The Cowsills vs The Partridge Family

Last record has some beauts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr4UKpKYpx0

That album is good and very obscure, but then the whole run of We Can Fly, Captain Sad & His Ship of Fools, II x II, and On My Side is great. Can't vouch for the "in concert" LP from 1969, and the first album from '67 with "The Rain, the Park, and Other Things" has kind of a beginners' feel to it, so it's a bit lesser than the others.

In Concert is lots of covers plus the studio version of “Hair,” no?

man i'm just a sucker for the mellotron every time, already a great song but when the chamberlin showed up on "can you love" really pushed it over the top!

Slightly weird when II x II shows up written Ii x Ii.

In Concert is lots of covers plus the studio version of “Hair,” no?

Right. Never actually heard it.

So is there good stuff in the Family Band outtakes? Anything illuminating?

i heard their version of "good vibrations" from it before i knew much of anything about them. i understand the song sets a high standard but they don't meet it.

not to derail but i quite like this version of "good vibrations" - they clearly put a lot of work into replicating the sound of the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqspzKO8AM

Nice. Balearic rock!

More detail on Bud’s bad behavior, especially in the one called “Bud & Barbara,” if you needed any more. In some others you find out those rocks they are often seen crawling on were near a big house they lived in in Newport that Artie Kornfeld helped them get.

Wait I don’t think that house is in Newport maybe it’s in California, couldn’t quite tell where that was. Guess I need to watch more footage.

iirc the partridge family was originally written for the cowsills family but they wanted to replace the mom with shirley jones in the show and the cowsills kids refused

also my wife is a HUGE cowsills fan, she ran a late 90s cowsills page/forum while in high school. i think she met all of them at one point or another.

Yeah, Bob Cowsill interviews Shirley Jones about that at one point. Although of course he says Bud was the one who mixed the deal because of that.

So after watching all these footage I have

So after watching all these videos and all this footage I have decided that, although I like all the Cowsills a lot, the one I think is the coolest is John and the one I am the most like in personality is Paul.

ah, see i wasnt sure the whole story, just half-remembering what my wife had said years ago

Paul is sort of the tetchy, combative one, right?

Yes, exactly. The difficult middle child.

Although I’m not in the middle

And not always difficult

Bass on TRTP&OT sure sounds like Carol Kaye, but what I can see says it was recorded in NYC with Joe Mack/Joe Macho on bass.

Supposedly he played with a pick on "Like A Rolling Stone" so I guess i can compare with that.

Also, there are some serious Cowsills fan sites out there.

Check this out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xdzx6zD5uI

Well, that’s fine but meant to post this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjlML0HvpPU

And check this out, from 2000. How young they look, especially Barry (and Richard) compared to a few years later. Barry looks just like his dad, and a little like his mom, I guess, and you can really hear his vocals loud and clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRzM2L4kCfk

On no, that’s Billy I am looking at and hearing, in the skinny jeans and messing with the guitar. Barry is in the back looking like Floyd Pepper. Still.

And just realized who he looks like in that video and who Bud looks a great deal like - Robert Mitchum.

I like them in this New Wave mode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROksVUge-bA

On the Barbara McNair show, doing some instrument switching with John playing guitar and singing, Paul on drums and Susan on bass for one number - was Barry ill?- another lead turn for Barbara (in case you didn’t click on Playboy After Dark clip) and participating in a group sing-a-long of “United We Stand” with Barbara McNair, an opera singer named Jan Rubeš and Freda Payne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PegF-6Vc1E

Another one from 2000, a little later in the year, at night, Barry playing bass and Billy singing the main lead on “Hair” with a little Hank Williams feel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3eSNLUZPdk

No, it seems to be from the same show as the one before, sorry

What I referred to as the New Wave stuff eventually was released eight years later on the Global album. Apparently some A&R guy got fired when attempted to release it prior to that. Also during this period Barry wasn’t playing with them so you will see videos with another guy on bass named Cecil Duke.

Really maybe should call it Power Pop instead of New Wave.

This record company executive, Marc Nathan: http://www.playlistresearch.com/interviews/nathan.htm

And here, in the comments: http://www.theautomatik.com/2006/01/06/barry-cowsill-1954-2005/

Are the songwriting credits to two Cowsills on the first two albums Bill and Bob (like they are on Captain Sad)?

First two MGM albums, that is

Presumably, though it's not specified in either case. The song "Mister Flynn" on We Can Fly is credited to three Cowsills.

Amazing thread! Never seen it before. Lots of stuff about Susan and the Continental Drifters here, incl. re a 2-CD comp on Omnivore and backstory etc etc: too much to paste, but worth the search:
TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

Well and here's a few tidbits from that:

saw susan cowsill at a local library recently. she was complaining of a cold but what a voice. she mentioned that continental drifters set from a couple posts up. i learned that vicki peterson is married to one of her brothers. also that she recorded a couple of singles for warner bros in the 70s, one of which had the first-issued version of "mohammad's radio" as the b-side. jackson browne gave her the zevon demo and suggested she cover it. susan cowsill fun facts.

― Thus Sang Freud, Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Also, what the hell:

Wow, thanks guys! Never heard of that. She has a lot of interesting comments in the compilation notes. Think she was already performing with Vicki Peterson as the Psycho Sisters when they met the Continental Drifters, and they finally put out an album under that name last year or so. She also did a solo album a few years ago, which was okay, but so far I like her better as a team player, like here (caffeinated review from 2013 follows)
The Hobart Brothers & Lil Sis Hobart--At Least We Have Each Other Jon Dee Graham, Freedy Johnston, and Susan Cowsill pool their songs about buildings, food, dirt, jobs, women, men, spare tires of several kinds, jobs, pavement, waking up, jobs, dreams (maybe), jobs, spare sounds, fuller ones too (I prefer the former here, for the coffee break vibe, but both work), and jobs. Not really so many (or so remarkable) jobs, but more than we usually hear songs about; songs that beat plain ol' complaints, anyway. Susan Cowsill was the youngest member of her brothers'/mother's/manager dad's group The Cowsills, real-life basis of the Partridge Family. She does not sound waify here: fairly tough and flexible voice, something of a potentially upsetting, born-for/to-trouble spark. Freedy Johnston's reedy, and observant enough to bend with the ornery wind; Graham's one gravelly, articulate Austin cracker. Johnston, whose stoically idiosyncratic practicality has so far led to at least one great solo album, Can You Fly (not even a rhetorical question), sometimes breaks out a bit of power pop here. It's in the soda pop pulled from a rusty icebed by a gas station, probably in Texas and/or the Great Plains, while the sun keeps the beat---they keep enough shade, enough cool to try and work out "the difference between beaten and beat," also Beat. This album is rec'd to these individual artists' fans, ditto those who enjoy the community-minded best of James McMurtry, Warren Zevon, John Doe, Dave Alvin, Eliza Gilkyson, like that y'all.

― dow, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 8:25 PM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, most of the Continental Drifters core moved from LA to NOLA, and eventually some (most? all?) of them encountered or were affected by Katrina in various ways; one of Susan's brothers didn't survive it.Also this from my 2013 Nashville Scene ballot notes:
The dB's--"She Won't Drive In The Rain Anymore": Very good contemporary country jangle-ballad, one of the highlights on a very good reunion album (aren't many of those). The true story, as told by Holsapple to http://dbs-repercussion.blogspot.com
"It's about my wife evacuating New Orleans during Katrina. I was on the road with Hootie [and the Blowfish]; my wife had taken my daughter and my baby son and my daughter's best friend on a train to Birmingham to buy a vehicle up there. She knew the hurricane was coming, and she did all the things you're supposed to do. We didn't think too much about it — we certainly didn't realize it was going to be a 100-year storm. But when she got to Birmingham to get the car, it was very evident there was no turning back, so she drove literally across the storm path to get to her grandmother's in Little Rock."
Peter goes on to explain the reunion theme in the lyrics. He says his wife "took a day to re-group and then started driving back and she dropped my daughter's best friend off with her mom in Memphis. And then [my wife took] Miranda, my daughter with Susan Cowsill, to where Susan and her husband were living at the time. Then she made a beeline to where Hootie was playing next, which was Baltimore. She got there 15 minutes before we went on. It had been this incredible, tortuous time, unable to get in touch with anybody. Meanwhile, I'm in this sort of suspended state of touring because I need the money, and I can't really stop. Where am I gonna go, what am I gonna do? When I saw her, it was the first time in weeks, she and my son pulled up and I was overjoyed just to get to see her. We didn't really talk very much because we didn't really know what to say; it was all just so overwhelming."

― dow, Tuesday, June 2, 2015 8:38 PM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Vicki is married to John Cowsill, who plays drums with Mike Love and Bruce Johnston in a "Beach Boys" group. I saw him play with Bob Cowsill, who performs regularly at a club in Los Angeles as The Cowsills. They do 60s/70s covers, with their own hits thrown in.

― nickn, Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Susan and Vicki certainly sing the hell out of every track they're given access to on that long and winding Continental Drifters comp.

Still need to check out their own (Psycho Sisters) album, And need to dig up Susan's solo album--was good, but don't remember particulars, just an impression of her standing by a river, singing her ass off (but not in a showboat way).

Thanks for adding all that stuff, dow. Isn’t Bill Mumy also a member of The Psycho Sisters?

Been listening to Susan’s solo album called Lighthouse which is pretty good and has a song called “River of Love” which is a tribute to Barry and was written by him, I think, performed by the four remaining Cowsills. There is a nice video of it made by the director of Family Band which starts with three of them on the mic waiting for John who is in another room either warming up or practicing for a gig by playing a Beach Boys song.

Ah, actually it is not John singing and playing The Beach Boys, maybe someone else on piano, perhaps it is Jackson Browne, as someone claims in the comments section, and then Paul Cowsill is singing it in imitation of John imitating Blondie Chaplin imitating Carl Wilson, in an attempt to summon John
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xva13taqpJY

Sorry about being a bit gaga at gogo about posting videos but it’s just that there are so many videos of them on YouTube if I find one I am particularly interested it I am putting it here so I can find it again.

Or maybe it is him playing piano. In any case it is an amusing illustration of the Cowsill dynamic.

Some post-Katrina talk from some of us here: Bands in the "powerpop" chapter of the 1980 new wave guide I just bought for https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=171&boardid=41&threadid=46289 off a seemingly homeless guy set up on the sidewalk of St Marks

Thanks! Had forgotten about that thread.

He does sometimes seem to appear with his siblings, but it’s not very often at all and not expected.

John anc Vicki apparently are living in NYC right now, but so far I have yet to cross paths with them.

i love susan cowsill, I can't even imagine how weird it would be to sing in a band at 8 years old but she never stopped so, still sounds great too

she popped up singing backups while I was trying to find the definitive live "Welcome Back" (Kotter) which seems to be this, on youtube anyways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFeHkC_w6kc

and then youtube was already open so had to listen to "Cocaine Drain" and then it was a cowsills evening

Susan became a really good singer but some of the early years kid sister stuff can be painful to watch, although I kind of feel bad even mentioning that.