Raspberries – Go All the Way

The Raspberries

Listen/Download – Raspberries – Go All Way the Way

Greetings all.

How’s by you?

All is well hereabouts, aside from the usual deficit of time and energy.

If I were asked to reference the first songs I remember hearing as a kid, I’d probably touch on the Mamas and Papas or Beatles, with my first significant attachment to contemporary pop music coming in the summer of 1969, when as a 6 year old I spent a few weeks in the company of my older cousins who had the radio going non-stop, with the Stevie Wonder, Tommy James and the Shondells, Blood Sweat and Tears and Oliver (yes…Oliver).

However, track it a few steps further on down the line, to when I had acquired my very own radio, to which I had become attached, and you’d be settling in around my 10th year on the planet.

1972 (actually, probably Christmas of 1971) brought a snazzy, multi-band portable radio into my life, where it took a leading role until I got my first record player.

Most of my listening at that time was divvied up between WABC (and occasionally WNBC) on the AM dial, and WCBS (an oldies station) on the FM side.

At that time – though I didn’t really have any idea at the time – most of the jocks I was listening to were relics of the heyday of AM Top 40 radio in New York, with guys like Cousin Brucie and Dan Ingram.

While some of their contemporaries – like ex-Good Guy Scot Muni – ended up on FM rock stations, these cats were still doing what they did best, serving up whatever was hot to a willing audience of teenagers with an exciting delivery that almost made you forget how many commercials were breaking up the musical flow.

Back then, I was listening to the radio almost constantly, from when I got home from school, between dinner and bed, and then long after the lights went out.

Though I remember a lot of what hit the Top 40 back then, aside from various and sundry soul and funk sounds, not a lot of the rock stuff has stayed with me, changing/evolving tastes being what they are.

One marked exception is the Raspberries’ ‘Go All the Way’.

I can say with a fair amount of certainty that the first time I heard this record my ears perked up, not to perk back down for a long, long time.

Though at the time I had literally no idea what Eric Carmen was requesting in the song, it wasn’t particularly important because once the opening guitar riff (perhaps riff isn’t strong enough of a word) hit, nothing else mattered.

‘Go All the Way’, despite Carmen’s patented brand of marshmallow fluff in the verse, was heavy as fuck, and super, duper (shmooper?) poppy, encapsulating in its three minutes and 10 or so seconds every bit of satin, guitar strings, sequins, platform boots, long hair, stage pyrotechnics of 1972, without (and this is the important part) sucking like so much of the other music that brought on the same sense memories.

It’s still one of those records that absolutely DEMANDS that the radio be turned up when it comes on.

No matter that within a few years Carmen would have detached himself from the steely grip of the band so that he could suck OUT LOUD with stuff like ‘All By Myself’ (REALLY?!?!) and ‘Never Gonna Fall In Love Again’ (dumb move, pal…), and would even further on down the road take part in the execrable ‘Dirty Dancing’ soundtrack, the records he made as part of the Raspberries are rightfully considered as a classic intersection between hard rock and power pop (you know Cheap Trick were digging this…at least Robin…).

Thank you Ohio.

Peace

Larry

 

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a funk 45 instrumental.

The Zoo – Where Have All the Good Times Gone

Listen – The Zoo – Where Have All the Good Times Gone – MP3

NOTE: I received the following info in the comments to this post. Apparently I have incorrectly conflated two different bands called the Zoo, and their histories. My apologies!

>>I think you have your two “Zoo bands” mixed up. The Zoo which came from the Beau Denturies actually recorded the above record. However, there was no one by the names of Howard Leese and Mike Flicker in the band. Iknow this because my brother-in-law Garland Aberegg was the lead guitarist and lead singer of The Zoo. They were indeed from Akron, OH, but they never recorded and album entitled “The Zoo Presents Chocolate Mousse”. The Zoo did a reunion concert in 1991 in Tallmadge, OH for their class reunion. Doug Barber, who I think still lives in Tallmadge, was their keyboard player. Their first hit called “Straight Home” came out on an Encore Label.<<

Greetings all.

I come to you once more to tear yet another week off the calendar.
This has been one of those ‘it kind of sucks but there’s nothing I can do about it (which kind of makes it suck even more)’ weeks, where physical infirmity keeps chasing me like I owe it money. Things are improving in increments, but I wish the increments were bigger (but isn’t that the way of the world anyway?).
The tune I bring you today is from a 45 that I picked up years ago, by virtue of the songs alone (one side a Beatles medley, the other – the one I’m posting today – a Kinks cover), knowing nothing about the band.
Over the 20 or so years since I found it, all I found out is that the band the Zoo released at least one album, and that there’s another band with the same name, from around the same time.
However, in those two decades passed, the Google arrived, making random bouts of info-seek much more productive. Thanks to the mighty search engine, I discovered a few more pertinent facts.
First off, the Zoo were from Ohio (Akron, I think), and included among its members two cats named Howard Leese and Mike Flicker (more on them later). Founded in 1966 (out of the ashes of a group called the Beau Denturies who had a track comped on Vol 21 of Highs In the Mid 60s), they recorded one 45 for the PKC label (which I’ll assume was a local Ohio imprint), and then a second – the one you see before you – for Parkway (of which there were at least two pressings). They went on to record a full length LP – ‘The Zoo Presents Chocolate Moose’ – and broke up by the end of the decade.
Mike Flicker ended up working at the Mushroom recording studio in Vancouver, where Leese met up with him again, eventually forming the Mushroom record label, wherein Leese met up with a young band named Heart, which of course he ended up joining.
The record itself is quite good, with a rough and ready take on the Kinks classic. I am wholly embarrassed to admit that I knew this as a Van Halen song before I heard the OG by the Kinks, though I be lying if I said I didn’t dig the VH version, Diamond Dave and friends being a major staple of my longhair, late teens, grocery stockboy era.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back on Monday with an (if I say so myself) outstanding new psyche mix.
Have a great weekend.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a new edition of Funky16Corners Radio.