Into the Mystic 

Maybe one of the best, most thematically perfect, movie soundtracks is the one that accompanies a quasi-documentary from 1971, “Dusty and Sweets McGee,” which uses actors and allegedly real addicts to tell us all about the wonderful world of heroin. If Moby Dick is the place to go for everything you’d ever want to know about whaling, “Dusty and Sweets McGee” is the Moby Dick of heroin: vignettes that take us through the entire heroin supply chain: selling it, buying it, preparing it, injecting it, arguing over it, committing crimes to pay for it, and as one character puts it, “Spending a lot of time sitting slack jawed on park benches.” 

At the film’s center is City Life, played by an unrecognizable Billy Gray (Bud on Fathers Knows Best), selling heroin and needles from his high-performance Mustang. His epic shoulder-length mullet is a begrudging acknowledgement of changing fashion, but otherwise he’s wearing the time-honored uniform of 50s gearheads: white t-shirt with a rolled sleeve holding his cigarettes, comb at the ready in a back pocket while he mulls over adding a tape deck and mag wheels to his car. 

Billy Gray, a long ways from Father Knows Best

Much of the film’s music is playing over City Life’s car radio, tuned into “the Big K in L.A.” with all the deejay patter and jingles, as he downshifts to “Runaway,” “Duke of Earl,” “Book of Love” and “Hey Baby” and we watch the neon death march of old brands whiz by on the highway: Rexall, Pep Boys, Rayco. 

It's perfectly placed; incidental music you’d expect to hear riding shotgun with someone who looks like he’s dressed for a Sha Na Na audition. 

In a bedroom where a couple are shooting up, “Ride Captain Ride” comes on the radio – the deejay, talking over the song’s intro, says “we’re just two hours away from the start of another solid gold weekend” – giving his patter, along with the lyrics of that groovy AM hit from the summer of 1970, an ominous feeling, playing as it does over closeups of needles in forearms and what looks like blood coming up the syringe. Another couple, locked away in a cheap motel room, are getting ready to inject themselves as Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” plays on the radio. Sample lyrics: “Then magnificently we will float into the mystic” and “It’s too late to stop now.” 

Sometimes the marriage of music and movies works. Often, you’re left scratching your head. Why does the Four Tops’ “Standing in the Shadows of Love” start playing in “The Fantastic Four” movie apropos of nothing? Why does the Great Gatsby, set in the 1920s, include music by Roxy Music and Beyonce? Watching “Casino,” with its soundtrack of 60 songs sounded like some hip dude’s iPod was playing on a continuous shuffle in the next room. “Dusty and Sweets McGee” got it right.

 

 

Last stop: The Lost Oasis 

If it’s 1965 and you’re obsessed with comic books, monster movies and spy shows, and come across this paperback on a spinner rack at Newberry’s, what can you do?

You find 50 cents. 

Beginning in 1964, Bantam Books began reprinting the run of Doc Savage pulp novels from the 30s. When Bantam commissioned James Bama to paint the covers to the Savage books, it was a hot wire to the brain – the colors, the lighting, the sweaty heroic poses. Bama was an illustrator and painter whose work mostly focused on advertising and the covers of “men’s adventure” magazines like True and Dare. 

Here’s the cover to another of Bama’s Doc Savage paperbacks, The Man of Bronze, with its golden lighting against a black background and the obligatory torn shirt, Doc’s security blanket. 

Lured by the covers, I bought several books until the dated Depression-era language (cars were “sedans,” friends were “chums”) and “comedy” routines between members of Doc’s gang of scientific experts began to feel uncool and tiresome. Even then, when I came across the latest installment in the series at Brentano’s bookstore, I had to stop and admire the cover. James Bama painted more than 60 Doc Savage paperback covers and had the knack for making the imaginary seem real. 

I didn’t find out until the 90s that Bama’s creativity was behind another childhood folly. Concurrent with the Doc Savage covers, he was also responsible for the box art that graced the popular Aurora monster models series. When I came across rows of these images on the shelves at Modell’s department store, I burned with the temptation of the damned. How could I resist? 

Fast forward to the dawn of puberty, and I find this book in my sister’s room: 

It’s James Bama again, this time capturing something I couldn’t quite articulate. The image seared a hole in my head and left me dizzy with the possibilities of adulthood.  

In the late 60s, Bama walked away from commercial illustration – although calling him a commercial artist is as severe an understatement as you’ll find; he was a modern master of realism – and turned to painting Western scenes: Native Americans with dignity intact, craggy ranch hands and cowboys staring out from a snowstorm or saddling up a horse. All of it looking more like a photograph than a painting. 

Bama died in this past April, a few days short of his 96^th birthday. He had an enormous talent, influential to many other artists who followed him and to some pre-teen boys as well.

 

 

April 1974: They call him the Streak 

Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night was nominated for four Oscars at the 1974 Academy Awards, winning the award for Best Foreign Film. It’s a movie about moviemaking, as its on-screen cast and crew work through a never-ending series of professional and personal challenges to complete a film whose plot sounds hardly worth the effort: French newlywed brings his British wife home to meet the parents. She falls in love with his father, whom the son confronts on a busy street and shoots. 

Nearly everything that can go wrong with making the movie does, but that doesn’t make Day for Night some sort of zany slapstick comedy. It’s about adapting. When an actor dies in a car accident, it necessitates a late-night rewrite of the script. To assist a boozy actress who keeps forgetting her lines, the crew hides cue cards with her lines around the set, unseen by the camera. 

Truffaut, who directed the movie and plays the on-screen director as well – very meta for 1974 – pulls the camera back even further to show, very matter-of-factly, how filmmakers go about creating an illusion of reality. A water pipe over a fake window to simulate rain. The scaffolding actors must climb to film a balcony scene. Monster hoses that spray “snow.” The back-up cat that comes out when a first cat won’t drink milk from a saucer on cue. 

A meta Francois Truffaut at left 

The title Day for Night comes from a process whereby sequences filmed outdoors in daylight are shot with a filter to appear as if they are taking place at night, which takes on another meaning here as the film sheds light and insight around filmmaking. 

Right around this time, a Beatles bootleg began showing up in discerning record stores titled Sweet Apple Trax. It offered, in mostly clear sound, outtakes pirated from the filming of Let It Be, much of which would not be officially released by the band until some fifty years later. 

With the universe’s most famous rock band working through sketches of songs, trying out and discarding guitar parts, singing half-written lyrics, mumbling when no lyrics exist or messing around with different tempos, at the time it was a revelation, a fly on the wall perspective that none of us had ever experienced.

That’s the value bootleggers have always brought, pulling back the camera, or in this case unlocking the studio door – a record about making records. Bringing day to night. 

The top ten records for April 1974 aren’t a very inspiring bunch: 

1 BENNIE AND THE JETS –•– Elton John

2 HOOKED ON A FEELING –•– Blue Swede

3 TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia) –•– MFSB

4 COME AND GET YOUR LOVE –•– Redbone

5 BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME –•– Gladys Knight and the Pips

6 SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS –•– John Denver

7 THE LORD’S PRAYER –•– Sister Janet Mead

8 OH MY MY –•– Ringo Starr

9 THE LOCO-MOTION –•– Grand Funk

10 SEASONS IN THE SUN –•– Terry Jacks 

Worth noting is this consecutive run of chart entries for the week ending April 13: 

82 — DAYBREAK –•– Nilsson

83 — SUNDOWN –•– Gordon Lightfoot

84 — THE STREAK –•– Ray Stevens 

Having “Sundown” follow “Daybreak” is kind of neat. “The Streak” was a novelty record with the great fortune of hitting the radio right as streaking hit its summit, the live broadcast of the 1974 Academy Awards. 

As the show was winding down to the big finale, Best Picture, David Niven is introducing Elizabeth Taylor just as the naked guy (Robert Opel, a photographer) runs onstage, setting up Niven’s famous retort, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was almost bound to happen. But isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?" (Opel didn’t have much life left after that night. He was murdered in 1979 during an attempted robbery). 

There has always been thought that the entire thing was staged. Like Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show, the camera was strategically placed so that we didn’t see anything below the streaker’s waist. Niven was a quick-witted type, but his ad lib appears too rehearsed and smooth. Watching him wait for the laughter to die down, he seems to be itching to pull the trigger on the punchline. 

Whether staged or not, Oscar night in 1974 was quite a slap in the face.

 

 

The Garden State Greats 

Saint Peters’ run in the NCAA Tournament revived all sorts of proclamations about New Jersey pride and Garden State grit. In response, here is a list of 21 songs that either bear some of that New Jersey attitude or at the very least have a strong Jersey connection. Missing in action: Whitney Houston, who could have been from Los Angeles or Miami for all the New Jersey she brought to her music, and Bon Jovi, because they’re Bon Jovi. 

Candy Girl – Four Seasons (1963)

The last holdouts of the urban doo-wop sound and briefly New Jersey’s answer to the Beatles. Three members were born and raised in the melting pot that was Newark and next-door Belleville. “Candy Girl” is a Frankie Valli vocal showcase.  

How Can I Be Sure – Young Rascals (1967)

Eddie Brigati of Garfield sings lead on this accordion-driven Paris on the Passaic ballad. 

My Boyfriend’s Back – Angels (1963)

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow – Shirelles (1960)

The Angels were from Belleville and Orange, the Shirelles from Passaic. “My Boyfriend’s Back” offers the immortal warning, “If I were you I’d take a permanent vacation.” 

Hasbrook Heights – Dionne Warwick (1972)

Written by Burt Bacharach whom, the internet says, briefly lived in Hasbrouck Heights. While the lyrics are complimentary, he awkwardly changed the name of the town to protect the innocent. Sung, of course, by an East Orange native. 

Pleasant Valley Sunday – Monkees (1967)

Like Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Gerry Goffin were commuting into Manhattan from New Jersey while they worked at the Brill Building. The Goffins lived on Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange, among “rows of house that are all the same/And on one seems to care.” 

Brandy – Looking Glass (1972)

Ariel – Dean Friedman (1977)

Lies – Knickerbockers (1965)

One-hit wonders from, respectively, New Brunswick, Paramus and Bergenfield. 

At Long Last Love – Frank Sinatra (1957)

Cole Porter acknowledges that New Jersey isn’t exactly the Garden of Eden as he asks the musical question, “Is it for all time or simply a lark/Is it Granada I see or only Asbury Park?” Sung, of course, by a Hoboken native. 

You Can’t Catch Me – Chuck Berry (1956)

America – Simon & Garfunkel (1971)

Racing a car with “hideaway wings” late one night on the Turnpike and with a state trooper bearing down, Chuck’s car takes flight: “Bye-bye New Jersey, I've become airborne.” The narrator in “America” stares out the window of a Greyhound Bus and counts the cars on the Turnpike. 

Jersey Girl – Tom Waits (1980)

Tweeter and the Monkey Man – Traveling Wilburies (1988)

The two best Bruce Springsteen songs not written by Bruce Springsteen. Bob Dylan’s “Tweeter” perpetuates the myth of New Jersey lawlessness: “In Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught." 

4^th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) – Bruce Springsteen (1973)

Palisades Park – Freddy Cannon (1960)

The singer in “Sandy” has come to the realization that once you get to the boardwalk, there’s nowhere left except the ocean. “Palisades Park” was written by Chuck Barris; Springsteen used the song as the intro to concerts when he was touring the “Tunnel of Love” album. 

Slip Away – David Bowie (2002)

Somehow, Bowie successfully makes The Uncle Floyd Show a mournful metaphor for lost times. “Back in the late ’70s, everyone would rush home in the afternoon to catch the Uncle Floyd Show. He was on UHF Ch. 68 and the show looked like it was done out of his living room in New Jersey. I knew so many people of my age who just wouldn’t miss it. Two of the regulars on the show were Oogie and Bones Boy, ridiculous puppets made out of ping-pong balls or some such … I just loved that show." 

Song For My Father – Horace Silver (1964)

Rudy van Gelder converted a couple of rooms in his parent’s home in Hackensack into a recording studio before moving into a much grander space in Englewood Cliffs and oversaw the production of hundreds of jazz albums, including many by Miles, Monk and Coltrane, all those jazz dudes known today by one name. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker based “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” on the main riff of “Song For My Father.” 

The Nightfly – Donald Fagen (1982)

Fagen grew up in Kendall Park and found life in suburbia stifling enough that he escaped into a teenager bedroom fantasy as a tragic figure chain-smoking through the night while hosting a jazz and talk radio show. 

Day of the Locusts – Bob Dylan (1970)

When Princeton University gave Bob Dylan an honorary degree at an outdoors commencement ceremony, the seventeen-year cicadas were loud enough to drown out the speakers. He described the “locusts” – which sounds a lot more biblical than “cicadas” – as “singing for me.” 

White Castle Blues – Smithereens (1986)

Also included on the soundtrack of the New Jersey epic Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. “I think I'll get some crisp onion rings/To compliment 10 of those little square things.”

 

March 1974: Can it be that it was all so simple then? 

The early 70s were transitional years. Time moved forward, but culturally everyone still seemed stuck in a gear clearly marked “60s.” 

The National Book Award winner for 1974 was Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers (later adapted into the movie Who’ll Stop the Rain), a bleak travelogue about smuggling heroin that starts in Vietnam and ends with a firefight on a California mountaintop equipped with speakers and lights to accompany Ken Kesey-styled Acid Tests. 

In the 1974 film The Parallax View, a shadow-shrouded federal “commission” rules that a lone gunman was behind a Robert Kennedy-styled political assassination, leading reporter Warren Beatty to track down a connection between the shooting and the equally shadowy Parallax Corporation. (A strange movie, sort of The Manchurian Candidate meets Cannonball Run, merging serious themes with a “smash-everything-in-sight” barroom brawl and a police car chase that ends with a car crashing through the front window of a supermarket. All that’s missing is Jerry Reed). 

In real life, even with Vietnam more or less over, as well as the military draft, Richard Nixon’s re-election in 1972 was enough to get the revolutionary arm of the counterculture to declare itself alive and well, and begin blowing up banks and ROTC training buildings. 

Combine these 60s hangovers with the OPEC oil embargo, Watergate and the unresolvable resolution to Vietnam and amateur sociologists will tell you that America’s reaction was to “go back to simpler times” – AKA the 50s. 

And we got back with a vengeance. Grease opened on Broadway in 1972, American Graffiti in theatres in 1973 and Happy Days on television in January 1974. In July 1972, New York City’s WCBS-FM changed to an all-oldies format. John Lennon released an album of favorite 50s songs in early 1975, as did the Band. 

Re-entering the Billboard charts in March 1974 was Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” 21 years after it was number one for eight weeks. Powered by its inclusion in the soundtrack to American Graffiti and as the first theme song to Happy Days, it reached #39 in May. 

Bill Haley & the Comets

The inherent irony in the rush for happier days was what got conveniently ignored, mainly the dark side of American society in the 50s: segregation, gay repression, cold war tensions and fear of The Bomb, the Red Scare. Joe McCarthy might have been the real face of the 50s, not the sassy drive-in carhop on roller skates who takes your order for a cheeseburger and a Coke. 

It took a long time to run its course, but the 50s fascination finally hit the wall in the early 80s; that Sha-Na-Na had its own variety show that lasted four seasons gives you an idea of how unescapable all this was. 

Here are Billboard’s top ten records for March 1974: 

SEASONS IN THE SUN –•– Terry Jacks

BOOGIE DOWN –•– Eddie Kendricks

DARK LADY –•– Cher

SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS –•– John Denver

THE WAY WE WERE –•– Barbra Streisand

MOCKINGBIRD –•– Carly Simon and James Taylor

JUNGLE BOOGIE –•– Kool and the Gang

SPIDERS & SNAKES –•– Jim Stafford

ROCK ON –•– David Essex

HOOKED ON A FEELING –•– Blue Swede 

“Seasons in the Sun” was a maudlin entry in the 70s genre of deathbed pop (“Yesterday When I Was Young,” “Reflections of My Life”). Terry Jacks was part of a strange run of studio vocalists who had multiple hits around this time, nearly all one-hit wonders and under different names. 

Jacks hit the top ten with “Seasons in the Sun” and in 1969 as part of the Poppy Family (Jacks and his wife) with “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” Ron Dante was recruited to sing lead on the Archies’ "Sugar, Sugar," Billboard’s #1 record for 1969. Later that year he recorded an album under the group name the Cuff Links and had a second top ten hit with “Tracy.” But nobody comes close to Britain’s Tony Burrows, who sang lead with five groups that didn’t exist outside of the recording studio, four of the five hitting the Billboard Top Ten: Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)"; White Plains' "My Baby Loves Lovin'"; the Pipkins' "Gimme Dat Ding"; Brotherhood of Man’s “United We Stand” (all from 1970) and First Class' "Beach Baby" (1974).

 

February 1974: I don’t like spiders and snakes

In its February 1974 issue, The Monster Times (yeah, that was the name of the publication, and it was a good read even if sometimes embarrassing to bring up to the counter) published a list of “The World’s 50 Worst Monster Movies,” “monster” being an umbrella term covering science fiction, horror and fantasy – sometimes it’s just easier to call them all monster movies. And it’s not as snooty as calling them genre movies.

The list mostly offers up the black and white flicks you’d catch back then on Chiller Theatre on Saturday night or on a Sunday afternoon, and their titles are a roll call of B movie greatness. Plan Nine from Outer Space. Bride of the Monster. Attack of the Killer Shrews. The Navy vs. the Night Monsters. The Horror of Party Beach. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (which The Monster Times claims as “absolutely the worst sci-fi flick ever made, bar none”).

Today, how many of the original 50 would make a current list of the worst? In a world where Battlefield Earth, Waterworld, and Batman and Robin will stream into eternity and the Wikipedia page for the cheesy original movies produced by the SyFi Channel lists more than 400 (a total probably eclipsed by the Hallmark Channel’s original Christmas flicks, another kind of horror), how bad is Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, even if its star is James Karen, known throughout the East Coast as the “Pathmark guy”? Would you rather watch John Carradine in a Dracula cape give a hammy, but credible performance or Will Smith wandering through yet another CGI post-apocalyptic wasteland?

John Carradine in Billy the Kid vs. Dracula

Since 1974, Tim Burton’s Ed Wood movie, Mystery Science Theatre 3000, the Golden Turkey Awards and Captain USA’s Groovie Movies have all done their part in giving The Monster Times 50 a safe – if always with varying degrees of dry irony – haven. Today, most of these films are seen as quaint labors of love, a geek’s vision filmed in a basement or a public park (usually without a permit) with an amateur cast and a special effects budget limited to what can be bought at a local hardware store. In 1974, nobody would have used a word like oeuvre to describe William (Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla) Beaudine’s work. Today, there are books about him.

Yes, you can see the zipper on the back of the monster in Horror of Party Beach, the wires suspending the flying saucer tin plates in Plan Nine and that the giant grasshoppers “attacking” the Sears Tower in Chicago in the Beginning of the End are normal-sized grasshoppers climbing over a postcard, but they were all entertaining, unforgettable and sincere.

The top ten songs for February 1974 aren’t the worst, but at the same time nothing to treasure.

LOVE’S THEME –•– The Love Unlimited Orchestra

THE WAY WE WERE –•– Barbra Streisand

YOU’RE SIXTEEN –•– Ringo Starr

UNTIL YOU COME BACK TO ME –•– Aretha Franklin

AMERICANS –•– Byron MacGregor

SPIDERS & SNAKES –•– Jim Stafford

LET ME BE THERE –•– Olivia Newton-John

BOOGIE DOWN –•– Eddie Kendricks

SHOW AND TELL –•– Al Wilson

I’VE GOT TO USE MY IMAGINATION –•– Gladys Knight and the Pips

Motown seemed to have no idea how to use Gladys Knight and the Pips. Their version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” preceded Marvin Gaye’s by a year and its unrestrained wildness made it totally unlike most of Motown’s polished productions. After signing with Buddah, they had their biggest hit with “Midnight Train to Georgia”; “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination” was the follow up. In the aftermath of the Vietnam debacle and with Watergate storm clouds bearing down, “Americans” was a hug and a hair-mussing recitation by Canadian broadcast Byron MacGregor, listing how great a neighbor/big brother the U.S. was to the rest of the world. “Spiders and Snakes” by Jim Stafford, the future Mr. Bobbie Gentry, was a memorable novelty.

Debuting on the Billboard Hot 100 this month were three cash-ins based on the news: “Energy Crisis ‘74” by Dickie Goodman, “Get That Gasoline Blues” by NRBQ and “The Crude Oil Blues” by Jerry Reed. Also new to the Hot 100, “Midnight on the Oasis” by Maria Muldaur isn’t about the oil crisis, maybe more about distracting some horny sheikh while others make off with the oil.

 

 

Skipped the light fandango 

OK boomer, time to put down the Arts & Entertainment section and take another glance at the obituaries. 

Gary Brooker, a co-founder and lead singer of Procol Harum, died this week. He sang and co-wrote the baroque and stately “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” a song that helped, along with the Sgt. Pepper album, define the music of the Summer of 1967. It’s also one of a handful of pop songs so out of leftfield that even now, more than 50 years later, they remain stunning listens (see also Good Vibrations, Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, Like A Rolling Stone). 

We took an immediate liking to “A Whiter Shade of Pale” when WABC began playing it that July and rooted for it each Tuesday afternoon when the station introduced its new weekly Top 20. It rose as high as #2 the week of August 8, blocked from the top spot by “Light My Fire.” How did two songs based around a keyboard sound grounded somewhat in the music of Bach occupy the top two places in a popular music survey? (A sound that also found its way in 1986 to Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”). 

The enigmatic lyrics could be viewed as hip Cliff Notes to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with its “vestal virgins” and “the miller,” but to take a more down-to-earth perspective, it could have also recounted a night of epic drinking down at the pub, falling into bed with the puke-inducing spins (“the room was humming harder, as the ceiling flew away”). 

Procol Harum favored a dual keyboard set-up, with Brooker on piano and Matthew Fisher playing organ. Brooker’s piano drove one of their FM standbys, “Simple Sister,” with a bridge “borrowed” from the Capitol’s “Cool Jerk,” a reminder that while the band was a pioneer of progressive rock, it always had a strong R&B feel. Otis Redding never got the chance to cover “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” but it would have been interesting. (Considering how Otis messed up the lyrics of “Satisfaction” and “Day Tripper” when he sang them, “A White Shade of Pale” wouldn’t have stood a chance). 

Brooker’s obits are mostly about “A White Shade of Pale,” but he also wrote and sang “Conquistador,” one of the ten greatest progressive rock tracks ever, and the epic, evocative “A Salty Dog”. He played on George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” album, toured with Ringo Starr and had a bit role in the “Evita” movie. Who knew?