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| Shit happened, man... |
[Ed. Note – In order to avoid warping the narrative to get in links where I want them, all the sources for this post are listed and linked to at the end. Hope it works for you…and me.]
The Hit
A proto-psychedelic rock tune called “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet” The Blues Magoos dropped into the Greenwich Village scene in 1966 – the very cusp of what counts as the psychedelic rock era (or enjoy this crappy live version). It opens with a shimmer of electric organ before clearing space for a grooving bass riff that holds the song together. It blew up worldwide – No. 5 on Billboard, and I read loose talk of No. 5 worldwide, but who knows? It’s a fun little tune that just about screams “mid-60s!”
That said, I’m excited about this band/post because, for the first time since I started this project, I finally found a band that might have gotten screwed into being a one hit wonder.
The (Original) Band
Emil “Peppy” Thielheim, aka, Peppy Castro (vox/guitar), Dennis LePore (lead guitar), Ralph Scala (organ/vox), Ron Gilbert (bass), Jon Finnegan (drums).
The Rest of the Story
The Blues Magoos started in Greenwich Village, playing wherever they could, trying to live on $8-10 a night, and crashing at home when they couldn’t earn enough playing shows. They started young too - right out of high school – which made home a live option. According to both Castro and Scala, a band that didn’t write its own songs would die in the Village, something that had the band writing songs at the same time they learned their instruments. All the members had their influences ("it was all Country-Western, Rhythm and Blues and Delta Blues"), but Scala notes that they wrote songs “as the commercial end.” And that will come up later…
From what I gather, “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet” was one of The Blues Magoos’ first polished tunes, so they hit the ground running. With Greenwich Village crawling with industry people, all it took was a series of one introduction leads to another moments to land the band to a deal with Mercury Records. They recorded two albums in quick succession – Psychedelic Lollipop in 1966 and Electric Comic Book in 1967 – and that’s where all the stories take off.
The Hit
A proto-psychedelic rock tune called “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet” The Blues Magoos dropped into the Greenwich Village scene in 1966 – the very cusp of what counts as the psychedelic rock era (or enjoy this crappy live version). It opens with a shimmer of electric organ before clearing space for a grooving bass riff that holds the song together. It blew up worldwide – No. 5 on Billboard, and I read loose talk of No. 5 worldwide, but who knows? It’s a fun little tune that just about screams “mid-60s!”
That said, I’m excited about this band/post because, for the first time since I started this project, I finally found a band that might have gotten screwed into being a one hit wonder.
The (Original) Band
Emil “Peppy” Thielheim, aka, Peppy Castro (vox/guitar), Dennis LePore (lead guitar), Ralph Scala (organ/vox), Ron Gilbert (bass), Jon Finnegan (drums).
The Rest of the Story
The Blues Magoos started in Greenwich Village, playing wherever they could, trying to live on $8-10 a night, and crashing at home when they couldn’t earn enough playing shows. They started young too - right out of high school – which made home a live option. According to both Castro and Scala, a band that didn’t write its own songs would die in the Village, something that had the band writing songs at the same time they learned their instruments. All the members had their influences ("it was all Country-Western, Rhythm and Blues and Delta Blues"), but Scala notes that they wrote songs “as the commercial end.” And that will come up later…
From what I gather, “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet” was one of The Blues Magoos’ first polished tunes, so they hit the ground running. With Greenwich Village crawling with industry people, all it took was a series of one introduction leads to another moments to land the band to a deal with Mercury Records. They recorded two albums in quick succession – Psychedelic Lollipop in 1966 and Electric Comic Book in 1967 – and that’s where all the stories take off.
On the plus side, when Herman’s Hermits introduced The Who to America in 1967 with a national tour, The Blues Magoos somehow managed to get on that ticket. (As it happens, Herman’s Hermits, of all people, egged The Who on to ever-greater acts of mayhem; cherry bombs in hotel toilets was the training wheels portion.) Both Scala and Castro have fond memories of friendship with The Who and, if they actually met all the people they name-drop (which I have no reason to doubt, up to and including a near-brawl with The Doors), The Blues Magoos was fairly wired into the mid-60s scene…
…and, strictly speaking, the whole “one hit” label doesn’t really fit a band that had a second song hit No. 10 on the Billboard charts. That song was “Pipe Dream,” by the way, which they played on the freakin’ Smothers’ Brothers show and, if you watch the longer (whoof, grainier) clip, you’ll see Tommy Smothers introduce them all as Magoos, a al, The Ramones. (And here’s a cleaner clip of them performing; also, if you look at the style, it raises questions). They hit a solid level, The Blues Magoos did. And yet they’re remembered for just the one hit…
Castro puts it down to a mini-controversy around that same song, “Pipe Dream.” Fearing they heard a drug reference in the title and/or lyrics, ABC banned the song from all of its radio stations, killing the band’s single for its second album, Electric Comic Book. In this telling, that ban killed whatever momentum The Blues Magoos got from a second solid single – again, it hit No. 10 on Billboard – plus, a national tour that would later become legendary. The band put out one more album, Basic Blues Magoos, in 1968. According to one source, it remains critically-acclaimed as an album. For what it’s worth, I agree with those critics, whether real or imaginary, and, honestly, I have no skin in the game on that one. It’s dated and entirely of its time, but it’s a good version of it.
That said, the picture Scala painted of the end sees it from a different angle. Without getting into the ins and outs (though they are interesting), three members of the band wanted to be musicians, while the rest of the guys thought more about “product,” as in production, moving music units, etc. A late prime-time career spat supports that theory. According to his own story, Castro wanted to explore what he called “Latin rock,” something he saw as part of his Colombian heritage by way of his father, who died when he was very young. At any rate, he recorded songs in that vein, named it Never Going Back to Georgia, and tried to figure out how to get it out into the world. People on his former label pushed him to release it as The Blues Magoos for the name recognition, but Castro balked. Somewhere in the balking, everyone but Castro recorded songs as The Blue Magoos for some rinky-dink California label, a court battle ensued, and it doesn’t matter who won, because, when Never Going Back to Georgia, its “Latin” sound confused the hell out of the band’s former fans, and no one else noticed, but also Santana came out and devoured the space for Castro’s “Latin rock,” so they faded away…
…but didn’t burn out entirely, baby! Despite some professional divides (e.g., the “music v. product” dynamic)…parts of the band reunited to play as The Blues Magoos again in 2015. And, no, I don't know how it went, but I am a little curious. Just not enough...
So, After a Week?
I actually grew to really enjoy this band as the week went on – and, yes, Basic Blues Magoos is the band’s high-water mark. When he talked about the band forming, Castro used what strikes me as a revealing line: “We found our niche and decided, ‘Okay, this is the direction for the band.’” The first two albums are good, even with the passive-aggressive knee-capping I just gave them – and I included The Animals-esque “Gotta Get Away” and the mini-(solidly)-epic, “Tobacco Road” from the first album and the tongue-in-cheek fuck-around “Life’s a Cher O’ Bowlies” from the second, on my sampler – but, while the same structure is there, the songs sound like they’re pitching to the era first, and playing music second. The best compliment I can play to Basic Blues Magoos is to note the simple fact that seven (7) of the songs in my sampler came from that album – and it has only 13 songs on it. Sure, part of it boils down to the band competing with itself, but these are all songs – “I Wanna Be There,” “I Can Hear the Green Grass Grow” (that treble hook...damn), “All the Better to See You,” “I Can Move a Mountain,” “President’s Council on Psychic Fitness” (yessss....!), “There She Goes,” and (personal favorite) “Chicken Wire Lady.”
To the extent they get labeled “psychedelic rock,” Scala came closer to the right label. When classicbands.com asked him how he felt about Rolling Stone labeling the band “a lightweight blues-rock band,” he answered:
“So, in essence, we were lightweight because none of us had material enough to play Blues so to speak, to a level that would be considered heavyweight or medium weight.”
Yeah, I lost some context in there, but, if you go into The Blues Magoos somewhere between that version of blues-rock and psychedelic rock, you’re approaching them in the right frame of mind. This is one of those, “if you like the sound, you’ll like them” situations, only better. It could just be they were an average band in one of my favorite eras – i.e., the latest-60s rock tilting to toward the 70s – but I think these guys had something. They’re on hell of a lot better than that one hit, if nothing else.
Sources
Wikipedia - The Blues Magoos (good, sanitized outline, but I think that's their goal)
Ralph Scala Interview (undated; also, my favorite source, fwiw; he has a convincing bitterness)
Vanyaland Interview (May 2015; lots of name-dropping, good for their recent state of mind)
Wikipedia – Psychedelic Rock (context, just context)
Review of Psychedelic Resurrection, pt 1 (where I got Castro's take on what went wrong)
Review of Psychedelic Resurrection, pt. 2 (where I got most of there "where are they now" stuff)
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