S/D: The Turtles

"don't know anything"

LP produced by Ray Davies any good...?

I AM A FAN. WE HAVE MET. CAPSLOCK UNINTENTIONAL

I haven't heard the album Davies produced (being a Turtle neophyte myself), but I do recommend the fairly solid/often silly Battle of the Bands ("Elenore," "You Showed Me").

Elenore fucking rulz

Cheif was a break from way back in the days before rap records too, but ath Steady B Serious remix has recontextualized that track forever in my mind.

Great band. You need to meet more people Shakey.

c) played a pivotal role in the T. Rex sound

You mean Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman's backing vocals, I presume? In which case you might have added:

d) played a pivotal role in the destruction of whatever cred Frank Zappa still had at the start of the 70s

hey this Battle of the Bands album is awesome! and really funny. love the use of "you're my pride and enjoy, etcetera" in Elenore, the food song with the brownie recipe, "Surfer Dan".... good shit

and omg that I Am Chief Kamawamalea break - teh awesome

Destroy : Outside Chance ... for inventing Ocean Colour Scene.

eh?

you don't think it sounds like the template for the 3rd-rate fag-end of britpop? not that i'm seriously blaming the Turtles for those crimes of course.

maybe I just don't have a good idea of what Ocean Colour Scene really sound like, but to me Outside Chance is just a fairly generic 60s garage band type track.

...which happened to be written by a pre-fame Warren Zevon.

I got to see Flo & Eddie w/the newest editon of the Turtles a couple years back. Fun show. They did the expected hits, plus a bit of comedy and some trivia, like a song they wrote when they were staff writers for Strawberry Shortcake. Afterwards they joked about all the subliminal messages they stuck into that and other shows they worked on. ("We've been messing your kids up for years!")

"you don't think it sounds like the template for the 3rd-rate fag-end of britpop?"

i thought it was "you showed me" that invented bad brit 90's trippop? i actually liked the lightning seeds cover. but it's nowhere near as brilliant as the original:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ANPGyzmgvk4

and sorry to be a broken record, but the album that everyone needs:

The Turtles Thread (Cuz I Couldn't Find One) A.K.A. I Finally Heard Turtle Soup.

i mean, i love the first album and i love battle of the bands, but turtle soup is just flat-out amazing. near perfect. "hot little hands" is my jam of jams.

actually i don't even know if it aint me babe is their first album. but i like it. and i like happy together. and i really need a vinyl copy of you baby. i just found a nice mono copy of happy together.

I am currently searching for Turtle Soup... lolz it took me at least three or four listens before I got the filthy little pun in I'm Chief Kamanawanalea

*cough*

yeah grabbed that earlier - hurray for blogs

'Outside Chance' is a brilliant track. If only Ocean Colour Scene had been half as good...

Someone had to ask: would it be accurate to say that this band is completely misrepresented by "Happy Together"?

wow scott totally OTM abotu Turtle Soup - grab that shit yo

altho kinda annoying that it includes several songs from Battle of the Bands. I hate when bands do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqN3ZTuq5CA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZm96qtzePY&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyx7vizXJ6w&feature=related

Seek: "Goodbye Surprise," which sounds more like Uriah Heep than anything else.

Also seek: the Top 20 hits "She's My Girl" and "You Know What I Mean," two of my very favorite songs of all.

can't get enough of these guys lately. their "20 greatest hits" compilation is incredibly solid, perhaps more so than 99% of 60s pop acts. even "happy together", which has been utterly exhausted by years of oldies radio and advertisements, sounds incredibly fresh when placed among its family. these guys were genius arrangers. "you baby", "you showed me", "she's my girl"..."love in the city" is a lost masterpiece!

One of my first-ever 45s was "Sound Asleep," and I was OBSESSED with the flipside, "Umbassa The Dragon." In no way the "worst record ever made' as youtube claims, but it is pretty deranged/drug addled...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99mzGJpy9g0

i love, love, love the Turtle Soup outtakes. 'The Owl', 'The Last Thing I Remember' and 'If We Only Had the Time' in particular are amazing tracks. better than any of the offical album tracks, imo.

better than hot little hands!?? i'll be the judge of that! um, if i can find them somewhere. i'll look on youtube.

there's a song on their first album called "... suburbia" (can't remember, i'm at work now). truly hilarious wimpy "ballad of a thin man" rip-off. check it out.

i love, love, love the Turtle Soup outtakes. 'The Owl', 'The Last Thing I Remember' and 'If We Only Had the Time' in particular are amazing tracks. better than any of the offical album tracks, imo.

I dunno if they're better but they're definitely equal, especially "The Owl."

'If We Only Had the Time' has two distinct halves, and the second half totally reminds me of another song. Is it Blood, Sweat and Tears, maybe?? The first half is the better half anyway. Love the part with the lyrics about how 'isn't it nice, how little we have to say?/and how nice it is to say'. Although this kind of needs to be heard to be read right.

damn "hot little hands" smokes

I love The First Thing I Remember

last thing I remember

Tons of great songs!! "Outside Chance" is prolly my favorite, but they had a lot of winners.

Enjoying Michael Shelley interview(s) with Howard Kaylan but not sure if I want to read his entire book.

in-laws are tight with Kaylan. last year for Xmas they gave me a 45 of "You Showed Me" autographed by him and Volman!

... and yet five years ago:

I know anything about their actual output, nor to my knowlege have I ever met a fan

They'll be inviting you to join them next!

things have changed a lot in 5 years lol

Enjoying Michael Shelley interview(s) with Howard Kaylan but not sure if I want to read his entire book.

― Oulipo Traces (on a Cigarette) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 11:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heard one of these, it was really great. I love Flo & Eddie

the '65-'66 stuff is pretty hit and miss (so many similar covers etc.) but man was this band on a roll from '67 on.

agree the Turtles rule. good harmonies and good songs. Battle of the Bands is a lot of fun to listen to.

Howard Kaylan is a fantastic singer too.

they were the perfect fit for the Care Bears. hearing them sing and talk about a magical land of fluffy clouds and stuff just feels natural.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Dinner_with_Jimi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynu7b0diFJU

What the...?

Love this clip, especially the way Mark Volman's bouncing around with his French Horn, not even pretending to actually play. This is the side of the '60s I think Mad Men caught perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRCe5L1imxg

Future Jefferson Airplane/CSNY/Stray Gator Johnny Barbata twirling the sticks!

They repeated their performance schtick in that clip (the twirling, Volman's exaggerated miming of an instrument etc.) seemingly everytime they did that song on TV. Can only imagine the gay panic hatespeech from the control room that accompanied the awkward cutaway from Volman putting his arm around Kaylan in this Sullivan clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq3awlDqAVo

This is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JHN5HaUg28

In the comments, somebody names names on all the managers, and the "Big TV Star" part of 'Manager #6' was...Bill Cosby.

"You Showed Me" hits the spot, always

Great, but I like the Byrds' original even better.

Actually, no--I'll take the Turtles too.

"You Showed Me" hits the spot, always

but how do you feel about third rate brit trippop from the 90's?

i actually liked the lightning seeds cover. but it's nowhere near as brilliant as the original

it's freakin *identical* to the turtles' version iirc

Big fan of the first two Flo & Eddie albums, and scattered bits thereafter.

Keep it warm is such a banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_3aq5OrIls

My thing with the Turtles is, I’ve never seen a photo of them in their prime. I’ve only seen them as fat, old hippies playing Rockin’ 60’s Superstars specials on PBS, so I’ve sort of carried that around subconsciously over the years. I know that they’ve aged and they were young once but I still picture them as a couple of grandpas in the 60’s, making those records, singing those songs on television. To the point that it was their identity in the 60’s, in my mind. Just like The Rolling Stones were the dirty, nasty, rebellious ones, the Turtles were the old guys.

I’ve tended to also picture them wearing turtleneck sweaters. The Turtlenecks.

Howard Kaylan always looked 15 years older than he was, he was 17 or 18 when "It Ain't Me Babe" was released!

Don't think I've ever really been able to figure them out. When I listen to "Happy Together" or "Elenore," I'm not sure to what extent they're sincerely brilliant pop music and to what extent they're sly, knowing parody. Ultimately, it probably doesn't matter.

Wow, I didn't know that about Kaylan's lack of age. So he had a substantial amount of grey hair by the age of 23. Seeing the Turtles in '60s clips I had assumed he was this eccentric older guy who got stuck in a group with a bunch of kids.

clemenza, if intention matters, the lyrics to "Elenore" were written as a deliberate piss-take iirc

They were on a horrible record company who pressurised them to come up with hits and basically ripped them off, so "Elenore" was kind of a fuck you to them. Also it was on "Battle of the Bands" where they were doing songs in different styles as different bands, so it's a self-parody or a satirical version of what the record company thought the Turtles should sound like - which begs the question, why were people ever surprised that Kaylan and Volman ended up working with Zappa? To return to the unlikely youthfulness of Howard Kaylan, the band were all minors when they signed the contract with the record company, or rather when their parents did.

Yeah, come to think of it, I think I did know that "Elenore" was a put-on. Even with "Happy Together," though--which I count as a perfect distillation of everything ecstatic and sunshine-y about 1967--it walks a fine line between a gentle send-up of that mood and the thing itself.

Surely 'Happy Together' is about the 2 guys from the Turtles (Kaylan and Volman, I presume) who are inseparable friends and sing that song to each other every day.

Heh, that’s what I always thought too, at least in the back of my mind, in some dark corner that they and FZ were intent on shining a flashlight upon.

Didn’t they have to start recording as “Flo and Eddie” because their evil manager OWNED THEIR ACTUAL BIRTH NAMES?

Never thought about that but probably. Did they have the same manager as Moby Grape?

No MG had the Jefferson Airplane guy

Everyone should listen to the Andrew Hickey podcast ep on Happy Together he just did btw

This video will explain all their complicated business problems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=183OPk7-eK4

Flo and Eddie were friends with my parents back in the day. My dad was in The Leaves who shared a bad player with them (Jim Pons he played with FZ too) my mom says Howard and Mark shared a house in Lauren Canyon that had a room with a wall to wall waterbed lol.

Bass* not bad he was not bad he was very good

that is amazing that your dad was in the leaves.

dim memories of a syndicated flo & eddie radio show that was picked up by my beloved wlir in the 70s. they would only play the songs until the first appearance of the hook, which meant they could fit in a lot of songs. i remember one episode that was centered around the beau brummels. a quick search pulled this up:

https://archive.org/details/TurningTheTables061FloEddieByTheFiresidePt1Jul82017

Beloved WLIR? Oh right of course. Did you read Richard Neer’s book FM, TSF?

i have not read that book but thanks for the tip. wlir is known -- if it's known at all -- for being one of the first on the new wave tip. there was even a documentary called "dare to be different." but they were great even before that, with weekly live concert broadcasts, first from their own studios, then later from local venues like the calderone and my father's place. the concerts from their ultrasonic studios are legendary.

Right. Although in the pre-New Wave days and even after I seem to recall an element of Southern Rock as well. Feel like I can hear Larry the Duck Dunn saying something about Molly Hatchett in my head whilst riding an express bus to Jones Beach.

But yeah, there’s that one live Big Star album recorded there in 1974, for example.

a couple classic little feat performances, lou reed, dr john, incredible string band, holy modal rounders, gentle giant, frampton...they were all over the place.

I liked the old WLIR and the New Wave WLIR but my um, first love was the year and change of New Wave WPIX.

oh yeah that was a good one too. meg griffin!

Right. And Joe from Chicago, Joe Piasek, I think, her husband at the time maybe. Along with Dan Neer, Richard’s brother. Some of these people would migrate back and forth to and from the next spot on the dial at WNEW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHOZSNRFVdI

I should probably take this stuff over to the Lou Reed WPIX thread.

Heh, found this book about The Clash I never heard about until yesterday that mentions all those people which I probably have to read.

Howard Kaylan’s autobiography is a fun read- basically the exact opposite of Mike Love’s. I recall there being good Zappa stories in it.

i swear to god this song is the songwriter (al nichol) clocking a trans woman and being shitty about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc2QWTeLAQw

al don't knock it till you've tried it, that's all i got to say about that

More like the TERF-les on that particular number

does really bring to light how much transphobia is fundamentally rooted in patriarchy, though. al nichol makes a pretty poor excuse for a radical feminist!