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| Suits. Always the problem, amirite? |
The Hit
1966’s “Talk Talk,” a hard-rock, garage-buzz tune, or, as Rolling Stone put it, “hog-snort guitar distortion, machine-gun drumming and growling paranoid despair, shaved and hardened with geometric precision.” Built around a good driving beat and lyrics of self-and-others loathing, it picked up the “proto-punk” label once punk became a thing.
For what it’s worth, that proved kind of a buzz-kill for me. Because I’ve heard both sounds so many times, it registers less as “punk” than it does mid-60s garage-bleeding-to-psychedelic – i.e., exactly what it is. I also know that the first “garage” tunes came even earlier, and even the band’s founder/Svengali, Sean Bonniwelll, seemed luke-warm on the punk association:
“Although Bonniwell did not regard himself as ‘the grandfather of punk,’ he recognized that others did.”
To knock the clutter off all the above, if you like mid-60s garage, you will like this song. And you will probably get the case for “proto-punk.” Insofar as that word has any meaning. Hold that thought.
The Rest of the Story
I’ve spent a week listening to The Music Machine, and I’ve only understood the whys and hows of their sound since last Saturday, and the “punk” thing doesn’t really come through in their sound. Fortunately, it took more diving than stretching to find a phrasing that makes the punk label work. This sums up the spirit of the project nicely:
“This wouldn't allow me to express myself in terms of arrangements and approaches, although some of the music, you can hear in the latter part of the third album for RCA, you can hear some of my radical influence in the arrangements, especially in the last album.”
Bonniwell strove to find new possibilities in rock and/or popular music (and was the mid-60s the peak blurring of those genres?), whether with the arrangements or on the production side (“The Raggamuffins purchased hardware for a homemade fuzz-tone switch. From the onset Bonniwell ensured the group resonated like no other by instructing his bandmates to lower their instruments from the standard E note to D-flat.”). He was also a relentless perfectionist, (by his own account) driving willing and talented musicians to keep hold of hard rock in a world turning toward softer sounds. (That’s right, Bonniwell thought The Beatles were soft (but also talented, but also soft).) He really wanted to create a new sound – and, to a very real extent he did. His beginnings, however, were in folk.
1966’s “Talk Talk,” a hard-rock, garage-buzz tune, or, as Rolling Stone put it, “hog-snort guitar distortion, machine-gun drumming and growling paranoid despair, shaved and hardened with geometric precision.” Built around a good driving beat and lyrics of self-and-others loathing, it picked up the “proto-punk” label once punk became a thing.
For what it’s worth, that proved kind of a buzz-kill for me. Because I’ve heard both sounds so many times, it registers less as “punk” than it does mid-60s garage-bleeding-to-psychedelic – i.e., exactly what it is. I also know that the first “garage” tunes came even earlier, and even the band’s founder/Svengali, Sean Bonniwelll, seemed luke-warm on the punk association:
“Although Bonniwell did not regard himself as ‘the grandfather of punk,’ he recognized that others did.”
To knock the clutter off all the above, if you like mid-60s garage, you will like this song. And you will probably get the case for “proto-punk.” Insofar as that word has any meaning. Hold that thought.
The Rest of the Story
I’ve spent a week listening to The Music Machine, and I’ve only understood the whys and hows of their sound since last Saturday, and the “punk” thing doesn’t really come through in their sound. Fortunately, it took more diving than stretching to find a phrasing that makes the punk label work. This sums up the spirit of the project nicely:
“This wouldn't allow me to express myself in terms of arrangements and approaches, although some of the music, you can hear in the latter part of the third album for RCA, you can hear some of my radical influence in the arrangements, especially in the last album.”
Bonniwell strove to find new possibilities in rock and/or popular music (and was the mid-60s the peak blurring of those genres?), whether with the arrangements or on the production side (“The Raggamuffins purchased hardware for a homemade fuzz-tone switch. From the onset Bonniwell ensured the group resonated like no other by instructing his bandmates to lower their instruments from the standard E note to D-flat.”). He was also a relentless perfectionist, (by his own account) driving willing and talented musicians to keep hold of hard rock in a world turning toward softer sounds. (That’s right, Bonniwell thought The Beatles were soft (but also talented, but also soft).) He really wanted to create a new sound – and, to a very real extent he did. His beginnings, however, were in folk.
Bonniwell started in a folk act called The Wayfarers, and he had decent roots in the folk world (he knew real people), but he got bored and bridled against the conservatism of the folk sound. He experimented toward the end of his time with them (to no avail), but it took a fateful jam session with Keith Olsen (bass) and Ron Edgar (drums) to find people willing to follow him to where he wanted to go. The three of them built an act called The Raggamuffins (already noted above), before expanding into a five-piece with the addition of Mark Landon (lead guitar) and Doug Rhodes (organist).
They (somehow) found a regular gig at a bowling alley called Hollywood Legion Lanes, where they developed a following despite the setting (for the record, I’d give my left fucking arm to have a live band playing originals this good during my weekly league night), and this was the shape of it:
“We started to build a following that would come in of people who never bowled in their lives, would come into the bowling alley and after about two weeks, the management was nowhere to be found, so I simply had the band play all of my originals. We just played nothing but originals.”
It was the way they played originals that lead to the name change from The Raggamuffins to The Music Machine. In order to keep the alley’s management from forcing them to play covers of the hits, Bonniwell devised a set-list that lasted for one hour and ten minutes, and without interruption - i.e., they became a "music machine." Before too long, a guy named Brian Ross was one of the people who came to the bowling alley with no intent to bowl and he signed the band to the label he worked for (Original Sound). They started by recording “Talk Talk” and “Come On In” in three takes total (i.e., the perfectionism paid off), and the former went to No. 15 on Billboard, and nearly as high on a couple other charts. “Talk Talk” made them instantly, briefly famous, it’s short play-time (under 2:00) made it a radio favorite, and they started touring like maniacs on Dick Clark package tours with The Beach Boys, ? and the Mysterians, and Clyde McPhatter.
The other detail that makes the “proto-punk” line hold up is the band’s distinctive look. Somewhere in the middle of their Hollywood Legion Lanes Period, the band started dressing in all black. They’d later all dye their hair black and each of them started wearing black gloves during public appearances (they even had “show/concert” gloves and “after-party” gloves to suit each occasion). The image process sold in some markets, but not in others (inevitably, the South, who had questions). But that’s not what doomed The Music Machine to its one-hit dead-end.
The demands of fame (e.g., “They wanted me to write another ‘Talk Talk.’ They wanted us to pump out hit records”), management and touring combined to make the perfect storm that shut down The Music Machine. The delightful anecdote about hijacking the bowling alley set-list reversed once the band got big enough: when they recorded the one album they got with the original line-up, the label insisted they record “The Music Machine’s spin” on famous songs like “96 Tears,” “Cherry Cherry,” and (the most egregious) “Taxman” because the label thought it'd goose sales (but not “Hey Joe,” a song Bonniwell obsessed with recording until Jimi Hendrix made the well-traveled song his hit). As Bonniwell recalled in interviews with Richie Unterberger (very worth reading for the curious):
“When Art LaBoe and Original Sound rushed us into the studio to do the first album, and then put those cover song”s on that album, it really broke my heart, it really did. It's very depressing to me.”
Unlike a lot of people who demand control of projects, Bonniwell takes full blame for choosing management. I’d encourage anyone who finds this band interesting to read the those Unterberger interviews, because Bonniwell comes off as one hell of a nice, complicated guy in those interviews and through all this. For instance, he’s very gracious about giving credit to his band-mates – ““I was fortunate to have such gifted people with me who could share my vision” – but he was just as clear in talking about how The Music Machine’s sound came together (e.g., he had to train Edgar away from jazz drumming and, with Landon, “I had to literally teach him the guitar lines that I wanted him to play”). That said, he talks about how much they brought to the table in the next sentence, and he comes off so well and honestly throughout those interviews that all of those thoughts translate as sincere. He was ultimately thwarted, and God knows how much or little he gave to punk rock (and does it matter?), but at least Bonniwell, et. al. left a decent legacy from that short time…
…oh, and Keith Olsen is, like, a fucking legendary producer, so there’s that.
Bonniwell died in December 2011, and he carried the torch for the band’s memory. “Talk Talk” still mattered enough to get a remembrance from Rolling Stone, and that seems all right.
About the Sampler
Beyond three of the covers called out above, The Music Machine’s hit and its B-side (“Come On In”), I tried to include a decent cross-section of what they did as a band. To flag a couple favorites in the bunch, I’d go with “No Girl Gonna Cry,” which feels like where they wanted to go for me, but, as much as they get connected to Iron Butterfly, “The Eagle Never Hunts the Fly” presages Steppenwolf in my book. Related to that, I’ve got to see when Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” came out (1972), because the opening verses to “Smoke & Water” touch on similar themes (e.g., “smoke, smoke and water, that’s my life/who needs the spoon, the fork and knife” and “the fork and knife” seem mostly like cover for implication of “the spoon,” right?). It’s a bit of dopey song otherwise (no offense), but it’s in keeping with the whole “corporate thumb” theory of this band’s existence, as is, “Double Yellow Line,” “Astrologically Incompatible,” “Masculine Intuition,” but “Worry” at least feels like a minor tonal improvement. All in all, it’d be fascinating (and no longer possible) to ask Bonniwell which of these songs he wrote for love, and which he wrote for money (with regrets).
I think that’s everything, thanks for reading! Oh, and I included two songs from Olsen’s prior project The Goldebriars, “Sweet Potatoes” and “Sea of Tears.” I don’t like either of them, but, hey, you might!
Sources
Wikipedia
LA Times Obit for Bonniwell
Rolling Stone Appreciation
Richie Unterberger Interview, Pt. 1
Richie Unterberger Interview, Pt. 2
Keith Olsen Wikipedia
“We started to build a following that would come in of people who never bowled in their lives, would come into the bowling alley and after about two weeks, the management was nowhere to be found, so I simply had the band play all of my originals. We just played nothing but originals.”
It was the way they played originals that lead to the name change from The Raggamuffins to The Music Machine. In order to keep the alley’s management from forcing them to play covers of the hits, Bonniwell devised a set-list that lasted for one hour and ten minutes, and without interruption - i.e., they became a "music machine." Before too long, a guy named Brian Ross was one of the people who came to the bowling alley with no intent to bowl and he signed the band to the label he worked for (Original Sound). They started by recording “Talk Talk” and “Come On In” in three takes total (i.e., the perfectionism paid off), and the former went to No. 15 on Billboard, and nearly as high on a couple other charts. “Talk Talk” made them instantly, briefly famous, it’s short play-time (under 2:00) made it a radio favorite, and they started touring like maniacs on Dick Clark package tours with The Beach Boys, ? and the Mysterians, and Clyde McPhatter.
The other detail that makes the “proto-punk” line hold up is the band’s distinctive look. Somewhere in the middle of their Hollywood Legion Lanes Period, the band started dressing in all black. They’d later all dye their hair black and each of them started wearing black gloves during public appearances (they even had “show/concert” gloves and “after-party” gloves to suit each occasion). The image process sold in some markets, but not in others (inevitably, the South, who had questions). But that’s not what doomed The Music Machine to its one-hit dead-end.
The demands of fame (e.g., “They wanted me to write another ‘Talk Talk.’ They wanted us to pump out hit records”), management and touring combined to make the perfect storm that shut down The Music Machine. The delightful anecdote about hijacking the bowling alley set-list reversed once the band got big enough: when they recorded the one album they got with the original line-up, the label insisted they record “The Music Machine’s spin” on famous songs like “96 Tears,” “Cherry Cherry,” and (the most egregious) “Taxman” because the label thought it'd goose sales (but not “Hey Joe,” a song Bonniwell obsessed with recording until Jimi Hendrix made the well-traveled song his hit). As Bonniwell recalled in interviews with Richie Unterberger (very worth reading for the curious):
“When Art LaBoe and Original Sound rushed us into the studio to do the first album, and then put those cover song”s on that album, it really broke my heart, it really did. It's very depressing to me.”
Unlike a lot of people who demand control of projects, Bonniwell takes full blame for choosing management. I’d encourage anyone who finds this band interesting to read the those Unterberger interviews, because Bonniwell comes off as one hell of a nice, complicated guy in those interviews and through all this. For instance, he’s very gracious about giving credit to his band-mates – ““I was fortunate to have such gifted people with me who could share my vision” – but he was just as clear in talking about how The Music Machine’s sound came together (e.g., he had to train Edgar away from jazz drumming and, with Landon, “I had to literally teach him the guitar lines that I wanted him to play”). That said, he talks about how much they brought to the table in the next sentence, and he comes off so well and honestly throughout those interviews that all of those thoughts translate as sincere. He was ultimately thwarted, and God knows how much or little he gave to punk rock (and does it matter?), but at least Bonniwell, et. al. left a decent legacy from that short time…
…oh, and Keith Olsen is, like, a fucking legendary producer, so there’s that.
Bonniwell died in December 2011, and he carried the torch for the band’s memory. “Talk Talk” still mattered enough to get a remembrance from Rolling Stone, and that seems all right.
About the Sampler
Beyond three of the covers called out above, The Music Machine’s hit and its B-side (“Come On In”), I tried to include a decent cross-section of what they did as a band. To flag a couple favorites in the bunch, I’d go with “No Girl Gonna Cry,” which feels like where they wanted to go for me, but, as much as they get connected to Iron Butterfly, “The Eagle Never Hunts the Fly” presages Steppenwolf in my book. Related to that, I’ve got to see when Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” came out (1972), because the opening verses to “Smoke & Water” touch on similar themes (e.g., “smoke, smoke and water, that’s my life/who needs the spoon, the fork and knife” and “the fork and knife” seem mostly like cover for implication of “the spoon,” right?). It’s a bit of dopey song otherwise (no offense), but it’s in keeping with the whole “corporate thumb” theory of this band’s existence, as is, “Double Yellow Line,” “Astrologically Incompatible,” “Masculine Intuition,” but “Worry” at least feels like a minor tonal improvement. All in all, it’d be fascinating (and no longer possible) to ask Bonniwell which of these songs he wrote for love, and which he wrote for money (with regrets).
I think that’s everything, thanks for reading! Oh, and I included two songs from Olsen’s prior project The Goldebriars, “Sweet Potatoes” and “Sea of Tears.” I don’t like either of them, but, hey, you might!
Sources
Wikipedia
LA Times Obit for Bonniwell
Rolling Stone Appreciation
Richie Unterberger Interview, Pt. 1
Richie Unterberger Interview, Pt. 2
Keith Olsen Wikipedia
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