They do so!
They don't even play their own instruments.
No. No!!!
That's not even Joe Frank Corollo's own V-neck sweater!
Ahhh!
~~~~~
As just about everyone knows, a pop sensation emerged in 1966 that took the charts by storm. It later came out that the public face of this band didn't play the instruments on their recordings which forever tarnished their reputation. Fortunately, they would seek a degree of creative freedom and would find a bit of redemption, even if shaking the image of them as frauds would never quite wear off.
This is The T-Bones, a five-piece act that had been put together in order to "perform" and promote the single "No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)" since the actual musicians on it were members of Los Angeles studio group The Wrecking Crew who were preoccupied with more pressing matters and who, presumably, weren't terribly photogenic.
What's funny about this now is that a pop hit credited to The Wrecking Crew would be something would please music geeks today — especially if it had been something that had just slipped through the cracks and had only been unearthed decades later. But to hell with obscurity! Even a big hit single would've been regarded as a feather in the cap of a hardworking and talented but largely overlooked group of musicians. They were invaluable in the fame and fortune of countless stars and they deserved a taste of it themselves.
The idea of taking advertising jingles and turning them into releasable pop music is an inspired one — not to mention alien when you consider that TV ads normally get their tunes from existing recordings rather than the other way around. (I always think of the Canadian ads for butter from the late eighties that used Donovan's "Mellow Yellow" with the whispered bits altered to "just butter it") While Brian Wilson was working on his magnum opus Pet Sounds with a lyricist who'd come from the world of copyrighting, at least one record company was using the compositional skills of people in the advertising industry to supply them with potential hits.
The problem is, the Wrecking Crew are far too much the polished pros to have much fun with the theme song from an Alka-Seltzer commercial. Working under the direction of a Brian Wilson or a Phil Spector might get them to push out creatively; similarly, their deft all-around abilities displayed on singles such as The Byrds' "Mr Tambourine Man" and Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer" marked them out as being able to mimic the sound of just about any band out there. Nothing of either sort is going on with "No Matter What Shape". It's easy to imagine Booker T and the MG's playing around with it, gifting listeners with some typically sublime organ and guitar solos and just making it so much more than a lightweight TV jingle but that's not what the finest crew of LA session cats did with it. ("Feelin' Fine", the B-side, is surprisingly spirited, sounding far less like they were simply phoning it in)
The public face of The T-Bones went out and did the promo work. While it must've been exciting to have been on national TV, it couldn't have been very fulfilling to be a professional musician miming along to a record they didn't have any involvement in. Luckily, this didn't hold them back in the long run. Three of the fake Bones went on to a successful recording career in their own right and they'll even be appearing in this blog in a while. Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds did their own singing and playing and even wrote some of their own material. I imagine they'd outgrown the V-neck sweaters by then though.
Score: 5
~~~~~
Can Con
I suppose back in the mid-sixties the idea of a Dylan parody must've seemed fresh rather than hackneyed. As for it being funny? Uh, not with this dreadful mess. Of course, it just has to be the product of a DJ who likes the sound of his own voice. (Ed.: That's every DJ that has ever lived) I previously blogged about CHUM legend Gerry Ferrier and his novelty single "The President's Canada Congress" — which I still haven't had the chance to hear; YouTube still comes up short when it comes to shitty Canadian comedy discs from decades past — but the man just wouldn't take a hint and get lost so there was lots more from him. This time, he actually made the Top 10 with "Like a Dribbling Fram" under the name Race Marbles. If you're going to make a bad Dylan-esque copy then you might as well do it as poorly as possible and in this respect Ferrier couldn't have done better. He sounds a lot more like Gordon Lightfoot than the Bard himself and that's probably the best thing I can even bring myself to say about it. I don't make many worthwhile comments in this space but I have to say I stand by what I wrote the last time his nibs came up: "Say what you will about old pop and rock stars hosting their own radio shows but they tend to be better suited to spinning records and yammering about nothing than DJ's do when it comes to cutting quality music". Quite.
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