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
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Iron Leg 