes, transcripts and past guests, please visit thesetupseries.com Want to meet our guests? Join our community (“Set Up Set List") at thesetupseries.com/community --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thesetupseries/message

They say the universe is ever expanding, but the cultural center of the universe is conveniently located closer than you might think. withinpodcast.com Support our show at Support Within The Realm   Our sponsors:  jandjpoolsafety@gmail.com Music: The Right Direction by Shane Ivers Martin Mountain Coffee: Small Batch Roaster for an Artisan Cup of Coffee! Check out Martin Mountain Coffee's signature Within The Realm Blend "Story Teller's Roast!" Contact Us! Facebook: @withintherealm1 Twitter: @realm_within Instagram: within_the_realm contact@withinpodcast.com Want to advertise, sponsor or otherwise support Within The Realm? Visit with us at contact@withinpodcast.com or Support Within The Realm  The Center of the Universe   Welcome to the 101st episode of Within The Realm, I'm your host Steve Garrett. It's a big proposition to get started on the next 100 stories from Within The Realm. Some may wonder, how does a fella have so many tales tucked away in his mind. Folks that know me well, know that I have a million of ‘em and they wish I would hush, at least for a little bit. Well, the good news is that today is not a day I feel inclined to hush, so we'll move forward with our story for today after we hear from the good folks that help me bring you our show. After that I have a story about the center of the universe, it's closer than you might think. (music/Commercials/stinger) Thanks for inviting me back to your podcast listening device. Be sure to check out the show notes in the info on this episode for news about the show & how to contact us. We would love to hear from you. This episode might reveal my roundabout way of dealing with a story. I can't seem to follow a straight line from one end of a story to the next, but hopefully that makes them interesting. I tell stories that come from the place where the Great Plains, the Ozark Mountains and the Indian Territory collide. A lot of people refer to it as “Fly Over Country” and for a lot of folks they do exactly that, Fly over it on their way to more supposedly interesting places. One thing those people don't know is the Center of the Universe lies beneath them as they jet from coast to coast. The Center of the Universe is in Tulsa, just off 1st and Boston. At this location there is a small circle of concrete in a wide spot on a walking path where a person can stand & hear their conversational tone echoed back to them, but then step off of that circle no echo is produced. Folks come from near & far to hear for themselves & leave satisfied they have experienced something weird. There are those that try to explain away the phenomenon, saying it has something to do with the curved concrete seating on either side of the spot constructed several years ago that produces the echo. They can try to explain it with Science, but those that reside Within The Realm know it's a mystery of the ever expanding variety. But the first to point out Oklahoma's centralness to the Cosmos was the great Oklahoma folksinger, songwriter, actor & quantum philosopher Hoyt Axton. You may remember him as the Dad in Gremlins or from his song Della & the Dealer from the 70s. You DO remember him as the songwriter that gave us Never Been To Spain, The Pusher & the one about the Bullfrog named Jeremiah, Joy To The World. Hoyt was often quoted as saying Oklahoma was the cultural center of the universe. Now that always got a laugh from the folks on either coast, thinking about this place as devoid of anything good. After all the bright lights are in New York and LA. On this one, I'm a disciple of the Bard from Duncan, if we push the boundaries out to incorporate all of that place I call Within The Realm, I think I can make a pretty strong argument that Fly Over Country is, in fact, the cultural center of the universe. This part of the world has been settled for some time, but really didn't fill up til late in the game. It was very much a part of that frontier that Fredrick Jackson Turner based his thesis on, the one Professor Greg Jackson reminded us in the last episode went something like “the frontier made America or the Frontier was the most American thing that America ever America'd.” I put it another way, many of those folks were kicked out of every other decent place in the world and came here. This place was diverse, culturally speaking. Just taking that Center of the Universe location in Tulsa as an example, within just a few blocks of that site, you have the Muskogee Tribes Council Oak, the place where the members of that band of Native Americans met and conferred long before Oklahoma was a State. Within Walking distance from there is the Greenwood District, the Black Wall Street, where a vibrant African American community thrived. And of course downtown Tulsa, owing its very existence to those that came here to make a living from what came out of the ground. Many communities in this vast part of the country had similar communities. Not everything was perfect, but strong communities existed in this place. Out of those strong but separate cultures came the Negro Baseball Leagues, Wild West Shows, Kansas City Jazz & Western Swing. Those same communities produced Will Rogers, Walt Disney, Woody Guthrie & Langston Hughes. And as all that was brewing, Railroads funneled people through Kansas City and Route 66, the Mother Road was built right through the Ozarks, Indian Territory and the Great Plains in the 1920s. This was the road that the “Okies” used in their escape to California in the Great Depression. The term Okie, at least to the Californians who saw them as undesireables in their fair State, applied to all those that came through Oklahoma on their exodus to the west, be they from Texas, Arkansas or Missouri. But once it was all said and done 15% of the population of Oklahoma had headed for the jobs in the fields and the cities they hoped awaited them in the Golden State. This was the first great export of the Within The Realm culture. The Okies took with them their culture just as Will Rogers was the number one box-office draw and Walt Disney and the slew of Kansas City animators like Fritz Freeling and Ub Iwerks, were revolutionizing animation. Count Basie was spreading the popularity of the Kansas City style jazz & radio Station KVOO, the Voice of Oklahoma, was broadcasting the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys across the west. But even after the Depression & World War II, folks from this part of the world made an impact everywhere. The folk music trend of the 50s & 60s was greatly influenced by Woody Guthrie, Oklahoman Jimmy Webb penned some of the greatest love songs of the 60s, including Wichita Lineman & By The Time I Get to Phoenix about a lovelorn Okie headed back to Oklahoma. Newscaster Walter Cronkite, science fiction author Robert Heinlein & radio commentator Paul Harvey spread their Fly Over Country sentimentality to their audiences. S. E. Hinton, a young writer from the middle of nowhere wrote “The Outsiders” that influenced generations of young people. Long before Garth Brooks was the biggest thing ever in Country music, Ozarkian Porter Waggoner delivered Dolly Parton to the World and Eric Clapton regularly scoured the Tulsa scene for backing musicians. Leon Russell, the Master of Time and Space, influenced passels of musicians including a young Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who later became known as Elton John. And we're only scratching the surface of what this place has offered to the rest of the world. I haven't even mentioned Cherry Mash, the ICEE or Kool-Aid. So, for those of you who live Within The Realm, you know who you are, there's lots of history and background in this area. It's more than just trivia. It's a part of the fabric of our country, a country that has an outsized impact of the world. The influence of the people of the place even stretches into the depths of space. Remember it was a Kansas farm boy that discovered Pluto & four men from our little region have walked on or orbited the moon, Alan Bean, Edgar Mitchell, Tom Stafford & Ronald Evans. And then for you folks that have never known the pleasures of living in this stretch of country, those of you who wonder what in the world those folks you are flying over might be doing down there. You might be surprised to know how much the music you listen to, the literature you read and content you consume was created right here...or even how the ability to fly over said region was developed here. There's always more to the story here Within The Realm, the Cultural Center of the Universe. Plenty more stories for another 100 or so episodes. (music) Thanks for joining me today on this episode of Within The Realm. If you enjoyed this episode but haven't joined our Facebook group, you can find a link to it in our show notes. Come join the group and share our episode notifications with your friends. It's a great way to help us grow our audience. You can also keep up with the show on our home on the web, withinpodcast.com. You can find a complete archive of shows plus news & other show related items. If you have found value from our show & want to help keep this thing going, check out our support page at withinpodcast.com/support. Thanks in advance! Within The Realm is written & produced by me, Steve Garrett. Our theme music is provided by 5561/2, Join us in another two weeks for a trek Within The Realm. And as always, thanks for listening.

Episode 434: Pop icon Tiffany Darwish is here! That's right, Damian sits down the legendary singer to talk about: punk, country and wrestling! Listen as the two discuss: being discovered the great Hoyt Axton, touring with Jerry Lee Lewis & Little Richard, wrestling Butter Bean and so much more!!! Don't miss Tiffany's brand new album: Shadows! More information at tiffanytunes.com Also, grab a shirt for this podcast at turnedoutapunk.com

Gremlins Welcome to The Guys Review, where we review media, products and experiences.  **READ APPLE REVIEWS/Fan Mail**Mention Twitter DM group - like pinned tweet @The_GuysReviewRead emails theguysreviewpod@gmail.comTwitter Poll Gremlins Director: Joe Dante Starring:  Zach GalliganPhoebe CatesHoyt AxtonPolly HollidayFrances Lee McCain Released: June 8, 1984 Budget: $11M ($31.5M in 2022) Gross $212.9M ($610M in 2022) Ratings:   IMDb 7.3/10 Rotten Tomatoes 86% Metacritic 70% Google Users 83%  Here cometh thine shiny awards Sire. My Lord Tucker the Wanker second Earl of Wessex. Lord of the Furries. Heir of Lord baldy the one eyed snake wrestler. Protector of Freedom units. Step Sibling with funny feelings down stairs. Entertainer of uncles. Jailor of innocent. Spanker of innocent milk maids and stable boys. The toxic wanker. Big Cheif sitting doughnut. Teepee giver to the great Cornholio. Edgar Allan Poe's shaved muse. First Time you saw the movie? Plot:   TOP 5​1. It's partly responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating.Truth be told, it's Steven Spielberg who is really responsible for the introduction of the PG-13 rating. Both Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which he directed, and Gremlins, which he executive produced, were rated PG upon their release, and subsequently criticized for not being kid-appropriate. To avoid being slapped with an R rating in the future, Spielberg suggested that the MPAA add a rating between PG and R. On August 10, 1984, Red Dawn became the first movie to be released with the new PG-13 rating. 2. Howie Mandel is the voice of Gizmo.It was the suggestion of voice actor Frank Welker, who voiced Stripe in Gremlins (and Fred on Scooby-Doo before that), that Howie Mandel be hired for the role. Phoebe Cates was a controversial casting choice.Given her sweet demeanor as Kate, it's hard to imagine that not everyone was on board with casting Cates. But her infamous topless scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High gave the studio pause about putting her in the lead. Kingston Falls and Hill Valley are one and the same.If the fictional town of Kingston Falls in Gremlins looks familiar, that's because it was filmed on the same set used for the town of Hill Valley in Back to the Future, which wasreleased a year later. At one point, Gizmo and Stripe were supposed to be the same creature.It was also at Spielberg's suggestion that Gizmo's role in the film grew. Originally, it's the cute little Mogwai pet himself who transforms into Stripe the Gremlin. But Spielberg knew that audiences would want to see as much of Gizmo as possible, so he withdrew the idea so that they would appear as totally separate characters.  **TRIPLE LINDY AWARD** **REVIEW AND RATING**Trey 3Chris 1.5Stephen 2.5Tucker 2 TOP 5Stephen:1 Breakfast club2 Saving Private Ryan3 Ghostbusters4 Sandlot5 Color out of space Chris:1. sandlots2. T23. trick r treat4. rocky horror picture show5. hubie halloween Trey:1) Boondocks Saints2) Boiler Room3) Tombstone4) Very bad things5) She out of my league Tucker:1. T22:Saving Private Ryan3: Tombstone4: My Cousin Vinny5: Ghostbusters WHAT ARE WE DOING NEXT WEEK? Web: https://theguysreview.simplecast.com/EM: theguysreviewpod@gmail.comIG: @TheGuysReviewPodTW: @The_GuysReview - Twitter DM groupFB: https://facebook.com/TheGuysReviewPod/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYKXJhq9LbQ2VfR4K33kT9Q Please, Subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts from!! Thank you,-The Guys 

What movies did Allen, Scott, Rich, and Hadley pick to watch this holiday? Fatman is a 2020 American black comedy action film written and directed by Eshom Nelms and Ian Nelms and starring Mel Gibson, Walton Goggins and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride serve as executive producers of the film. Gremlins is a 1984 American black comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo, the main mogwai character. Die Hard is a 1988 American action film directed by John McTiernan, with a screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza. Based on the 1979 novel, Nothing Lasts Forever, by Roderick Thorp, it stars Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, and Bonnie Bedelia. Die Hard follows New York City police detective John McClane who is caught up in a terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles skyscraper while visiting his estranged wife. Reginald VelJohnson, William Atherton, Paul Gleason, and Hart Bochner feature in supporting roles A Christmas Story is a 1983 Christmas comedy film directed by Bob Clark and based on Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional anecdotes in his 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, with some elements from his 1971 book Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories And Other Disasters. www.wyrdrealities.net --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wyrd-realities/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wyrd-realities/support

Episode 332 is about the 1984 Christmas Horror Comedy, “Gremlins”. This Joe Dante directed classic stars Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday and other notables who will be covered in the episode. It's time to get out your ugly sweater and take a trip to that pretend town, which we'll call Kingston Falls for this movie. Find us on Instagram where we are @chewingthescenery or easily find us on Facebook. CTS can be found on Soundcloud, Stitcher, Apple Music and anywhere fine podcasts can be found. Please rate, review, subscribe- it really does help new listeners find us! #horror #horrormovies #horrornerd #horroraddict #horrorjunkie #monsterkid #bmovie #scarymovies #monstermovie #podcast #chewingthescenery #zombies #zombie #VHS #moviemonsters #denver #colorado #gremlins #gizmo #zachgalligan #phoebecates #christmashorror #joedante

10:19 We Dip Chris Shiflett's Rig! 25:00 Zach's New Pedal 28:29 Joe Bonamassa Live from Nerdville Big thanks to StewMac for sponsoring this episode. Head to http://stewmac.com/dippedintone (http://stewmac.com/dippedintone) to get 10% off! Go see Joe's Dumbles in person: https://jbonamassa.com/tour-dates/ (https://jbonamassa.com/tour-dates/)  Dipped In Tone begins its partnership with Premier Guitar with Rhett Shull and Zack Broyles visiting Joe Bonamassa in Nerdville East, his Nashville home and museum. They talk vintage gear, guitar obsession, innovation versus tradition, and Dumbles. Many Dumbles … including a rare—even among these ultra-rare custom-built amps—example with a DI port for acoustic guitar made for the late songwriter Hoyt Axton. Bonamassa also explains his philosophy about taking guitars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the road and to local gigs, and what the future holds in store for his collection of 500 instruments—every one with a story. Also, our hosts “dip” Chris Shiflett's rig, offering the Foo Fighters guitarist a few “pointers” on rebuilding his massive pedalboard while ogling his refinished 1957 Les Paul and his custom-built Telecaster called “the Cleaver.” But before they dive deep, Schull shows off his recently acquired 1989 R9 Les Paul from Norm's Rare Guitars, and Broyles shows off the new super-Muff style Positron Cascading Amplifier Distortion. Subscribe, like, and leave us a comment Sign up on our mailing list: http://eepurl.com/iaCee5 (http://eepurl.com/iaCee5) Support us on Patreon for access to our discord server and other perks! https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone (https://www.patreon.com/dippedintone) MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/dipped-in-tone (https://teespring.com/stores/dipped-in-tone) Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/dippedintone (https://instagram.com/dippedintone)   Dipped in Tone is: Rhett Shull  https://www.rhettshull.com/ (https://www.rhettshull.com/) Zach Broyles / Mythos Pedals  https://mythospedals.com/ (https://mythospedals.com) Premier Guitar https://www.premierguitar.com/ (https://www.premierguitar.com/)

Wow! Today we sit down with musician and actor Bill Bancroft! And what a discussion it is! Bill takes us on a journey through his music career starting in the 1960's and gives us the inside scoop about Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll! Behind a drum kit, Bill Bancroft experienced the whole mind-altering trip. Sex and drugs were on steady supply everywhere he went. Acid trips, cocaine busts and psycho groupies were part of this strange world. His bands opened for national acts such as Robert Cray and Hoyt Axton. He played with the legendary Bo Diddley and went on tour with Freddy Fender. He partied with Heart, drank beers with the guys from AC/DC and even shot a round of roadside golf with Willie Nelson. Sex, drums, and rock & roll were the center of his world… Until a girl walked into Bill's life and everything changed. Now he's an actor, worked on his own films and is looking to be a positive influence in the film community! Also, we take in his knowledge about the Washington Incentive Plan for filmmakers... don't miss this episode so please kick back, relax and enjoy our conversation with our friend Mr. Bill Bancroft!Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREE Entrepreneur Swag Shop! Get your swag! Identity is about being who you are meant to be! Use coupon code AROUNDTHEREEL & save 15%!Support the show

We start season four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs with an extra-long look at "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie, and at the Monterey Pop Festival, and the careers of the Mamas and the Papas and P.F. Sloan. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Up, Up, and Away" by the 5th Dimension. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. Scott McKenzie's first album is available here. There are many compilations of the Mamas and the Papas' music, but sadly none that are in print in the UK have the original mono mixes. This set is about as good as you're going to find, though, for the stereo versions. Information on the Mamas and the Papas came from Go Where You Wanna Go: The Oral History of The Mamas and the Papas by Matthew Greenwald, California Dreamin': The True Story Of The Mamas and Papas by Michelle Phillips, and Papa John by John Phillips and Jim Jerome. Information on P.F. Sloan came from PF - TRAVELLING BAREFOOT ON A ROCKY ROAD by Stephen McParland and What's Exactly the Matter With Me? by P.F. Sloan and S.E. Feinberg. The film of the Monterey Pop Festival is available on this Criterion Blu-Ray set. Sadly the CD of the performances seems to be deleted. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to season four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. It's good to be back. Before we start this episode, I just want to say one thing. I get a lot of credit at times for the way I don't shy away from dealing with the more unsavoury elements of the people being covered in my podcast -- particularly the more awful men. But as I said very early on, I only cover those aspects of their life when they're relevant to the music, because this is a music podcast and not a true crime podcast. But also I worry that in some cases this might mean I'm giving a false impression of some people. In the case of this episode, one of the central figures is John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Now, Phillips has posthumously been accused of some truly monstrous acts, the kind of thing that is truly unforgivable, and I believe those accusations. But those acts didn't take place during the time period covered by most of this episode, so I won't be covering them here -- but they're easily googlable if you want to know. I thought it best to get that out of the way at the start, so no-one's either anxiously waiting for the penny to drop or upset that I didn't acknowledge the elephant in the room. Separately, this episode will have some discussion of fatphobia and diet culture, and of a death that is at least in part attributable to those things. Those of you affected by that may want to skip this one or read the transcript. There are also some mentions of drug addiction and alcoholism. Anyway, on with the show. One of the things that causes problems with rock history is the tendency of people to have selective memories, and that's never more true than when it comes to the Summer of Love, summer of 1967. In the mythology that's built up around it, that was a golden time, the greatest time ever, a period of peace and love where everything was possible, and the world looked like it was going to just keep on getting better. But what that means, of course, is that the people remembering it that way do so because it was the best time of their lives. And what happens when the best time of your life is over in one summer? When you have one hit and never have a second, or when your band splits up after only eighteen months, and you have to cope with the reality that your best years are not only behind you, but they weren't even best years, but just best months? What stories would you tell about that time? Would you remember it as the eve of destruction, the last great moment before everything went to hell, or would you remember it as a golden summer, full of people with flowers in their hair? And would either really be true? [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco"] Other than the city in which they worked, there are a few things that seem to characterise almost all the important figures on the LA music scene in the middle part of the 1960s. They almost all seem to be incredibly ambitious, as one might imagine. There seem to be a huge number of fantasists among them -- people who will not only choose the legend over reality when it suits them, but who will choose the legend over reality even when it doesn't suit them. And they almost all seem to have a story about being turned down in a rude and arrogant manner by Lou Adler, usually more or less the same story. To give an example, I'm going to read out a bit of Ray Manzarek's autobiography here. Now, Manzarek uses a few words that I can't use on this podcast and keep a clean rating, so I'm just going to do slight pauses when I get to them, but I'll leave the words in the transcript for those who aren't offended by them: "Sometimes Jim and Dorothy and I went alone. The three of us tried Dunhill Records. Lou Adler was the head man. He was shrewd and he was hip. He had the Mamas and the Papas and a big single with Barry McGuire's 'Eve of Destruction.' He was flush. We were ushered into his office. He looked cool. He was California casually disheveled and had the look of a stoner, but his eyes were as cold as a shark's. He took the twelve-inch acetate demo from me and we all sat down. He put the disc on his turntable and played each cut…for ten seconds. Ten seconds! You can't tell jack [shit] from ten seconds. At least listen to one of the songs all the way through. I wanted to rage at him. 'How dare you! We're the Doors! This is [fucking] Jim Morrison! He's going to be a [fucking] star! Can't you see that? Can't you see how [fucking] handsome he is? Can't you hear how groovy the music is? Don't you [fucking] get it? Listen to the words, man!' My brain was a boiling, lava-filled Jell-O mold of rage. I wanted to eviscerate that shark. The songs he so casually dismissed were 'Moonlight Drive,' 'Hello, I Love You,' 'Summer's Almost Gone,' 'End of the Night,' 'I Looked at You,' 'Go Insane.' He rejected the whole demo. Ten seconds on each song—maybe twenty seconds on 'Hello, I Love You' (I took that as an omen of potential airplay)—and we were dismissed out of hand. Just like that. He took the demo off the turntable and handed it back to me with an obsequious smile and said, 'Nothing here I can use.' We were shocked. We stood up, the three of us, and Jim, with a wry and knowing smile on his lips, cuttingly and coolly shot back at him, 'That's okay, man. We don't want to be *used*, anyway.'" Now, as you may have gathered from the episode on the Doors, Ray Manzarek was one of those print-the-legend types, and that's true of everyone who tells similar stories about Lou Alder. But... there are a *lot* of people who tell similar stories about Lou Adler. One of those was Phil Sloan. You can get an idea of Sloan's attitude to storytelling from a story he always used to tell. Shortly after he and his family moved to LA from New York, he got a job selling newspapers on a street corner on Hollywood Boulevard, just across from Schwab's Drug Store. One day James Dean drove up in his Porsche and made an unusual request. He wanted to buy every copy of the newspaper that Sloan had -- around a hundred and fifty copies in total. But he only wanted one article, something in the entertainment section. Sloan didn't remember what the article was, but he did remember that one of the headlines was on the final illness of Oliver Hardy, who died shortly afterwards, and thought it might have been something to do with that. Dean was going to just clip that article from every copy he bought, and then he was going to give all the newspapers back to Sloan to sell again, so Sloan ended up making a lot of extra money that day. There is one rather big problem with that story. Oliver Hardy died in August 1957, just after the Sloan family moved to LA. But James Dean died in September 1955, two years earlier. Sloan admitted that, and said he couldn't explain it, but he was insistent. He sold a hundred and fifty newspapers to James Dean two years after Dean's death. When not selling newspapers to dead celebrities, Sloan went to Fairfax High School, and developed an interest in music which was mostly oriented around the kind of white pop vocal groups that were popular at the time, groups like the Kingston Trio, the Four Lads, and the Four Aces. But the record that made Sloan decide he wanted to make music himself was "Just Goofed" by the Teen Queens: [Excerpt: The Teen Queens, "Just Goofed"] In 1959, when he was fourteen, he saw an advert for an open audition with Aladdin Records, a label he liked because of Thurston Harris. He went along to the audition, and was successful. His first single, released as by Flip Sloan -- Flip was a nickname, a corruption of "Philip" -- was produced by Bumps Blackwell and featured several of the musicians who played with Sam Cooke, plus Larry Knechtel on piano and Mike Deasey on guitar, but Aladdin shut down shortly after releasing it, and it may not even have had a general release, just promo copies. I've not been able to find a copy online anywhere. After that, he tried Arwin Records, the label that Jan and Arnie recorded for, which was owned by Marty Melcher (Doris Day's husband and Terry Melcher's stepfather). Melcher signed him, and put out a single, "She's My Girl", on Mart Records, a subsidiary of Arwin, on which Sloan was backed by a group of session players including Sandy Nelson and Bruce Johnston: [Excerpt: Philip Sloan, "She's My Girl"] That record didn't have any success, and Sloan was soon dropped by Mart Records. He went on to sign with Blue Bird Records, which was as far as can be ascertained essentially a scam organisation that would record demos for songwriters, but tell the performers that they were making a real record, so that they would record it for the royalties they would never get, rather than for a decent fee as a professional demo singer would get. But Steve Venet -- the brother of Nik Venet, and occasional songwriting collaborator with Tommy Boyce -- happened to come to Blue Bird one day, and hear one of Sloan's original songs. He thought Sloan would make a good songwriter, and took him to see Lou Adler at Columbia-Screen Gems music publishing. This was shortly after the merger between Columbia-Screen Gems and Aldon Music, and Adler was at this point the West Coast head of operations, subservient to Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, but largely left to do what he wanted. The way Sloan always told the story, Venet tried to get Adler to sign Sloan, but Adler said his songs stunk and had no commercial potential. But Sloan persisted in trying to get a contract there, and eventually Al Nevins happened to be in the office and overruled Adler, much to Adler's disgust. Sloan was signed to Columbia-Screen Gems as a songwriter, though he wasn't put on a salary like the Brill Building songwriters, just told that he could bring in songs and they would publish them. Shortly after this, Adler suggested to Sloan that he might want to form a writing team with another songwriter, Steve Barri, who had had a similar non-career non-trajectory, but was very slightly further ahead in his career, having done some work with Carol Connors, the former lead singer of the Teddy Bears. Barri had co-written a couple of flop singles for Connors, before the two of them had formed a vocal group, the Storytellers, with Connors' sister. The Storytellers had released a single, "When Two People (Are in Love)" , which was put out on a local independent label and which Adler had licensed to be released on Dimension Records, the label associated with Aldon Music: [Excerpt: The Storytellers "When Two People (Are in Love)"] That record didn't sell, but it was enough to get Barri into the Columbia-Screen Gems circle, and Adler set him and Sloan up as a songwriting team -- although the way Sloan told it, it wasn't so much a songwriting team as Sloan writing songs while Barri was also there. Sloan would later claim "it was mostly a collaboration of spirit, and it seemed that I was writing most of the music and the lyric, but it couldn't possibly have ever happened unless both of us were present at the same time". One suspects that Barri might have a different recollection of how it went... Sloan and Barri's first collaboration was a song that Sloan had half-written before they met, called "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann", which was recorded by a West Coast Chubby Checker knockoff who went under the name Round Robin, and who had his own dance craze, the Slauson, which was much less successful than the Twist: [Excerpt: Round Robin, "Kick that Little Foot Sally Ann"] That track was produced and arranged by Jack Nitzsche, and Nitzsche asked Sloan to be one of the rhythm guitarists on the track, apparently liking Sloan's feel. Sloan would end up playing rhythm guitar or singing backing vocals on many of the records made of songs he and Barri wrote together. "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann" only made number sixty-one nationally, but it was a regional hit, and it meant that Sloan and Barri soon became what Sloan later described as "the Goffin and King of the West Coast follow-ups." According to Sloan "We'd be given a list on Monday morning by Lou Adler with thirty names on it of the groups who needed follow-ups to their hit." They'd then write the songs to order, and they started to specialise in dance craze songs. For example, when the Swim looked like it might be the next big dance, they wrote "Swim Swim Swim", "She Only Wants to Swim", "Let's Swim Baby", "Big Boss Swimmer", "Swim Party" and "My Swimmin' Girl" (the last a collaboration with Jan Berry and Roger Christian). These songs were exactly as good as they needed to be, in order to provide album filler for mid-tier artists, and while Sloan and Barri weren't writing any massive hits, they were doing very well as mid-tier writers. According to Sloan's biographer Stephen McParland, there was a three-year period in the mid-sixties where at least one song written or co-written by Sloan was on the national charts at any given time. Most of these songs weren't for Columbia-Screen Gems though. In early 1964 Lou Adler had a falling out with Don Kirshner, and decided to start up his own company, Dunhill, which was equal parts production company, music publishers, and management -- doing for West Coast pop singers what Motown was doing for Detroit soul singers, and putting everything into one basket. Dunhill's early clients included Jan and Dean and the rockabilly singer Johnny Rivers, and Dunhill also signed Sloan and Barri as songwriters. Because of this connection, Sloan and Barri soon became an important part of Jan and Dean's hit-making process. The Matadors, the vocal group that had provided most of the backing vocals on the duo's hits, had started asking for more money than Jan Berry was willing to pay, and Jan and Dean couldn't do the vocals themselves -- as Bones Howe put it "As a singer, Dean is a wonderful graphic artist" -- and so Sloan and Barri stepped in, doing session vocals without payment in the hope that Jan and Dean would record a few of their songs. For example, on the big hit "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena", Dean Torrence is not present at all on the record -- Jan Berry sings the lead vocal, with Sloan doubling him for much of it, Sloan sings "Dean"'s falsetto, with the engineer Bones Howe helping out, and the rest of the backing vocals are sung by Sloan, Barri, and Howe: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena"] For these recordings, Sloan and Barri were known as The Fantastic Baggys, a name which came from the Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Oldham and Mick Jagger, when the two were visiting California. Oldham had been commenting on baggys, the kind of shorts worn by surfers, and had asked Jagger what he thought of The Baggys as a group name. Jagger had replied "Fantastic!" and so the Fantastic Baggys had been born. As part of this, Sloan and Barri moved hard into surf and hot-rod music from the dance songs they had been writing previously. The Fantastic Baggys recorded their own album, Tell 'Em I'm Surfin', as a quickie album suggested by Adler: [Excerpt: The Fantastic Baggys, "Tell 'Em I'm Surfin'"] And under the name The Rally Packs they recorded a version of Jan and Dean's "Move Out Little Mustang" which featured Berry's girlfriend Jill Gibson doing a spoken section: [Excerpt: The Rally Packs, "Move Out Little Mustang"] They also wrote several album tracks for Jan and Dean, and wrote "Summer Means Fun" for Bruce and Terry -- Bruce Johnston, later of the Beach Boys, and Terry Melcher: [Excerpt: Bruce and Terry, "Summer Means Fun"] And they wrote the very surf-flavoured "Secret Agent Man" for fellow Dunhill artist Johnny Rivers: [Excerpt: Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man"] But of course, when you're chasing trends, you're chasing trends, and soon the craze for twangy guitars and falsetto harmonies had ended, replaced by a craze for jangly twelve-string guitars and closer harmonies. According to Sloan, he was in at the very beginning of the folk-rock trend -- the way he told the story, he was involved in the mastering of the Byrds' version of "Mr. Tambourine Man". He later talked about Terry Melcher getting him to help out, saying "He had produced a record called 'Mr. Tambourine Man', and had sent it into the head office, and it had been rejected. He called me up and said 'I've got three more hours in the studio before I'm being kicked out of Columbia. Can you come over and help me with this new record?' I did. I went over there. It was under lock and key. There were two guards outside the door. Terry asked me something about 'Summer Means Fun'. "He said 'Do you remember the guitar that we worked on with that? How we put in that double reverb?' "And I said 'yes' "And he said 'What do you think if we did something like that with the Byrds?' "And I said 'That sounds good. Let's see what it sounds like.' So we patched into all the reverb centres in Columbia Music, and mastered the record in three hours." Whether Sloan really was there at the birth of folk rock, he and Barri jumped on the folk-rock craze just as they had the surf and hot-rod craze, and wrote a string of jangly hits including "You Baby" for the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Baby"] and "I Found a Girl" for Jan and Dean: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "I Found a Girl"] That song was later included on Jan and Dean's Folk 'n' Roll album, which also included... a song I'm not even going to name, but long-time listeners will know the one I mean. It was also notable in that "I Found a Girl" was the first song on which Sloan was credited not as Phil Sloan, but as P.F. Sloan -- he didn't have a middle name beginning with F, but rather the F stood for his nickname "Flip". Sloan would later talk of Phil Sloan and P.F. Sloan as almost being two different people, with P.F. being a far more serious, intense, songwriter. Folk 'n' Roll also contained another Sloan song, this one credited solely to Sloan. And that song is the one for which he became best known. There are two very different stories about how "Eve of Destruction" came to be written. To tell Sloan's version, I'm going to read a few paragraphs from his autobiography: "By late 1964, I had already written ‘Eve Of Destruction,' ‘The Sins Of A Family,' ‘This Mornin',' ‘Ain't No Way I'm Gonna Change My Mind,' and ‘What's Exactly The Matter With Me?' They all arrived on one cataclysmic evening, and nearly at the same time, as I worked on the lyrics almost simultaneously. ‘Eve Of Destruction' came about from hearing a voice, perhaps an angel's. The voice instructed me to place five pieces of paper and spread them out on my bed. I obeyed the voice. The voice told me that the first song would be called ‘Eve Of Destruction,' so I wrote the title at the top of the page. For the next few hours, the voice came and went as I was writing the lyric, as if this spirit—or whatever it was—stood over me like a teacher: ‘No, no … not think of all the hate there is in Red Russia … Red China!' I didn't understand. I thought the Soviet Union was the mortal threat to America, but the voice went on to reveal to me the future of the world until 2024. I was told the Soviet Union would fall, and that Red China would continue to be communist far into the future, but that communism was not going to be allowed to take over this Divine Planet—therefore, think of all the hate there is in Red China. I argued and wrestled with the voice for hours, until I was exhausted but satisfied inside with my plea to God to either take me out of the world, as I could not live in such a hypocritical society, or to show me a way to make things better. When I was writing ‘Eve,' I was on my hands and knees, pleading for an answer." Lou Adler's story is that he gave Phil Sloan a copy of Bob Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home album and told him to write a bunch of songs that sounded like that, and Sloan came back a week later as instructed with ten Dylan knock-offs. Adler said "It was a natural feel for him. He's a great mimic." As one other data point, both Steve Barri and Bones Howe, the engineer who worked on most of the sessions we're looking at today, have often talked in interviews about "Eve of Destruction" as being a Sloan/Barri collaboration, as if to them it's common knowledge that it wasn't written alone, although Sloan's is the only name on the credits. The song was given to a new signing to Dunhill Records, Barry McGuire. McGuire was someone who had been part of the folk scene for years, He'd been playing folk clubs in LA while also acting in a TV show from 1961. When the TV show had finished, he'd formed a duo, Barry and Barry, with Barry Kane, and they performed much the same repertoire as all the other early-sixties folkies: [Excerpt: Barry and Barry, "If I Had a Hammer"] After recording their one album, both Barrys joined the New Christy Minstrels. We've talked about the Christys before, but they were -- and are to this day -- an ultra-commercial folk group, led by Randy Sparks, with a revolving membership of usually eight or nine singers which included several other people who've come up in this podcast, like Gene Clark and Jerry Yester. McGuire became one of the principal lead singers of the Christys, singing lead on their version of the novelty cowboy song "Three Wheels on My Wagon", which was later released as a single in the UK and became a perennial children's favourite (though it has a problematic attitude towards Native Americans): [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Three Wheels on My Wagon"] And he also sang lead on their big hit "Green Green", which he co-wrote with Randy Sparks: [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Green Green"] But by 1965 McGuire had left the New Christy Minstrels. As he said later "I'd sung 'Green Green' a thousand times and I didn't want to sing it again. This is January of 1965. I went back to LA to meet some producers, and I was broke. Nobody had the time of day for me. I was walking down street one time to see Dr. Strangelove and I walked by the music store, and I heard "Green Green" comin' out of the store, ya know, on Hollywood Boulevard. And I heard my voice, and I thought, 'I got four dollars in my pocket!' I couldn't believe it, my voice is comin' out on Hollywood Boulevard, and I'm broke. And right at that moment, a car pulls up, and the radio is playing 'Chim Chim Cherie" also by the Minstrels. So I got my voice comin' at me in stereo, standin' on the sidewalk there, and I'm broke, and I can't get anyone to sign me!" But McGuire had a lot of friends who he'd met on the folk scene, some of whom were now in the new folk-rock scene that was just starting to spring up. One of them was Roger McGuinn, who told him that his band, the Byrds, were just about to put out a new single, "Mr. Tambourine Man", and that they were about to start a residency at Ciro's on Sunset Strip. McGuinn invited McGuire to the opening night of that residency, where a lot of other people from the scene were there to see the new group. Bob Dylan was there, as was Phil Sloan, and the actor Jack Nicholson, who was still at the time a minor bit-part player in low-budget films made by people like American International Pictures (the cinematographer on many of Nicholson's early films was Floyd Crosby, David Crosby's father, which may be why he was there). Someone else who was there was Lou Adler, who according to McGuire recognised him instantly. According to Adler, he actually asked Terry Melcher who the long-haired dancer wearing furs was, because "he looked like the leader of a movement", and Melcher told him that he was the former lead singer of the New Christy Minstrels. Either way, Adler approached McGuire and asked if he was currently signed -- Dunhill Records was just starting up, and getting someone like McGuire, who had a proven ability to sing lead on hit records, would be a good start for the label. As McGuire didn't have a contract, he was signed to Dunhill, and he was given some of Sloan's new songs to pick from, and chose "What's Exactly the Matter With Me?" as his single: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "What's Exactly the Matter With Me?"] McGuire described what happened next: "It was like, a three-hour session. We did two songs, and then the third one wasn't turning out. We only had about a half hour left in the session, so I said 'Let's do this tune', and I pulled 'Eve of Destruction' out of my pocket, and it just had Phil's words scrawled on a piece of paper, all wrinkled up. Phil worked the chords out with the musicians, who were Hal Blaine on drums and Larry Knechtel on bass." There were actually more musicians than that at the session -- apparently both Knechtel and Joe Osborn were there, so I'm not entirely sure who's playing bass -- Knechtel was a keyboard player as well as a bass player, but I don't hear any keyboards on the track. And Tommy Tedesco was playing lead guitar, and Steve Barri added percussion, along with Sloan on rhythm guitar and harmonica. The chords were apparently scribbled down for the musicians on bits of greasy paper that had been used to wrap some takeaway chicken, and they got through the track in a single take. According to McGuire "I'm reading the words off this piece of wrinkled paper, and I'm singing 'My blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'", that part that goes 'Ahhh you can't twist the truth', and the reason I'm going 'Ahhh' is because I lost my place on the page. People said 'Man, you really sounded frustrated when you were singing.' I was. I couldn't see the words!" [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction"] With a few overdubs -- the female backing singers in the chorus, and possibly the kettledrums, which I've seen differing claims about, with some saying that Hal Blaine played them during the basic track and others saying that Lou Adler suggested them as an overdub, the track was complete. McGuire wasn't happy with his vocal, and a session was scheduled for him to redo it, but then a record promoter working with Adler was DJing a birthday party for the head of programming at KFWB, the big top forty radio station in LA at the time, and he played a few acetates he'd picked up from Adler. Most went down OK with the crowd, but when he played "Eve of Destruction", the crowd went wild and insisted he play it three times in a row. The head of programming called Adler up and told him that "Eve of Destruction" was going to be put into rotation on the station from Monday, so he'd better get the record out. As McGuire was away for the weekend, Adler just released the track as it was, and what had been intended to be a B-side became Barry McGuire's first and only number one record: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction"] Sloan would later claim that that song was a major reason why the twenty-sixth amendment to the US Constitution was passed six years later, because the line "you're old enough to kill but not for votin'" shamed Congress into changing the constitution to allow eighteen-year-olds to vote. If so, that would make "Eve of Destruction" arguably the single most impactful rock record in history, though Sloan is the only person I've ever seen saying that As well as going to number one in McGuire's version, the song was also covered by the other artists who regularly performed Sloan and Barri songs, like the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Eve of Destruction"] And Jan and Dean, whose version on Folk & Roll used the same backing track as McGuire, but had a few lyrical changes to make it fit with Jan Berry's right-wing politics, most notably changing "Selma, Alabama" to "Watts, California", thus changing a reference to peaceful civil rights protestors being brutally attacked and murdered by white supremacist state troopers to a reference to what was seen, in the popular imaginary, as Black people rioting for no reason: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Eve of Destruction"] According to Sloan, he worked on the Folk & Roll album as a favour to Berry, even though he thought Berry was being cynical and exploitative in making the record, but those changes caused a rift in their friendship. Sloan said in his autobiography "Where I was completely wrong was in helping him capitalize on something in which he didn't believe. Jan wanted the public to perceive him as a person who was deeply concerned and who embraced the values of the progressive politics of the day. But he wasn't that person. That's how I was being pulled. It was when he recorded my actual song ‘Eve Of Destruction' and changed a number of lines to reflect his own ideals that my principles demanded that I leave Folk City and never return." It's true that Sloan gave no more songs to Jan and Dean after that point -- but it's also true that the duo would record only one more album, the comedy concept album Jan and Dean Meet Batman, before Jan's accident. Incidentally, the reference to Selma, Alabama in the lyric might help people decide on which story about the writing of "Eve of Destruction" they think is more plausible. Remember that Lou Adler said that it was written after Adler gave Sloan a copy of Bringing it All Back Home and told him to write a bunch of knock-offs, while Sloan said it was written after a supernatural force gave him access to all the events that would happen in the world for the next sixty years. Sloan claimed the song was written in late 1964. Selma, Alabama, became national news in late February and early March 1965. Bringing it All Back Home was released in late March 1965. So either Adler was telling the truth, or Sloan really *was* given a supernatural insight into the events of the future. Now, as it turned out, while "Eve of Destruction" went to number one, that would be McGuire's only hit as a solo artist. His next couple of singles would reach the very low end of the Hot One Hundred, and that would be it -- he'd release several more albums, before appearing in the Broadway musical Hair, most famous for its nude scenes, and getting a small part in the cinematic masterpiece Werewolves on Wheels: [Excerpt: Werewolves on Wheels trailer] P.F. Sloan would later tell various stories about why McGuire never had another hit. Sometimes he would say that Dunhill Records had received death threats because of "Eve of Destruction" and so deliberately tried to bury McGuire's career, other times he would say that Lou Adler had told him that Billboard had said they were never going to put McGuire's records on the charts no matter how well they sold, because "Eve of Destruction" had just been too powerful and upset the advertisers. But of course at this time Dunhill were still trying for a follow-up to "Eve of Destruction", and they thought they might have one when Barry McGuire brought in a few friends of his to sing backing vocals on his second album. Now, we've covered some of the history of the Mamas and the Papas already, because they were intimately tied up with other groups like the Byrds and the Lovin' Spoonful, and with the folk scene that led to songs like "Hey Joe", so some of this will be more like a recap than a totally new story, but I'm going to recap those parts of the story anyway, so it's fresh in everyone's heads. John Phillips, Scott McKenzie, and Cass Elliot all grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, just a few miles south of Washington DC. Elliot was a few years younger than Phillips and McKenzie, and so as is the way with young men they never really noticed her, and as McKenzie later said "She lived like a quarter of a mile from me and I never met her until New York". While they didn't know who Elliot was, though, she was aware who they were, as Phillips and McKenzie sang together in a vocal group called The Smoothies. The Smoothies were a modern jazz harmony group, influenced by groups like the Modernaires, the Hi-Los, and the Four Freshmen. John Phillips later said "We were drawn to jazz, because we were sort of beatniks, really, rather than hippies, or whatever, flower children. So we used to sing modern harmonies, like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Dave Lambert did a lot of our arrangements for us as a matter of fact." Now, I've not seen any evidence other than Phillips' claim that Dave Lambert ever arranged for the Smoothies, but that does tell you a lot about the kind of music that they were doing. Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross were a vocalese trio whose main star was Annie Ross, who had a career worthy of an episode in itself -- she sang with Paul Whiteman, appeared in a Little Rascals film when she was seven, had an affair with Lenny Bruce, dubbed Britt Ekland's voice in The Wicker Man, played the villain's sister in Superman III, and much more. Vocalese, you'll remember, was a style of jazz vocal where a singer would take a jazz instrumental, often an improvised one, and add lyrics which they would sing, like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross' version of "Cloudburst": [Excerpt: Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, "Cloudburst"] Whether Dave Lambert ever really did arrange for the Smoothies or not, it's very clear that the trio had a huge influence on John Phillips' ideas about vocal arrangement, as you can hear on Mamas and Papas records like "Once Was a Time I Thought": [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Once Was a Time I Thought"] While the Smoothies thought of themselves as a jazz group, when they signed to Decca they started out making the standard teen pop of the era, with songs like "Softly": [Excerpt, The Smoothies, "Softly"] When the folk boom started, Phillips realised that this was music that he could do easily, because the level of musicianship among the pop-folk musicians was so much lower than in the jazz world. The Smoothies made some recordings in the style of the Kingston Trio, like "Ride Ride Ride": [Excerpt: The Smoothies, "Ride Ride Ride"] Then when the Smoothies split, Phillips and McKenzie formed a trio with a banjo player, Dick Weissman, who they met through Izzy Young's Folklore Centre in Greenwich Village after Phillips asked Young to name some musicians who could make a folk record with him. Weissman was often considered the best banjo player on the scene, and was a friend of Pete Seeger's, to whom Seeger sometimes turned for banjo tips. The trio, who called themselves the Journeymen, quickly established themselves on the folk scene. Weissman later said "we had this interesting balance. John had all of this charisma -- they didn't know about the writing thing yet -- John had the personality, Scott had the voice, and I could play. If you think about it, all of those bands like the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, nobody could really *sing* and nobody could really *play*, relatively speaking." This is the take that most people seemed to have about John Phillips, in any band he was ever in. Nobody thought he was a particularly good singer or instrumentalist -- he could sing on key and play adequate rhythm guitar, but nobody would actually pay money to listen to him do those things. Mark Volman of the Turtles, for example, said of him "John wasn't the kind of guy who was going to be able to go up on stage and sing his songs as a singer-songwriter. He had to put himself in the context of a group." But he was charismatic, he had presence, and he also had a great musical mind. He would surround himself with the best players and best singers he could, and then he would organise and arrange them in ways that made the most of their talents. He would work out the arrangements, in a manner that was far more professional than the quick head arrangements that other folk groups used, and he instigated a level of professionalism in his groups that was not at all common on the scene. Phillips' friend Jim Mason talked about the first time he saw the Journeymen -- "They were warming up backstage, and John had all of them doing vocal exercises; one thing in particular that's pretty famous called 'Seiber Syllables' -- it's a series of vocal exercises where you enunciate different vowel and consonant sounds. It had the effect of clearing your head, and it's something that really good operetta singers do." The group were soon signed by Frank Werber, the manager of the Kingston Trio, who signed them as an insurance policy. Dave Guard, the Kingston Trio's banjo player, was increasingly having trouble with the other members, and Werber knew it was only a matter of time before he left the group. Werber wanted the Journeymen as a sort of farm team -- he had the idea that when Guard left, Phillips would join the Kingston Trio in his place as the third singer. Weissman would become the Trio's accompanist on banjo, and Scott McKenzie, who everyone agreed had a remarkable voice, would be spun off as a solo artist. But until that happened, they might as well make records by themselves. The Journeymen signed to MGM records, but were dropped before they recorded anything. They instead signed to Capitol, for whom they recorded their first album: [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "500 Miles"] After recording that album, the Journeymen moved out to California, with Phillips' wife and children. But soon Phillips' marriage was to collapse, as he met and fell in love with Michelle Gilliam. Gilliam was nine years younger than him -- he was twenty-six and she was seventeen -- and she had the kind of appearance which meant that in every interview with an older heterosexual man who knew her, that man will spend half the interview talking about how attractive he found her. Phillips soon left his wife and children, but before he did, the group had a turntable hit with "River Come Down", the B-side to "500 Miles": [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "River Come Down"] Around the same time, Dave Guard *did* leave the Kingston Trio, but the plan to split the Journeymen never happened. Instead Phillips' friend John Stewart replaced Guard -- and this soon became a new source of income for Phillips. Both Phillips and Stewart were aspiring songwriters, and they collaborated together on several songs for the Trio, including "Chilly Winds": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Chilly Winds"] Phillips became particularly good at writing songs that sounded like they could be old traditional folk songs, sometimes taking odd lines from older songs to jump-start new ones, as in "Oh Miss Mary", which he and Stewart wrote after hearing someone sing the first line of a song she couldn't remember the rest of: [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Oh Miss Mary"] Phillips and Stewart became so close that Phillips actually suggested to Stewart that he quit the Kingston Trio and replace Dick Weissman in the Journeymen. Stewart did quit the Trio -- but then the next day Phillips suggested that maybe it was a bad idea and he should stay where he was. Stewart went back to the Trio, claimed he had only pretended to quit because he wanted a pay-rise, and got his raise, so everyone ended up happy. The Journeymen moved back to New York with Michelle in place of Phillips' first wife (and Michelle's sister Russell also coming along, as she was dating Scott McKenzie) and on New Year's Eve 1962 John and Michelle married -- so from this point on I will refer to them by their first names, because they both had the surname Phillips. The group continued having success through 1963, including making appearances on "Hootenanny": [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "Stack O'Lee (live on Hootenanny)"] By the time of the Journeymen's third album, though, John and Scott McKenzie were on bad terms. Weissman said "They had been the closest of friends and now they were the worst of enemies. They talked through me like I was a medium. It got to the point where we'd be standing in the dressing room and John would say to me 'Tell Scott that his right sock doesn't match his left sock...' Things like that, when they were standing five feet away from each other." Eventually, the group split up. Weissman was always going to be able to find employment given his banjo ability, and he was about to get married and didn't need the hassle of dealing with the other two. McKenzie was planning on a solo career -- everyone was agreed that he had the vocal ability. But John was another matter. He needed to be in a group. And not only that, the Journeymen had bookings they needed to complete. He quickly pulled together a group he called the New Journeymen. The core of the lineup was himself, Michelle on vocals, and banjo player Marshall Brickman. Brickman had previously been a member of a folk group called the Tarriers, who had had a revolving lineup, and had played on most of their early-sixties recordings: [Excerpt: The Tarriers, "Quinto (My Little Pony)"] We've met the Tarriers before in the podcast -- they had been formed by Erik Darling, who later replaced Pete Seeger in the Weavers after Seeger's socialist principles wouldn't let him do advertising, and Alan Arkin, later to go on to be a film star, and had had hits with "Cindy, O Cindy", with lead vocals from Vince Martin, who would later go on to be a major performer in the Greenwich Village scene, and with "The Banana Boat Song". By the time Brickman had joined, though, Darling, Arkin, and Martin had all left the group to go on to bigger things, and while he played with them for several years, it was after their commercial peak. Brickman would, though, also go on to a surprising amount of success, but as a writer rather than a musician -- he had a successful collaboration with Woody Allen in the 1970s, co-writing four of Allen's most highly regarded films -- Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Manhattan Murder Mystery -- and with another collaborator he later co-wrote the books for the stage musicals Jersey Boys and The Addams Family. Both John and Michelle were decent singers, and both have their admirers as vocalists -- P.F. Sloan always said that Michelle was the best singer in the group they eventually formed, and that it was her voice that gave the group its sound -- but for the most part they were not considered as particularly astonishing lead vocalists. Certainly, neither had a voice that stood out the way that Scott McKenzie's had. They needed a strong lead singer, and they found one in Denny Doherty. Now, we covered Denny Doherty's early career in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful, because he was intimately involved in the formation of that group, so I won't go into too much detail here, but I'll give a very abbreviated version of what I said there. Doherty was a Canadian performer who had been a member of the Halifax Three with Zal Yanovsky: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Land"] After the Halifax Three had split up, Doherty and Yanovsky had performed as a duo for a while, before joining up with Cass Elliot and her husband Jim Hendricks, who both had previously been in the Big Three with Tim Rose: [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] Elliot, Hendricks, Yanovsky, and Doherty had formed The Mugwumps, sometimes joined by John Sebastian, and had tried to go in more of a rock direction after seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. They recorded one album together before splitting up: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] Part of the reason they split up was that interpersonal relationships within the group were put under some strain -- Elliot and Hendricks split up, though they would remain friends and remain married for several years even though they were living apart, and Elliot had an unrequited crush on Doherty. But since they'd split up, and Yanovsky and Sebastian had gone off to form the Lovin' Spoonful, that meant that Doherty was free, and he was regarded as possibly the best male lead vocalist on the circuit, so the group snapped him up. The only problem was that the Journeymen still had gigs booked that needed to be played, one of them was in just three days, and Doherty didn't know the repertoire. This was a problem with an easy solution for people in their twenties though -- they took a huge amount of amphetamines, and stayed awake for three days straight rehearsing. They made the gig, and Doherty was now the lead singer of the New Journeymen: [Excerpt: The New Journeymen, "The Last Thing on My Mind"] But the New Journeymen didn't last in that form for very long, because even before joining the group, Denny Doherty had been going in a more folk-rock direction with the Mugwumps. At the time, John Phillips thought rock and roll was kids' music, and he was far more interested in folk and jazz, but he was also very interested in making money, and he soon decided it was an idea to start listening to the Beatles. There's some dispute as to who first played the Beatles for John in early 1965 -- some claim it was Doherty, others claim it was Cass Elliot, but everyone agrees it was after Denny Doherty had introduced Phillips to something else -- he brought round some LSD for John and Michelle, and Michelle's sister Rusty, to try. And then he told them he'd invited round a friend. Michelle Phillips later remembered, "I remember saying to the guys "I don't know about you guys, but this drug does nothing for me." At that point there was a knock on the door, and as I opened the door and saw Cass, the acid hit me *over the head*. I saw her standing there in a pleated skirt, a pink Angora sweater with great big eyelashes on and her hair in a flip. And all of a sudden I thought 'This is really *quite* a drug!' It was an image I will have securely fixed in my brain for the rest of my life. I said 'Hi, I'm Michelle. We just took some LSD-25, do you wanna join us?' And she said 'Sure...'" Rusty Gilliam's description matches this -- "It was mind-boggling. She had on a white pleated skirt, false eyelashes. These were the kind of eyelashes that when you put them on you were supposed to trim them to an appropriate length, which she didn't, and when she blinked she looked like a cow, or those dolls you get when you're little and the eyes open and close. And we're on acid. Oh my God! It was a sight! And everything she was wearing were things that you weren't supposed to be wearing if you were heavy -- white pleated skirt, mohair sweater. You know, until she became famous, she suffered so much, and was poked fun at." This gets to an important point about Elliot, and one which sadly affected everything about her life. Elliot was *very* fat -- I've seen her weight listed at about three hundred pounds, and she was only five foot five tall -- and she also didn't have the kind of face that gets thought of as conventionally attractive. Her appearance would be cruelly mocked by pretty much everyone for the rest of her life, in ways that it's genuinely hurtful to read about, and which I will avoid discussing in detail in order to avoid hurting fat listeners. But the two *other* things that defined Elliot in the minds of those who knew her were her voice -- every single person who knew her talks about what a wonderful singer she was -- and her personality. I've read a lot of things about Cass Elliot, and I have never read a single negative word about her as a person, but have read many people going into raptures about what a charming, loving, friendly, understanding person she was. Michelle later said of her "From the time I left Los Angeles, I hadn't had a friend, a buddy. I was married, and John and I did not hang out with women, we just hung out with men, and especially not with women my age. John was nine years older than I was. And here was a fun-loving, intelligent woman. She captivated me. I was as close to in love with Cass as I could be to any woman in my life at that point. She also represented something to me: freedom. Everything she did was because she wanted to do it. She was completely independent and I admired her and was in awe of her. And later on, Cass would be the one to tell me not to let John run my life. And John hated her for that." Either Elliot had brought round Meet The Beatles, the Beatles' first Capitol album, for everyone to listen to, or Denny Doherty already had it, but either way Elliot and Doherty were by this time already Beatles fans. Michelle, being younger than the rest and not part of the folk scene until she met John, was much more interested in rock and roll than any of them, but because she'd been married to John for a couple of years and been part of his musical world she hadn't really encountered the Beatles music, though she had a vague memory that she might have heard a track or two on the radio. John was hesitant -- he didn't want to listen to any rock and roll, but eventually he was persuaded, and the record was put on while he was on his first acid trip: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand"] Within a month, John Phillips had written thirty songs that he thought of as inspired by the Beatles. The New Journeymen were going to go rock and roll. By this time Marshall Brickman was out of the band, and instead John, Michelle, and Denny recruited a new lead guitarist, Eric Hord. Denny started playing bass, with John on rhythm guitar, and a violinist friend of theirs, Peter Pilafian, knew a bit of drums and took on that role. The new lineup of the group used the Journeymen's credit card, which hadn't been stopped even though the Journeymen were no more, to go down to St. Thomas in the Caribbean, along with Michelle's sister, John's daughter Mackenzie (from whose name Scott McKenzie had taken his stage name, as he was born Philip Blondheim), a pet dog, and sundry band members' girlfriends. They stayed there for several months, living in tents on the beach, taking acid, and rehearsing. While they were there, Michelle and Denny started an affair which would have important ramifications for the group later. They got a gig playing at a club called Duffy's, whose address was on Creeque Alley, and soon after they started playing there Cass Elliot travelled down as well -- she was in love with Denny, and wanted to be around him. She wasn't in the group, but she got a job working at Duffy's as a waitress, and she would often sing harmony with the group while waiting at tables. Depending on who was telling the story, either she didn't want to be in the group because she didn't want her appearance to be compared to Michelle's, or John wouldn't *let* her be in the group because she was so fat. Later a story would be made up to cover for this, saying that she hadn't been in the group at first because she couldn't sing the highest notes that were needed, until she got hit on the head with a metal pipe and discovered that it had increased her range by three notes, but that seems to be a lie. One of the songs the New Journeymen were performing at this time was "Mr. Tambourine Man". They'd heard that their old friend Roger McGuinn had recorded it with his new band, but they hadn't yet heard his version, and they'd come up with their own arrangement: [Excerpt: The New Journeymen, "Mr. Tambourine Man"] Denny later said "We were doing three-part harmony on 'Mr Tambourine Man', but a lot slower... like a polka or something! And I tell John, 'No John, we gotta slow it down and give it a backbeat.' Finally we get the Byrds 45 down here, and we put it on and turn it up to ten, and John says 'Oh, like that?' Well, as you can tell, it had already been done. So John goes 'Oh, ah... that's it...' a light went on. So we started doing Beatles stuff. We dropped 'Mr Tambourine Man' after hearing the Byrds version, because there was no point." Eventually they had to leave the island -- they had completely run out of money, and were down to fifty dollars. The credit card had been cut up, and the governor of the island had a personal vendetta against them because they gave his son acid, and they were likely to get arrested if they didn't leave the island. Elliot and her then-partner had round-trip tickets, so they just left, but the rest of them were in trouble. By this point they were unwashed, they were homeless, and they'd spent their last money on stage costumes. They got to the airport, and John Phillips tried to write a cheque for eight air fares back to the mainland, which the person at the check-in desk just laughed at. So they took their last fifty dollars and went to a casino. There Michelle played craps, and she rolled seventeen straight passes, something which should be statistically impossible. She turned their fifty dollars into six thousand dollars, which they scooped up, took to the airport, and paid for their flights out in cash. The New Journeymen arrived back in New York, but quickly decided that they were going to try their luck in California. They rented a car, using Scott McKenzie's credit card, and drove out to LA. There they met up with Hoyt Axton, who you may remember as the son of Mae Axton, the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel", and as the performer who had inspired Michael Nesmith to go into folk music: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] Axton knew the group, and fed them and put them up for a night, but they needed somewhere else to stay. They went to stay with one of Michelle's friends, but after one night their rented car was stolen, with all their possessions in it. They needed somewhere else to stay, so they went to ask Jim Hendricks if they could crash at his place -- and they were surprised to find that Cass Elliot was there already. Hendricks had another partner -- though he and Elliot wouldn't have their marriage annulled until 1968 and were still technically married -- but he'd happily invited her to stay with them. And now all her friends had turned up, he invited them to stay as well, taking apart the beds in his one-bedroom apartment so he could put down a load of mattresses in the space for everyone to sleep on. The next part becomes difficult, because pretty much everyone in the LA music scene of the sixties was a liar who liked to embellish their own roles in things, so it's quite difficult to unpick what actually happened. What seems to have happened though is that first this new rock-oriented version of the New Journeymen went to see Frank Werber, on the recommendation of John Stewart. Werber was the manager of the Kingston Trio, and had also managed the Journeymen. He, however, was not interested -- not because he didn't think they had talent, but because he had experience of working with John Phillips previously. When Phillips came into his office Werber picked up a tape that he'd been given of the group, and said "I have not had a chance to listen to this tape. I believe that you are a most talented individual, and that's why we took you on in the first place. But I also believe that you're also a drag to work with. A pain in the ass. So I'll tell you what, before whatever you have on here sways me, I'm gonna give it back to you and say that we're not interested." Meanwhile -- and this part of the story comes from Kim Fowley, who was never one to let the truth get in the way of him taking claim for everything, but parts of it at least are corroborated by other people -- Cass Elliot had called Fowley, and told him that her friends' new group sounded pretty good and he should sign them. Fowley was at that time working as a talent scout for a label, but according to him the label wouldn't give the group the money they wanted. So instead, Fowley got in touch with Nik Venet, who had just produced the Leaves' hit version of "Hey Joe" on Mira Records: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] Fowley suggested to Venet that Venet should sign the group to Mira Records, and Fowley would sign them to a publishing contract, and they could both get rich. The trio went to audition for Venet, and Elliot drove them over -- and Venet thought the group had a great look as a quartet. He wanted to sign them to a record contract, but only if Elliot was in the group as well. They agreed, he gave them a one hundred and fifty dollar advance, and told them to come back the next day to see his boss at Mira. But Barry McGuire was also hanging round with Elliot and Hendricks, and decided that he wanted to have Lou Adler hear the four of them. He thought they might be useful both as backing vocalists on his second album and as a source of new songs. He got them to go and see Lou Adler, and according to McGuire Phillips didn't want Elliot to go with them, but as Elliot was the one who was friends with McGuire, Phillips worried that they'd lose the chance with Adler if she didn't. Adler was amazed, and decided to sign the group right then and there -- both Bones Howe and P.F. Sloan claimed to have been there when the group auditioned for him and have said "if you won't sign them, I will", though exactly what Sloan would have signed them to I'm not sure. Adler paid them three thousand dollars in cash and told them not to bother with Nik Venet, so they just didn't turn up for the Mira Records audition the next day. Instead, they went into the studio with McGuire and cut backing vocals on about half of his new album: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire with the Mamas and the Papas, "Hide Your Love Away"] While the group were excellent vocalists, there were two main reasons that Adler wanted to sign them. The first was that he found Michelle Phillips extremely attractive, and the second is a song that John and Michelle had written which he thought might be very suitable for McGuire's album. Most people who knew John Phillips think of "California Dreamin'" as a solo composition, and he would later claim that he gave Michelle fifty percent just for transcribing his lyric, saying he got inspired in the middle of the night, woke her up, and got her to write the song down as he came up with it. But Michelle, who is a credited co-writer on the song, has been very insistent that she wrote the lyrics to the second verse, and that it's about her own real experiences, saying that she would often go into churches and light candles even though she was "at best an agnostic, and possibly an atheist" in her words, and this would annoy John, who had also been raised Catholic, but who had become aggressively opposed to expressions of religion, rather than still having nostalgia for the aesthetics of the church as Michelle did. They were out walking on a particularly cold winter's day in 1963, and Michelle wanted to go into St Patrick's Cathedral and John very much did not want to. A couple of nights later, John woke her up, having written the first verse of the song, starting "All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey/I went for a walk on a winter's day", and insisting she collaborate with him. She liked the song, and came up with the lines "Stopped into a church, I passed along the way/I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray/The preacher likes the cold, he knows I'm going to stay", which John would later apparently dislike, but which stayed in the song. Most sources I've seen for the recording of "California Dreamin'" say that the lineup of musicians was the standard set of players who had played on McGuire's other records, with the addition of John Phillips on twelve-string guitar -- P.F. Sloan on guitar and harmonica, Joe Osborn on bass, Larry Knechtel on keyboards, and Hal Blaine on drums, but for some reason Stephen McParland's book on Sloan has Bones Howe down as playing drums on the track while engineering -- a detail so weird, and from such a respectable researcher, that I have to wonder if it might be true. In his autobiography, Sloan claims to have rewritten the chord sequence to "California Dreamin'". He says "Barry Mann had unintentionally showed me a suspended chord back at Screen Gems. I was so impressed by this beautiful, simple chord that I called Brian Wilson and played it for him over the phone. The next thing I knew, Brian had written ‘Don't Worry Baby,' which had within it a number suspended chords. And then the chord heard 'round the world, two months later, was the opening suspended chord of ‘A Hard Day's Night.' I used these chords throughout ‘California Dreamin',' and more specifically as a bridge to get back and forth from the verse to the chorus." Now, nobody else corroborates this story, and both Brian Wilson and John Phillips had the kind of background in modern harmony that means they would have been very aware of suspended chords before either ever encountered Sloan, but I thought I should mention it. Rather more plausible is Sloan's other claim, that he came up with the intro to the song. According to Sloan, he was inspired by "Walk Don't Run" by the Ventures: [Excerpt: The Ventures, "Walk Don't Run"] And you can easily see how this: [plays "Walk Don't Run"] Can lead to this: [plays "California Dreamin'"] And I'm fairly certain that if that was the inspiration, it was Sloan who was the one who thought it up. John Phillips had been paying no attention to the world of surf music when "Walk Don't Run" had been a hit -- that had been at the point when he was very firmly in the folk world, while Sloan of course had been recording "Tell 'Em I'm Surfin'", and it had been his job to know surf music intimately. So Sloan's intro became the start of what was intended to be Barry McGuire's next single: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "California Dreamin'"] Sloan also provided the harmonica solo on the track: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "California Dreamin'"] The Mamas and the Papas -- the new name that was now given to the former New Journeymen, now they were a quartet -- were also signed to Dunhill as an act on their own, and recorded their own first single, "Go Where You Wanna Go", a song apparently written by John about Michelle, in late 1963, after she had briefly left him to have an affair with Russ Titelman, the record producer and songwriter, before coming back to him: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Go Where You Wanna Go"] But while that was put out, they quickly decided to scrap it and go with another song. The "Go Where You Wanna Go" single was pulled after only selling a handful of copies, though its commercial potential was later proved when in 1967 a new vocal group, the 5th Dimension, released a soundalike version as their second single. The track was produced by Lou Adler's client Johnny Rivers, and used the exact same musicians as the Mamas and the Papas version, with the exception of Phillips. It became their first hit, reaching number sixteen on the charts: [Excerpt: The 5th Dimension, "Go Where You Wanna Go"] The reason the Mamas and the Papas version of "Go Where You Wanna Go" was pulled was because everyone became convinced that their first single should instead be their own version of "California Dreamin'". This is the exact same track as McGuire's track, with just two changes. The first is that McGuire's lead vocal was replaced with Denny Doherty: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreamin'"] Though if you listen to the stereo mix of the song and isolate the left channel, you can hear McGuire singing the lead on the first line, and occasional leakage from him elsewhere on the backing vocal track: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreamin'"] The other change made was to replace Sloan's harmonica solo with an alto flute solo by Bud Shank, a jazz musician who we heard about in the episode on "Light My Fire", when he collaborated with Ravi Shankar on "Improvisations on the Theme From Pather Panchali": [Excerpt: Ravi Shankar, "Improvisation on the Theme From Pather Panchali"] Shank was working on another session in Western Studios, where they were recording the Mamas and Papas track, and Bones Howe approached him while he was packing his instrument and asked if he'd be interested in doing another session. Shank agreed, though the track caused problems for him. According to Shank "What had happened was that whe

Alex Battles - "Honky Tonk Radio Girl" - single [0:00:00] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Straight Shift" - single [0:02:49] Tabby West - "Hillbilly Blues" - single [0:04:39] The York Brothers - "Hamtramck Mama" - single [0:06:54] Jimmy Work - "Making Believe" - single [0:09:52] Loyd Weaver - "One Wheel Draggin'" - single [0:12:56] Porter Wagoner - "Let's Squiggle" - single [0:15:51] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Fluid Drive" - single [0:17:34] 5 Williamson Bros. - "I've Got A Bead On You Baby" - single [0:20:26] Tom James - "Track Down Baby" - AAAAHHHH ROCK-A-BILLY [0:22:50] Mac Curtis - "100 Pounds Of Honey" - single [0:25:30] Cliff Sullins - "Will You Be Waiting" - single [0:27:46] Charles Wilson - "Hey Baby" - single [0:29:18] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Straight Shift" - single [0:31:57] Mike Clark - "Green, Green Grass of Home" - single [0:35:19] Lee Kelly - "No Letter Today" - single [0:37:29] Don Bailey - "I'm Proud Of Me" - single [0:40:18] Perk Williams - "I'm That Fool" - single [0:42:51] Helen Long & The Longshots - "Leroy Brown" - The Ponderosa Hotel Presents Longshot Country [0:44:39] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Fluid Drive" - single [0:46:55] Bucky Allred - "Rx-All Ranger" - single [0:50:05] Hoyt Axton with the Chambers Brothers - "Thunder 'N Lightnin'" - single [0:52:52] Jim Taylor - "Unknown Sin" - single [0:54:52] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Fluid Drive" - single [0:57:38] https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/118806

Alex Battles - "Honky Tonk Radio Girl" - single [0:00:00] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Straight Shift" - single [0:02:49] Tabby West - "Hillbilly Blues" - single [0:04:39] The York Brothers - "Hamtramck Mama" - single [0:06:54] Jimmy Work - "Making Believe" - single [0:09:52] Loyd Weaver - "One Wheel Draggin'" - single [0:12:56] Porter Wagoner - "Let's Squiggle" - single [0:15:51] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Fluid Drive" - single [0:17:34] 5 Williamson Bros. - "I've Got A Bead On You Baby" - single [0:20:26] Tom James - "Track Down Baby" - AAAAHHHH ROCK-A-BILLY [0:22:50] Mac Curtis - "100 Pounds Of Honey" - single [0:25:30] Cliff Sullins - "Will You Be Waiting" - single [0:27:46] Charles Wilson - "Hey Baby" - single [0:29:18] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Straight Shift" - single [0:31:57] Mike Clark - "Green, Green Grass of Home" - single [0:35:19] Lee Kelly - "No Letter Today" - single [0:37:29] Don Bailey - "I'm Proud Of Me" - single [0:40:18] Perk Williams - "I'm That Fool" - single [0:42:51] Helen Long & The Longshots - "Leroy Brown" - The Ponderosa Hotel Presents Longshot Country [0:44:39] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Fluid Drive" - single [0:46:55] Bucky Allred - "Rx-All Ranger" - single [0:50:05] Hoyt Axton with the Chambers Brothers - "Thunder 'N Lightnin'" - single [0:52:52] Jim Taylor - "Unknown Sin" - single [0:54:52] Music behind DJ: Jimmy Collins with "Big" Jim De Noon - "Fluid Drive" - single [0:57:38] https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/118806

It's a Conspiracy! Season 4, Episode 16! Behind the Music with Jo Johnson - Five Musicians Who Disappeared, Love Roller Coaster Screams and Cathy Sundown Smith   Check out Jo's River Poets online   It's a Conspiracy! is proud to be a part of the Albert Podcast Network: AlbertaPodcastNetwork.com   Links: Five Musicians Who Disappeared 8 Famous Musicians Who Mysteriously Disappeared And Were Never Seen Again The 27 Club Wikipedia 'If You Tolerate This..." Manic Street Preachers The Incredible String Band - Empty Pocket Blues (Live 1970) Jim Sullivan 'U.F.O.', ''U.F.O.'' [1969] Glenn Miller - In The Mood [HQ] DY FT. DANNY FERNANDES - PASSENGER   Love Roller Coaster Screams THE OHIO PLAYERS' “LOVE ROLLERCOASTER” AND ITS NOTORIOUS MURDER MYTH Songfacts - Love Rollercoaster - The Ohio Players Honey (Ohio Players album) Wikipedia   Cathy Sundown Smith Flash Of Fire , Hoyt Axton , 1976 Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown The Weight - The Band Cathy Smith - Wikipedia Cathy Smith Dies: ‘Sundown' Muse Who Injected John Belushi With Fatal Drug Dose Was 73 Cathy Smith: “I Killed John Belushi”   What Are We Drinking? Andrew is drinking Village Blacksmith from Village Brewery Charlie is drinking Guinness Draught (and probably out of his It's a Conspiracy Mug that you can get at www.oldmandesign.com ) Jo is drinking Dark Rum from Romero Distilling Co.   --- Patreon / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook Merch available at OldManDesign.com Questions, comments, or feedback? Email the show at itsaconspiracy@protonmail.com

Episode 144 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Last Train to Clarksville" and the beginnings of the career of the Monkees, along with a short primer on the origins of the Vietnam War.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a seventeen-minute bonus episode available, on "These Boots Are Made For Walking" by Nancy Sinatra, which I mispronounce at the end of this episode as "These Boots Were Made For Walking", so no need to correct me here. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. The best versions of the Monkees albums are the triple-CD super-deluxe versions that used to be available from monkees.com , and I've used Andrew Sandoval's liner notes for them extensively in this episode. Sadly, though, the only one of those that is still in print is More of the Monkees. For those just getting into the group, my advice is to start with this five-CD set, which contains their first five albums along with bonus tracks. The single biggest source of information I used in this episode is the first edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees; The Day-By-Day Story. Sadly that is now out of print and goes for hundreds of pounds. Sandoval released a second edition of the book last year, which I was unfortunately unable to obtain, but that too is now out of print. If you can find a copy of either, do get one. Other sources used were Monkee Business by Eric Lefcowitz, and the autobiographies of three of the band members and one of the songwriters -- Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, They Made a Monkee Out of Me by Davy Jones, I'm a Believer by Micky Dolenz, and Psychedelic Bubble-Gum by Bobby Hart. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript We've obviously talked in this podcast about several of the biggest hits of 1966 already, but we haven't mentioned the biggest hit of the year, one of the strangest records ever to make number one in the US -- "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Sgt Barry Sadler: [Excerpt: Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Berets"] Barry Sadler was an altogether odd man, and just as a brief warning his story, which will last a minute or so, involves gun violence. At the time he wrote and recorded that song, he was on active duty in the military -- he was a combat medic who'd been fighting in the Vietnam War when he'd got a wound that had meant he had to be shipped back to the USA, and while at Fort Bragg he decided to write and record a song about his experiences, with the help of Robin Moore, a right-wing author of military books, both fiction and nonfiction, who wrote the books on which the films The Green Berets and The French Connection were based. Sadler's record became one of those massive fluke hits, selling over nine million copies and getting him appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, but other than one top thirty hit, he never had another hit single. Instead, he tried and failed to have a TV career, then became a writer of pulp fiction himself, writing a series of twenty-one novels about the centurion who thrust his spear into Jesus' side when Jesus was being crucified, and is thus cursed to be a soldier until the second coming. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived until he shot Lee Emerson, a country songwriter who had written songs for Marty Robbins, in the head, killing him, in an argument over a woman. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail for this misdemeanour, of which he served twenty-eight. Later he moved to Guatemala City, where he was himself shot in the head. The nearest Army base to Nashville, where Sadler lived after his discharge, is Fort Campbell, in Clarksville: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] The Vietnam War was a long and complicated war, one which affected nearly everything we're going to see in the next year or so of this podcast, and we're going to talk about it a lot, so it's worth giving a little bit of background here. In doing so, I'm going to use quite a flippant tone, but I want to make it clear that I'm not mocking the very real horrors that people suffered in the wars I'm talking about -- it's just that to sum up multiple decades of unimaginable horrors in a few sentences requires glossing over so much that you have to either laugh or cry. The origin of the Vietnam War, as in so many things in twentieth century history, can be found in European colonialism. France had invaded much of Southeast Asia in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and created a territory known as French Indo-China, which became part of the French colonial Empire. But in 1940 France was taken over by Germany, and Japan was at war with China. Germany and Japan were allies, and the Japanese were worried that French Indo-China would be used to import fuel and arms to China -- plus, they quite fancied the idea of having a Japanese empire. So Vichy France let Japan take control of French Indo-China. But of course the *reason* that France had been taken over by Germany was that pretty much the whole world was at war in 1940, and obviously the countries that were fighting Germany and Japan -- the bloc led by Britain, soon to be joined by America and Russia -- weren't very keen on the idea of Japan getting more territory. But they were also busy with the whole "fighting a world war" thing, so they did what governments in this situation always do -- they funded local guerilla insurgent fighters on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is my friend", something that has luckily never had any negative consequences whatsoever, except for occasionally. Those local guerilla fighters were an anti-imperialist popular front, the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh, a revolutionary Communist. They were dedicated to overthrowing foreign imperialist occupiers and gaining independence for Vietnam, and Hồ Chí Minh further wanted to establish a Soviet-style Communist government in the newly-independent country. The Allies funded the Việt Minh in their fight against the Japanese occupiers until the end of the Second World War, at which point France was liberated from German occupation, Vietnam was liberated from Japanese occupation, and the French basically said "Hooray! We get our Empire back!", to which Hồ Chí Minh's response was, more or less, "what part of anti-imperialist Marxist dedicated to overthrowing foreign occupation of Vietnam did you not understand, exactly?" Obviously, the French weren't best pleased with this, and so began what was the first of a series of wars in the region. The First Indochina War lasted for years and ended in a negotiated peace of a sort. Of course, this led to the favoured tactic of the time, partition -- splitting a formerly-occupied country into two, at an arbitrary dividing line, a tactic which was notably successful in securing peace everywhere it was tried. Apart from Ireland, India, Korea, and a few other places, but surely it wouldn't be a problem in Vietnam, right? North Vietnam was controlled by the Communists, led by Hồ Chí Minh, and recognised by China and the USSR but not by the Western states. South Vietnam was nominally independent but led by the former puppet emperor who owed his position to France, soon replaced by a right-wing dictatorship. And both the right-wing dictatorship and the left-wing dictatorship were soon busily oppressing their own citizens and funding military opposition groups in the other country. This soon escalated into full-blown war, with the North backed by China and Russia and the South backed by America. This was one of a whole series of wars in small countries which were really proxy wars between the two major powers, the USA and the USSR, both of which were vying for control, but which couldn't confront each other directly because either country had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world multiple times over. But the Vietnam War quickly became more than a small proxy war. The US started sending its own troops over, and more and more of them. The US had never ended the draft after World War II, and by the mid sixties significant numbers of young men were being called up and sent over to fight in a war that had by that point lasted a decade (depending on exactly when you count the war as starting from) between two countries they didn't care about, over things few of them understood, and at an exorbitant cost in lives. As you might imagine, this started to become unpopular among those likely to be drafted, and as the people most affected (other, of course, than the Vietnamese people, whose opinions on being bombed and shot at by foreigners supporting one of other of the dictators vying to rule over them nobody else was much interested in) were also of the generation who were the main audience for popular music, slowly this started to seep into the lyrics of songs -- a seepage which had already been prompted by the appearance in the folk and soul worlds of many songs against other horrors, like segregation. This started to hit the pop charts with songs like "The Universal Soldier" by Buffy Saint-Marie, which made the UK top five in a version by Donovan: [Excerpt: Donovan, "The Universal Soldier"] That charted in the lower regions of the US charts, and a cover version by Glen Campbell did slightly better: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "The Universal Soldier"] That was even though Campbell himself was a supporter of the war in Vietnam, and rather pro-military. Meanwhile, as we've seen a couple of times, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean recorded a pro-war answer song to that, "The Universal Coward": [Excerpt: Jan Berry, "The Universal Coward"] This, of course, was even though Berry was himself avoiding the draft. And I've not been able to find the credits for that track, but Glen Campbell regularly played guitar on Berry's sessions, so it's entirely possible that he played guitar on that record made by a coward, attacking his own record, which he disagreed with, for its cowardice. This is, of course, what happens when popular culture tries to engage with social and political issues -- pop culture is motivated by money, not ideological consistency, and so if there's money to be made from anti-war songs or from pro-war songs, someone will take that money. And so on October the ninth 1965, Billboard magazine ran a report: "Colpix Enters Protest Field HOLLYWOOD -Colpix has secured its first protest lyric disk, "The Willing Conscript,"as General Manager Bud Katzel initiates relationships with independent producers. The single features Lauren St. Davis. Katzel says the song was written during the Civil War, rewritten during World War I and most recently updated by Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe. Screen Gems Music, the company's publishing wing, is tracing the song's history, Katzel said. Katzel's second single is "(You Got the Gamma Goochee" by an artist with that unusual stage name. The record is a Screen Gems production and was in the house when Katzel arrived one month ago. The executive said he was expressly looking for material for two contract artists, David Jones and Hoyt Axton. The company is also working on getting Axton a role in a television series, "Camp Runamuck." " To unpack this a little, Colpix was a record label, owned by Columbia Pictures, and we talked about that a little bit in the episode on "The Loco-Motion" -- the film and TV companies were getting into music, and Columbia had recently bought up Don Kirshner's Aldon publishing and Dimension Records as part of their strategy of tying in music with their TV shows. This is a company trying desperately to jump on a bandwagon -- Colpix at this time was not exactly having huge amounts of success with its records. Hoyt Axton, meanwhile, was a successful country singer and songwriter. We met his mother many episodes back -- Mae Axton was the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel". Axton himself is now best known as the dad in the 80s film Gremlins. David Jones will be coming up shortly. Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe were record executives then at Kama Sutra records, but soon to move on -- we'll be hearing about Krasnow more in future episodes. Neither of them were songwriters, and while I have no real reason to disbelieve the claim that "The Willing Conscript" dates back to the Civil War, the earliest version *I* have been able to track down was its publication in issue 28 of Broadside Magazine in June 1963 -- nearly a hundred years after the American Civil War -- with the credit "by Tom Paxton" -- Paxton was a popular singer-songwriter of the time, and it certainly sounds like his writing. The first recording of it I know of was by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, "The Willing Conscript"] But the odd thing is that by the time this was printed, the single had already been released the previous month, and it was not released under the name Lauren St Davis, or under the title "The Willing Conscript" -- there are precisely two differences between the song copyrighted as by Krasnow and Ashe and the one copyrighted two years earlier as by Paxton. One is that verses three and four are swapped round, the other is that it's now titled "The New Recruit". And presumably because they realised that the pseudonym "Lauren St. Davis" was trying just a bit too hard to sound cool and drug culture, they reverted to another stage name the performer had been using, Michael Blessing: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "The New Recruit"] Blessing's name was actually Michael Nesmith, and before we go any further, yes his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, did invent the product that later became marketed in the US as Liquid Paper. At this time, though, that company wasn't anywhere near as successful as it later became, and was still a tiny company. I only mention it to forestall the ten thousand comments and tweets I would otherwise get asking why I didn't mention it. In Nesmith's autobiography, while he talks a lot about his mother, he barely mentions her business and says he was uninterested in it -- he talks far more about the love of art she instilled in him, as well as her interest in the deep questions of philosophy and religion, to which in her case and his they found answers in Christian Science, but both were interested in conversations about ideas, in a way that few other people in Nesmith's early environment were. Nesmith's mother was also responsible for his music career. He had spent two years in the Air Force in his late teens, and the year he got out, his mother and stepfather bought him a guitar for Christmas, after he was inspired by seeing Hoyt Axton performing live and thinking he could do that himself: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] As he put it in his autobiography, "What did it matter that I couldn't play the guitar, couldn't sing very well, and didn't know any folk songs? I would be going to college and hanging out at the student union with pretty girls and singing folk songs. They would like me. I might even figure out a way to get a cool car." This is, of course, the thought process that pretty much every young man to pick up a guitar goes through, but Nesmith was more dedicated than most. He gave his first performance as a folk singer ten days after he first got a guitar, after practising the few chords in most folk songs for twelve hours a day every day in that time. He soon started performing as a folk singer, performing around Dallas both on his own and with his friend John London, performing the standard folk repertoire of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly songs, things like "Pick a Bale of Cotton": [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "Pick a Bale of Cotton"] He also started writing his own songs, and put out a vanity record of one of them in 1963: [Excerpt: Mike Nesmith, "Wanderin'"] London moved to California, and Nesmith soon followed, with his first wife Phyllis and their son Christian. There Nesmith and London had the good fortune to be neighbours with someone who was a business associate of Frankie Laine, and they were signed to Laine's management company as a folk duo. However, Nesmith's real love was rock and roll, especially the heavier R&B end of the genre -- he was particularly inspired by Bo Diddley, and would always credit seeing Diddley live as a teenager as being his biggest musical influence. Soon Nesmith and London had formed a folk-rock trio with their friend Bill Sleeper. As Mike & John & Bill, they put out a single, "How Can You Kiss Me?", written by Nesmith: [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "How Can You Kiss Me?"] They also recorded more of Nesmith's songs, like "All the King's Horses": [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "All the King's Horses"] But that was left unreleased, as Bill was drafted, and Nesmith and London soon found themselves in The Survivors, one of several big folk groups run by Randy Sparks, the founder of the New Christie Minstrels. Nesmith was also writing songs throughout 1964 and 1965, and a few of those songs would be recorded by other people in 1966, like "Different Drum", which was recorded by the bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys: [Excerpt: The Greenbriar Boys, "Different Drum"] That would more successfully be recorded by the Stone Poneys later of course. And Nesmith's "Mary Mary" was also picked up by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Mary Mary"] But while Nesmith had written these songs by late 1965, he wasn't able to record them himself. He was signed by Bob Krasnow, who insisted he change his name to Michael Blessing, and recorded two singles for Colpix -- "The New Recruit", which we heard earlier, and a version of Buffy Saint-Marie's "Until It's Time For You To Go", sung in a high tenor range very far from Nesmith's normal singing voice: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Until It's Time For You To Go"] But to my mind by far the best thing Nesmith recorded in this period is the unissued third Michael Blessing single, where Nesmith seems to have been given a chance to make the record he really wanted to make. The B-side, a version of Allen Toussaint's swamp-rocker "Get Out of My Life, Woman", is merely a quite good version of the song, but the A-side, a version of his idol Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" is utterly extraordinary, and it's astonishing that it was never released at the time: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Who Do You Love?"] But the Michael Blessing records did no better than anything else Colpix were putting out. Indeed, the only record they got onto the hot one hundred at all in a three and a half year period was a single by one David Jones, which reached the heady heights of number ninety-eight: [Excerpt: David Jones, "What Are We Going to Do?"] Jones had been brought up in extreme poverty in Openshaw in Manchester, but had been encouraged by his mother, who died when he was fourteen, to go into acting. He'd had a few parts on local radio, and had appeared as a child actor on TV shows made in Manchester, like appearing in the long-running soap opera Coronation Street (still on today) as Ena Sharples' grandson Colin: [Excerpt: Coronation St https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FDEvOs1imc , 13:30] He also had small roles in Z-Cars and Bill Naughton's TV play "June Evening", and a larger role in Keith Waterhouse's radio play "There is a Happy Land". But when he left school, he decided he was going to become a jockey rather than an actor -- he was always athletic, he loved horses, and he was short -- I've seen his height variously cited as five foot three and five foot four. But it turned out that the owner of the stables in which he was training had showbusiness connections, and got him the audition that changed his life, for the part of the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's West End musical Oliver! We've encountered Lionel Bart before a couple of times, but if you don't remember him, he was the songwriter who co-wrote Tommy Steele's hits, and who wrote "Living Doll" for Cliff Richard. He also discovered both Steele and Marty Wilde, and was one of the major figures in early British rock and roll. But after the Tommy Steele records, he'd turned his attention to stage musicals, writing book, music, and lyrics for a string of hits, and more-or-less singlehandedly inventing the modern British stage musical form -- something Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, always credits him with. Oliver!, based on Oliver Twist, was his biggest success, and they were looking for a new Artful Dodger. This was *the* best role for a teenage boy in the UK at the time -- later performers to take the role on the London stage include Steve Marriott and Phil Collins, both of whom we'll no doubt encounter in future episodes -- and Jones got the job, although they were a bit worried at first about his Manchester vowels. He assured them though that he could learn to do a Cockney accent, and they took him on. Jones not having a natural Cockney accent ended up doing him the biggest favour of his career. While he could put on a relatively convincing one, he articulated quite carefully because it wasn't his natural accent. And so when the North American version found  in previews that their real Cockney Dodger wasn't being understood perfectly, the fake Cockney Jones was brought over to join the show on Broadway, and was there from opening night on. On February the ninth, 1964, Jones found himself, as part of the Broadway cast of Oliver!, on the Ed Sullivan Show: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Georgia Brown, "I'd Do Anything"] That same night, there were some other British people, who got a little bit more attention than Jones did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on Ed Sullivan)"] Davy Jones wasn't a particular fan of pop music at that point, but he knew he liked what he saw, and he wanted some of the same reaction. Shortly after this, Jones was picked up for management by Ward Sylvester, of Columbia Pictures, who was going to groom Jones for stardom. Jones continued in Oliver! for a while, and also had a brief run in a touring version of Pickwick, another musical based on a Dickens novel, this time starring Harry Secombe, the British comedian and singer who had made his name with the Goon Show. Jones' first single, "Dream Girl", came out in early 1965: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Dream Girl"] It was unsuccessful, as was his one album, David Jones, which seemed to be aiming at the teen idol market, but failing miserably. The second single, "What Are  We Going to Do?" did make the very lowest regions of the Hot One Hundred, but the rest of the album was mostly attempts to sound a bit like Herman's Hermits -- a band whose lead singer, coincidentally, also came from Manchester, had appeared in Coronation Street, and was performing with a fake Cockney accent. Herman's Hermits had had a massive US hit with the old music hall song "I'm Henry VIII I Am": [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] So of course Davy had his own old music-hall song, "Any Old Iron": [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Any Old Iron"] Also, the Turtles had recently had a hit with a folk-rock version of Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe", and Davy cut his own version of their arrangement, in the one concession to rock music on the album: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "It Ain't Me Babe"] The album was, unsurprisingly, completely unsuccessful, but Ward Sylvester was not disheartened. He had the perfect job for a young British teen idol who could sing and act. The Monkees was the brainchild of two young TV producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who had come up with the idea of doing a TV show very loosely based on the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night (though Rafelson would later claim that he'd had the idea many years before A Hard Day's Night and was inspired by his youth touring with folk bands -- Schneider always admitted the true inspiration though). This was not a particularly original idea -- there were a whole bunch of people trying to make TV shows based in some way around bands. Jan and Dean were working on a possible TV series, there was talk of a TV series starring The Who, there was a Beatles cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera were working on a cartoon series about a band called The Bats, and there was even another show proposed to Screen Gems, Columbia's TV department, titled Liverpool USA, which was meant to star Davy Jones, another British performer, and two American musicians, and to have songs provided by Don Kirshner's songwriters. That The Monkees, rather than these other series, was the one that made it to the TV (though obviously the Beatles cartoon series did too) is largely because Rafelson and Schneider's independent production company, Raybert, which they had started after leaving Screen Gems, was given two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to develop the series by their former colleague, Screen Gems' vice president in charge of programme development, the former child star Jackie Cooper. Of course, as well as being their former colleague, Cooper may have had some more incentive to give Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider that money in that the head of Columbia Pictures, and thus Cooper's boss' boss, was one Abe Schneider. The original idea for the show was to use the Lovin' Spoonful, but as we heard last week they weren't too keen, and it was quickly decided instead that the production team would put together a group of performers. Davy Jones was immediately attached to the project, although Rafelson was uncomfortable with Jones, thinking he wasn't as rock and roll as Rafelson was hoping for -- he later conceded, though, that Jones was absolutely right for the group. As for everyone else, to start with Rafelson and Schneider placed an ad in a couple of the trade papers which read "Madness!! Auditions Folk and Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys ages 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank's types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview" There were a couple of dogwhistles in there, to appeal to the hip crowd -- Ben Frank's was a twenty-four-hour restaurant on the Sunset Strip, where people including Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison used to hang out, and which was very much associated with the freak scene we've looked at in episodes on Zappa and the Byrds. Meanwhile "Must come down for interview" was meant to emphasise that you couldn't actually be high when you turned up -- but you were expected to be the kind of person who would at least at some points have been high. A lot of people answered that ad -- including Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, and many more we'll be seeing along the way. But oddly, the only person actually signed up for the show because of that ad was Michael Nesmith -- who was already signed to Colpix Records anyway. According to Davy Jones, who was sitting in at the auditions, Schneider and Rafelson were deliberately trying to disorient the auditioners with provocative behaviour like just ignoring them, to see how they'd react. Nesmith was completely unfazed by this, and apparently walked in wearing a  green wool hat and carrying a bag of laundry, saying that he needed to get this over with quickly so he could go and do his washing. John London, who came along to the audition as well, talked later about seeing Nesmith fill in a questionnaire that everyone had to fill in -- in a space asking about previous experience Nesmith just wrote "Life" and drew a big diagonal line across the rest of the page. That attitude certainly comes across in Nesmith's screen test: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith screen test] Meanwhile, Rafelson and Schneider were also scouring the clubs for performers who might be useful, and put together a shortlist of people including Jerry Yester and Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, Bill Chadwick, who was in the Survivors with Nesmith and London, and one Micky Braddock, whose agent they got in touch with and who was soon signed up. Braddock was the stage name of Micky Dolenz, who soon reverted to his birth surname, and it's the name by which he went in his first bout of fame. Dolenz was the son of two moderately successful Hollywood actors, George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson, and their connections had led to Dolenz, as Braddock, getting the lead role in the 1958 TV series Circus Boy, about a child named Corky who works in a circus looking after an elephant after his parents, the Flying Falcons, were killed in a trapeze accident. [Excerpt: Circus Boy, "I can't play a drum"] Oddly, one of the other people who had been considered for that role was Paul Williams, who was also considered for the Monkees but ultimately turned down, and would later write one of the Monkees' last singles. Dolenz had had a few minor TV appearances after that series had ended, including a recurring role on Peyton Place, but he had also started to get interested in music. He'd performed a bit as a folk duo with his sister Coco, and had also been the lead singer of a band called Micky and the One-Nighters, who later changed their name to the Missing Links, who'd played mostly covers of Little Richard and Chuck Berry songs and later British Invasion hits. He'd also recorded two tracks with Wrecking Crew backing, although neither track got released until after his later fame -- "Don't Do It": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Don't Do It"] and "Huff Puff": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Huff Puff"] Dolenz had a great singing voice, an irrepressible personality, and plenty of TV experience. He was obviously in. Rafelson and Schneider took quite a while whittling down the shortlist to the final four, and they *were* still considering people who'd applied through the ads. One they actually offered the role to was Stephen Stills, but he decided not to take the role. When he turned the role down, they asked if he knew anyone else who had a similar appearance to him, and as it happened he did. Steve Stills and Peter Tork had known of each other before they actually met on the streets of Greenwich Village -- the way they both told the story, on their first meeting they'd each approached the other and said "You must be the guy everyone says looks like me!" The two had become fast friends, and had played around the Greenwich Village folk scene together for a while, before going their separate ways -- Stills moving to California while Tork joined another of those big folk ensembles of the New Christie Minstrels type, this one called the Phoenix Singers. Tork had later moved to California himself, and reconnected with his old friend, and they had performed together for a while in a trio called the Buffalo Fish, with Tork playing various instruments, singing, and doing comedy bits. Oddly, while Tork was the member of the Monkees with the most experience as a musician, he was the only one who hadn't made a record when the TV show was put together. But he was by far the most skilled instrumentalist of the group -- as distinct from best musician, a distinction Tork was always scrupulous about making -- and could play guitar, bass, and keyboards, all to a high standard -- and I've also seen him in more recent years play French horn live. His great love, though, was the banjo, and you can hear how he must have sounded on the Greenwich Village folk scene in his solo spots on Monkees shows, where he would show off his banjo skills: [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Cripple Creek"] Tork wouldn't get to use his instrumental skills much at first though, as most of the backing tracks for the group's records were going to be performed by other people. More impressive for the TV series producers was his gift for comedy, especially physical comedy -- having seen Tork perform live a few times, the only comparison I can make to his physical presence is to Harpo Marx, which is about as high a compliment as one can give. Indeed, Micky Dolenz has often pointed out that while there were intentional parallels to the Beatles in the casting of the group, the Marx Brothers are a far better parallel, and it's certainly easy to see Tork as Harpo, Dolenz as Chico, Nesmith as Groucho, and Jones as Zeppo. (This sounds like an insult to Jones, unless you're aware of how much the Marx Brothers films actually depended on Zeppo as the connective tissue between the more outrageous brothers and the more normal environment they were operating in, and how much the later films suffered for the lack of Zeppo). The new cast worked well together, even though there were obvious disagreements between them right from the start. Dolenz, at least at this point, seems to have been the gel that held the four together -- he had the experience of being a child star in common with Jones, he was a habitue of the Sunset Strip clubs where Nesmith and Tork had been hanging out, and he had personality traits in common with all of them. Notably, in later years, Dolenz would do duo tours with each of his three bandmates without the participation of the others. The others, though, didn't get on so well with each other. Jones and Tork seem to have got on OK, but they were very different people -- Jones was a showbiz entertainer, whose primary concern was that none of the other stars of the show be better looking than him, while Tork was later self-diagnosed as neurodivergent, a folkie proto-hippie who wanted to drift from town to town playing his banjo. Tork and Nesmith had similar backgrounds and attitudes in some respects -- and were united in their desire to have more musical input into the show than was originally intended -- but they were such different personalities in every aspect of their lives from their religious views to their politics to their taste in music they came into conflict. Nesmith would later say of Tork "I never liked Peter, he never liked me. So we had an uneasy truce between the two of us. As clear as I could tell, among his peers he was very well liked. But we rarely had a civil word to say to each other". Nesmith also didn't get on well with Jones, both of them seeming to view themselves as the natural leader of the group, with all the clashes that entails. The four Monkees were assigned instruments for their characters based not on instrumental skill, but on what suited their roles better. Jones was the teen idol character, so he was made the maraca-playing frontman who could dance without having to play an instrument, though Dolenz took far more of the lead vocals. Nesmith was made the guitarist, while Tork was put on bass, though Tork was by far the better guitarist of the two. And Dolenz was put on drums, even though he didn't play the drums -- Tork would always say later that if the roles had been allocated by actual playing ability, Jones would have been the drummer. Dolenz did, though, become a good drummer, if a rather idiosyncratic one. Tork would later say "Micky played the drums but Mike kept time, on that one record we all made, Headquarters. Mike was the timekeeper. I don't know that Micky relied on him but Mike had a much stronger sense of time. And Davy too, Davy has a much stronger sense of time. Micky played the drums like they were a musical instrument, as a colour. He played the drum colour.... as a band, there was a drummer and there was a timekeeper and they were different people." But at first, while the group were practising their instruments so they could mime convincingly on the TV and make personal appearances, they didn't need to play on their records. Indeed, on the initial pilot, they didn't even sing -- the recordings had been made before the cast had been finalised: [Excerpt: Boyce & Hart, "Monkees Theme (pilot version)"] The music was instead performed by two songwriters, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who would become hugely important in the Monkees project. Boyce and Hart were not the first choice for the project. Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems Music, had initially suggested Roger Atkins, a Brill Building songwriter working for his company, as the main songwriter for The Monkees. Atkins is best known for writing "It's My Life", a hit for the Animals: [Excerpt: The Animals, "It's My Life"] But Atkins didn't work out, though he would collaborate later on one song with Nesmith, and reading between the lines, it seems that there was some corporate infighting going on, though I've not seen it stated in so many words. There seems to have been a turf war between Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems' music publishing, who was based in the Brill Building, and Lester Sill, the West Coast executive we've seen so many times before, the mentor to Leiber and Stoller, Duane Eddy, and Phil Spector, who was now the head of Screen Gems music on the West Coast. It also seems to be the case that none of the top Brill Building songwriters were all that keen on being involved at this point -- writing songs for an unsold TV pilot wasn't exactly a plum gig. Sill ended up working closely with the TV people, and it seems to have been him who put forward Boyce and Hart, a songwriting team he was mentoring. Boyce and Hart had been working in the music industry for years, both together and separately, and had had some success, though they weren't one of the top-tier songwriting teams like Goffin and King. They'd both started as performers -- Boyce's first single, "Betty Jean", had come out in 1958: [Excerpt: Tommy Boyce, "Betty Jean"] And Hart's, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me", under his birth name Robert Harshman, a year later: [Excerpt: Robert Harshman, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me"] Boyce had been the first one to have real songwriting success, writing Fats Domino's top ten hit "Be My Guest" in 1959: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Be My Guest"] and cowriting two songs with singer Curtis Lee, both of which became singles produced by Phil Spector -- "Under the Moon of Love" and the top ten hit "Pretty Little Angel Eyes": [Excerpt: Curtis Lee, "Pretty Little Angel Eyes"] Boyce and Hart together, along with Wes Farrell, who had co-written "Twist and Shout" with Bert Berns, wrote "Lazy Elsie Molly" for Chubby Checker, and the number three hit "Come a Little Bit Closer" for Jay and the Americans: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Come a Little Bit Closer"] At this point they were both working in the Brill Building, but then Boyce moved to the West Coast, where he was paired with Steve Venet, the brother of Nik Venet, and they co-wrote and produced "Peaches and Cream" for the Ikettes: [Excerpt: The Ikettes, "Peaches and Cream"] Hart, meanwhile, was playing in the band of Teddy Randazzo, the accordion-playing singer who had appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, and with Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein he wrote "Hurts So Bad", which became a big hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials: [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, "Hurts So Bad"] But Hart soon moved over to the West Coast, where he joined his old partner Boyce, who had been busy writing TV themes with Venet for shows like "Where the Action Is". Hart soon replaced Venet in the team, and the two soon wrote what would become undoubtedly their most famous piece of music ever, a theme tune that generations of TV viewers would grow to remember: [Excerpt: "Theme from Days of Our Lives"] Well, what did you *think* I meant? Yes, just as Davy Jones had starred in an early episode of Britain's longest-running soap opera, one that's still running today, so Boyce and Hart wrote the theme music for *America's* longest-running soap opera, which has been running every weekday since 1965, and has so far aired well in excess of fourteen thousand episodes. Meanwhile, Hart had started performing in a band called the Candy Store Prophets, with Larry Taylor  -- who we last saw with the Gamblers, playing on "LSD-25" and "Moon Dawg" -- on bass, Gerry McGee on guitar, and Billy Lewis on drums. It was this band that Boyce and Hart used -- augmented by session guitarists Wayne Erwin and Louie Shelton and Wrecking Crew percussionist Gene Estes on tambourine, plus Boyce and session singer Ron Hicklin on backing vocals, to record first the demos and then the actual tracks that would become the Monkees hits. They had a couple of songs already that would be suitable for the pilot episode, but they needed something that would be usable as a theme song for the TV show. Boyce and Hart's usual working method was to write off another hit -- they'd try to replicate the hook or the feel or the basic sound of something that was already popular. In this case, they took inspiration from the song "Catch Us If You Can", the theme from the film that was the Dave Clark Five's attempt at their own A Hard Day's Night: [Excerpt: The Dave Clark Five, "Catch Us If You Can"] Boyce and Hart turned that idea into what would become the Monkees theme. We heard their performance of it earlier of course, but when the TV show finally came out, it was rerecorded with Dolenz singing: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Monkees Theme"] For a while, Boyce and Hart hoped that they would get to perform all the music for the TV show, and there was even apparently some vague talk of them being cast in it, but it was quickly decided that they would just be songwriters. Originally, the intent was that they wouldn't even produce the records, that instead the production would be done by a name producer. Micky Most, the Animals' producer, was sounded out for the role but wasn't interested. Snuff Garrett was brought in, but quickly discovered he didn't get on with the group at all -- in particular, they were all annoyed at the idea that Davy would be the sole lead vocalist, and the tracks Garrett cut with Davy on lead and the Wrecking Crew backing were scrapped. Instead, it was decided that Boyce and Hart would produce most of the tracks, initially with the help of the more experienced Jack Keller, and that they would only work with one Monkee at a time to minimise disruption -- usually Micky and sometimes Davy. These records would be made the same way as the demos had been, by the same set of musicians, just with one of the Monkees taking the lead. Meanwhile, as Nesmith was seriously interested in writing and production, and Rafelson and Schneider wanted to encourage the cast members, he was also assigned to write and produce songs for the show. Unlike Boyce and Hart, Nesmith wanted to use his bandmates' talents -- partly as a way of winning them over, as it was already becoming clear that the show would involve several competing factions. Nesmith's songs were mostly country-rock tracks that weren't considered suitable as singles, but they would be used on the TV show and as album tracks, and on Nesmith's songs Dolenz and Tork would sing backing vocals, and Tork would join the Wrecking Crew as an extra guitarist -- though he was well aware that his part on records like "Sweet Young Thing" wasn't strictly necessary when Glen Campbell, James Burton, Al Casey and Mike Deasy were also playing guitar: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Sweet Young Thing"] That track was written by Nesmith with Goffin and King, and there seems to have been some effort to pair Nesmith, early on, with more commercial songwriters, though this soon fell by the wayside and Nesmith was allowed to keep making his own idiosyncratic records off to the side while Boyce and Hart got on with making the more commercial records. This was not, incidentally, something that most of the stars of the show objected to or even thought was a problem at the time. Tork was rather upset that he wasn't getting to have much involvement with the direction of the music, as he'd thought he was being employed as a musician, but Dolenz and Jones were actors first and foremost, while Nesmith was happily making his own tracks. They'd all known going in that most of the music for the show would be created by other people -- there were going to be two songs every episode, and there was no way that four people could write and record that much material themselves while also performing in a half-hour comedy show every week. Assuming, of course, that the show even aired. Initial audience response to the pilot was tepid at best, and it looked for a while like the show wasn't going to be green-lit. But Rafelson and Schneider -- and director James Frawley who played a crucial role in developing the show -- recut the pilot, cutting out one character altogether -- a manager who acted as an adult supervisor -- and adding in excerpts of the audition tapes, showing the real characters of some of the actors. As three of the four were playing characters loosely based on themselves -- Peter's "dummy" character wasn't anything like he was in real life, but was like the comedy character he'd developed in his folk-club performances -- this helped draw the audience in. It also, though, contributed to some line-blurring that became a problem. The re-edited pilot was a success, and the series sold. Indeed, the new format for the series was a unique one that had never been done on TV before -- it was a sitcom about four young men living together, without any older adult supervision, getting into improbable adventures, and with one or two semi-improvised "romps", inspired by silent slapstick, over which played original songs. This became strangely influential in British sitcom when the series came out over here  -- two of the most important sitcoms of the next couple of decades, The Goodies and The Young Ones, are very clearly influenced by the Monkees. And before the broadcast of the first episode, they were going to release a single to promote it. The song chosen as the first single was one Boyce and Hart had written, inspired by the Beatles. Specifically inspired by this: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Hart heard that tag on the radio, and thought that the Beatles were singing "take the last train". When he heard the song again the next day and realised that the song had nothing to do with trains, he and Boyce sat down and wrote their own song inspired by his mishearing. "Last Train to Clarksville" is structured very, very, similarly to "Paperback Writer" -- both of them stay on one chord, a G7, for an eight-bar verse before changing to C7 for a chorus line -- the word "writer" for the Beatles, the "no no no" (inspired by the Beatles "yeah yeah yeah") for the Monkees. To show how close the parallels are, I've sped up the vocals from the Beatles track slightly to match the tempo with a karaoke backing track version of "Last Train to Clarksville" I found, and put the two together: [Excerpt: "Paperback Clarksville"] Lyrically, there was one inspiration I will talk about in a minute, but I think I've identified another inspiration that nobody has ever mentioned. The classic country song "Night Train to Memphis", co-written by Owen Bradley, and made famous by Roy Acuff, has some slight melodic similarity to "Last Train to Clarksville", and parallels the lyrics fairly closely -- "take the night train to Memphis" against "take the last train to Clarksville", both towns in Tennessee, and "when you arrive at the station, I'll be right there to meet you I'll be right there to greet you, So don't turn down my invitation" is clearly close to "and I'll meet you at the station, you can be here by 4:30 'cos I've made your reservation": [Excerpt: Roy Acuff, "Night Train to Memphis"] Interestingly, in May 1966, the same month that "Paperback Writer" was released, and so presumably the time that Hart heard the song on the radio for the first time, Rick Nelson, the teen idol formerly known as Ricky Nelson, who had started his own career as a performer in a sitcom, had released an album called Bright Lights and Country Music. He'd had a bit of a career downslump and was changing musical direction, and recording country songs. The last track on that album was a version of "Night Train to Memphis": [Excerpt: Rick Nelson, "Night Train to Memphis"] Now, I've never seen either Boyce or Hart ever mention even hearing that song, it's pure speculation on my part that there's any connection there at all, but I thought the similarity worth mentioning. The idea of the lyric, though, was to make a very mild statement about the Vietnam War. Clarksville was, as mentioned earlier, the site of Fort Campbell, a military training base, and they crafted a story about a young soldier being shipped off to war, calling his girlfriend to come and see him for one last night. This is left more-or-less ambiguous -- this was a song being written for a TV show intended for children, after all -- but it's still very clear on the line "and I don't know if I'm ever coming home". Now, Boyce and Hart were songwriters first and foremost, and as producers they were quite hands-off and would let the musicians shape the arrangements. They knew they wanted a guitar riff in the style of the Beatles' recent singles, and Louie Shelton came up with one based around the G7 chord that forms the basis of the song, starting with an octave leap: Shelton's riff became the hook that drove the record, and engineer Dave Hassinger added the final touch, manually raising the volume on the hi-hat mic for a fraction of a second every bar, creating a drum sound like a hissing steam brake: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] Now all that was needed was to get the lead vocals down. But Micky Dolenz was tired, and hungry, and overworked -- both Dolenz and Jones in their separate autobiographies talk about how it was normal for them to only get three hours' sleep a night between working twelve hour days filming the series, three-hour recording sessions, and publicity commitments. He got the verses down fine, but he just couldn't sing the middle eight. Boyce and Hart had written a complicated, multisyllabic, patter bridge, and he just couldn't get his tongue around that many syllables when he was that tired. He eventually asked if he could just sing "do do do" instead of the words, and the producers agreed. Surprisingly, it worked: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] "Last Train to Clarksville" was released in advance of the TV series, on a new label, Colgems, set up especially for the Monkees to replace Colpix, with a better distribution deal, and it went to number one. The TV show started out with mediocre ratings, but soon that too became a hit. And so did the first album released from the TV series. And that album was where some of the problems really started. The album itself was fine -- ten tracks produced by Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets playing and either Micky or Davy singing, mostly songs Boyce and Hart wrote, with a couple of numbers by Goffin and King and other Kirshner staff songwriters, plus two songs produced by Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, and with token participation from Tork and Dolenz. The problem was the back cover, which gave little potted descriptions of each of them, with their height, eye colour, and so on. And under three of them it said "plays guitar and sings", while under Dolenz it said "plays drums and sings". Now this was technically accurate -- they all did play those instruments. They just didn't play them on the record, which was clearly the impression the cover was intended to give. Nesmith in particular was incandescent. He believed that people watching the TV show understood that the group weren't really performing that music, any more than Adam West was really fighting crime or William Shatner travelling through space. But crediting them on the record was, he felt, crossing a line into something close to con artistry. To make matters worse, success was bringing more people trying to have a say. Where before, the Monkees had been an irrelevance, left to a couple of B-list producer-songwriters on the West Coast, now they were a guaranteed hit factory, and every songwriter working for Kirshner wanted to write and produce for them -- which made sense because of the sheer quantity of material they needed for the TV show, but it made for a bigger, less democratic, organisation -- one in which Kirshner was suddenly in far more control. Suddenly as well as Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets and Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, both of whom had been operating without much oversight from Kirshner, there were a bunch of tracks being cut on the East Coast by songwriting and production teams like Goffin and King, and Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer. On the second Monkees album, released only a few months after the first, there were nine producers credited -- as well as Boyce, Hart, Jack Keller, and Nesmith, there were now also Goffin, King, Sedaka, Bayer, and Jeff Barry, who as well as cutting tracks on the east coast was also flying over to the West Coast, cutting more tracks with the Wrecking Crew, and producing vocal sessions while there. As well as producing songs he'd written himself, Barry was also supervising songs written by other people. One of those was a new songwriter he'd recently discovered and been co-producing for Bang Records, Neil Diamond, who had just had a big hit of his own with "Cherry Cherry": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] Diamond was signed with Screen Gems, and had written a song which Barry thought would be perfect for the Monkees, an uptempo song called "I'm a Believer", which he'd demoed with the regular Bang musicians -- top East Coast session players like Al Gorgoni, the guitarist who'd played on "The Sound of Silence": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "I'm a Believer"] Barry had cut a backing track for the Monkees using those same musicians, including Diamond on acoustic guitar, and brought it over to LA. And that track would indirectly lead to the first big crisis for the group. Barry, unlike Boyce and Hart, was interested in working with the whole group, and played all of them the backing track. Nesmith's reaction was a blunt "I'm a producer too, and that ain't no hit". He liked the song -- he wanted to have a go at producing a track on it himself, as it happened -- but he didn't think the backing track worked. Barry, trying to lighten the mood, joked that it wasn't finished and you needed to imagine it with strings and horns. Unfortunately, Nesmith didn't get that he was joking, and started talking about how that might indeed make a difference -- at which point everyone laughed and Nesmith took it badly -- his relationship with Barry quickly soured. Nesmith was getting increasingly dissatisfied with the way his songs and his productions were being sidelined, and was generally getting unhappy, and Tork was wanting more musical input too. They'd been talking with Rafelson and Schneider, who'd agreed that the group were now good enough on their instruments that they could start recording some tracks by themselves, an idea which Kirshner loathed. But for now they were recording Neil Diamond's song to Jeff Barry's backing track. Given that Nesmith liked the song, and given that he had some slight vocal resemblance to Diamond, the group suggested that Nesmith be given the lead vocal, and Kirshner and Barry agreed, although Kirshner at least apparently always intended for Dolenz to sing lead, and was just trying to pacify Nesmith. In the studio, Kirshner kept criticising Nesmith's vocal, and telling him he was doing it wrong, until eventually he stormed out, and Kirshner got what he wanted -- another Monkees hit with Micky Dolenz on lead, though this time it did at least have Jones and Tork on backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] That was released on November 23rd, 1966, as their second single, and became their second number one. And in January 1967, the group's second album, More of the Monkees, was released. That too went to number one. There was only one problem. The group weren't even told about the album coming out beforehand -- they had to buy their own copies from a record shop to even see what tracks were on it. Nesmith had his two tracks, but even Boyce and Hart were only given two, with the rest of the album being made up of tracks from the Brill Building songwriters Kirshner preferred. Lots of great Nesmith and Boyce and Hart tracks were left off the album in favour of some astonishingly weak material, including the two worst tracks the group ever recorded, "The Day We Fall in Love" and "Laugh", and a novelty song they found embarrassing, "Your Auntie Grizelda", included to give Tork a vocal spot. Nesmith called it "probably the worst album in the history of the world", though in truth seven of the twelve tracks are really very strong, though some of the other material is pretty poor. The group were also annoyed by the packaging. The liner notes were by Don Kirshner, and read to the group at least like a celebration of Kirshner himself as the one person responsible for everything on the record. Even the photo was an embarrassment -- the group had taken a series of photos in clothes from the department store J. C. Penney as part of an advertising campaign, and the group thought the clothes were ridiculous, but one of those photos was the one chosen for the cover. Nesmith and Tork made a decision, which the other two agreed to with varying degrees of willingness. They'd been fine miming to other people's records when it was clearly just for a TV show. But if they were being promoted as a real band, and having to go on tour promoting albums credited to them, they were going to *be* a real band, and take some responsibility for the music that was being put out in their name.  With the support of Rafelson and Schneider, they started making preparations to do just that. But Don Kirshner had other ideas, and told them so in no uncertain terms. As far as he was concerned, they were a bunch of ungrateful, spoiled, kids who were very happy cashing the ridiculously large cheques they were getting, but now wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. They were going to keep doing what they were told. Things came to a head in a business meeting in January 1967, when Nesmith gave an ultimatum. Either the group got to start playing on their own records, or he was quitting. Herb Moelis, Kirshner's lawyer, told Nesmith that he should read his contract more carefully, at which point Nesmith got up, punched a hole in the wall of the hotel suite they were in, and told Moelis "That could have been your face". So as 1967 began, the group were at a turning point. Would they be able to cut the puppet strings, or would they have to keep living a lie? We'll find out in a few weeks' time...

Matt Axton is a songwriter in Los Angeles who performs original music along with the music of his father, country & folk hit songwriter and actor, Hoyt Axton.  We chat about growing up on tour with Hoyt Axton and the things he learned about life on the road. Matt's grandmother, Mae Axton, was a famed promoter in Nashville's early days who cowrote "Heartbreak Hotel" for Elvis Presley among many others. Matt continues the legacy of his family with his songwriting and performing, including an Axton family legacy documentary in the works. Matt is on instagram at @mattaxtonmusicmattaxton.comPresented by Wood & Steel Live Music Co. California's Finest Live Bands for Weddings & Events. Book your band now at woodandsteel.live

By definition, a gremlin is an unexplained problem or fault. Oddly enough, the movie Gremlins, had many of those same issues. This is the third episode of our Christmas specrapular. Next is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. In this episode, we discuss the 1984 movie, Gremlins. Which is available on HBO Max. Directed by Joe Dante. Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Howie Mandel (voice of Gizmo), and Frances Lee McCain. Every movie we discuss will be available on either: Netflix, Hulu, HBO MAX, YouTube, or Amazon Prime. Next episode is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which is available on HBO Max. Directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik. Starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Juliette Lewis, Jonny Galecki, and Randy Quaid. Intro music by: Luis. Outro music by: Cairo Braga - Revision of the Future

When you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, what do you think? Predator? True Lies? Terminator? Governor? Adulterer? Not today! It's turbo time with Jingle All the Way! This is the second episode of our Christmas specrapular. Next is Gremlins. Followed by National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. In this episode we discuss the 1996 movie, Jingle All the Way. Which is available on Hulu and Amazon Prime. Directed by Brian Levant. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Rita Wilson, (RIP) Phil Hartman, and Jake Lloyd. Every movie we discuss will be available on either: Netflix, Hulu, HBO MAX, YouTube, or Amazon Prime. Next episode is Gremlins, which is available on HBO Max. Directed by Joe Dante. Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, and Polly Holliday. Intro music by: Luis. Outro music by: Cairo Braga - Revision of the Future

Welcome to the Horror Project Podcast. Join hosts Phil and Laura as they continue their festive-film season with the 1984 creature-feature, Gremlins. WARNING:- Do not expose this podcast to light, especially sunlight. Do not let it come in contact with water, and above all, never feed it after midnight...Email - Horrorprojectpodcast@hotmail.comTwitter - @TheHorrorProje1Instagram - horrorprojectpodcast