Some people voted for this shit. I sure hope they like the taste.
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’ Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’ Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’ Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’ Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
So happy together — Flo & Eddie and The Mothers of Invention.
Mark Volman, a.k.a. The Phlorescent Leech, or “Flo” for short, has gone west. He was 78.
You may remember Volman from The Turtles. Or p’raps from Flo & Eddie, his two-man band with fellow ex-Turtle Howard Kaylan, a change of identity required in 1970 when they got sideways with their label and were contractually forbidden to perform as either The Turtles or even under their own names.
As a teenage weirdo in the magical Seventies I recall a mentor at the Colorado Springs Sun, Bill McBean, turning me on to Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention — specifically, their “Fillmore East — June 1971” album, which includes, as the wrapup to an insane musical tale of Seattle’s Edgewater Inn, a mud shark, and the Vanilla Fudge, a stellar performance of The Turtles’ No. 1 hit from 1967, “Happy Together.”
“Wow,” sez I, or something very much like that (it was the Seventies, after all). “That’s an excellent take on that old Turtles tune.”
“No shit,” replies Bill. “That’s Flo & Eddie you’re hearing.”
Further explanation was required — thank Dog for mentors — but I eventually came to understand that former Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan were now Flo & Eddie and rockin’ with The Mothers.
Talk about happy together. It still rocks, a half-century down the road.
“And this is what he said on / his way to Armageddon. …”
I have no idea where or when I made the acquaintance of Tom Lehrer, who has gone west on us at the ripe old age of 97.
But I was immediately enthralled. What a mind!
I couldn’t do math at gunpoint. What few resources I possessed were directed at trying (and often failing) to make people laugh.
But Tom Lehrer could do both, and seemingly with ease. Numbers and words alike danced to his merrily sardonic tunes.
In the end, he chose academia over comedy. I expect his GPA was a wee bit more impressive than mine. At the age of 18 he received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Harvard; at that age I was a freshman on drugs and academic probation at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colo.
His music was ultimately just a momentary detour in an academic career that included teaching posts at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, and even a stint with the Atomic Energy Commission.
I never caught his mathematical act at those venues. But I saw him perform on TV a time or two, and heard him now and then on FM radio, both freeform and public. My faves were “Wernher von Braun,” “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “The Vatican Rag,” and “A Song for World War III,” which I suspect may have inspired Randy Newman’s “Political Science.”
And five years before he left us on Saturday, he remembered us in his will. Well, on his website, anyway, where he announced that:
[A]ll the lyrics on this website, whether published or unpublished, copyrighted or uncopyrighted, may be downloaded and used in any manner whatsoever, without requiring any further permission from me or any payment to me or to anyone else.
In other words, he relinquished the rights to all his songs, except for the melodies of a few that used his words but someone else’s music.
The curtain may have rung down, but his satirical legacy survives. So long, Tom, you never dropped a bomb.
O, Lawd — can I say, “O, Lawd,” in this connection? — Ozzy and I made some powerful noise on South Loring Circle back in 1970.
I played “Paranoid” on the folks’ console stereo so loud, so many times, that they finally told me to take it with me when I left. It had been ruined as a stage for Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman. It had become the Devil’s Juke Box.
Don’t get me wrong — I liked the big bands. But I liked a big noise, too. Thus I rattled the windows with Led Zep’, Iron Butterfly, and of course, Black Sabbath.
I was born in 1954. We spent a lot of time under our desks, hiding from nuclear weapons and/or the Selective Service System. Some of us came out humming “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?” Others shrieked about “War Pigs.”
Day of judgement, God is calling On their knees, the war pigs crawling Begging mercy for their sins Satan, laughing, spreads his wings Oh, Lord, yeah
Eventually I wound up somewhere in between, with John Prine and “Sam Stone.” But man, did I ever enjoy rattling those windows. Thanks, Ozzy. Peace to you and yours.
And if you happen to see Hunter S. Thompson on the Other Side, the two of yis stay the hell away from those goddamn bats.
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