Tag Archives: Howard Kaylan

The Turtles and the Airwaves ► A Modern Day Fable

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Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan aka Flo & Eddie

Remember Aesop’s fable of The Tortoise and the Hare? The moral of that story: slow and steady wins the race, especially against a tricky opponent. Today’s Fable Du Jour, kiddies, is how The Turtles, of Happy Together fame, won a huge lawsuit against SiriusXM, a decision that will have profound effects on Show Bidnezz. 

So, gather ’round children and stop fidgeting. I call this modern day fable, “The Turtles and the Airwaves.” It also has tricky adversaries, but ends with the same moral: one step at a time will get you there, especially if you can outwit your protagonists. However, because it’s updated for the 21st Century, this race ends in a courtroom, not a finish line. 

But first, a word from our sponsor:

Our story begins all the way back in the last century, in the ’60s, when a bunch of teenagers with a wacky dream started a Rock and Roll band. Call them The Turtles because that’s what they called themselves, after changing their name from The Crossfires when they signed a recording contract. Because they were young and stupid, the contract they signed with White Whale Records would come back to kick them in the ass later.

But that was all in the future. As the ’60s progressed, The Turtles delivered on their end of the bargain, recording Top Ten hit after Top Ten hit. However, The Turtles were pretty much all that was keeping White Whale afloat. It already had serious financial troubles and no other hit-makers. The company pressed Volman and Kaylan, the lead singers of The Turtles, to dump the rest of the group and tour with a pick-up band. It also wanted the Mark and Howard to just add their voices to backing tracks and tunes cut by other musicians. Eventually the White Whale went belly up, which is when that crazy contract reared its clause. [Geddit?]

When they were too young to know any better, and just wanted to make music, Volman and Kaylan had not only signed away the rights to the Turtles name, but had actually signed away the right to use their own names. In one of the most Kafkaesque chapters in the entire Kafkaesque history of Rock and Roll, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan were prevented from calling themselves Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan.

That’s when Flo & Eddie (originally The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, but shorted to a pun; rivers can both flow and eddy) were born. Prevented from using their own names, Flo & Eddie joined Frank Zappa’s band and recorded several LPs with him, as well as appearing in the movie “200 Motels.”

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’ve been a Frank Zappa fan since Freak Out was a new LP. I saw it at my local Kresge’s and it was the ugliest band I had ever seen in my life. I bought the 2-record set and played it for hours on end while I poured over the crazy graphics and liner notes. That’s why I could quote from memory certain passages printed inside the gatefold cover, including:

“I’d like to clean you boys up a bit and mold you. I believe I could make you bigger than The Turtles.”
~~~~~A NOTED L.A. DISC JOCKEY

The irony of those words were not lost on me when I learned Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan had joined Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Over the years Zappa had many amazing musicians in his band, but the short-lived Flo & Eddie Years have always been my favourite Zappa era. 

TANGENT OVER

Flo & Eddie released several records under that name and, along the way, provided back up vocals to T. Rex, Alice Cooper, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. And, as improbable as this sounds after their scatological residency with Zappa, provided music for The Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake. As well, Volman & Kaylan litigated the White Whale issues, eventually winning the right to not only use the name The Turtles, but their own names as well, hence the billing The Turtles featuring Flo & Eddie.

However, life is a marathon. The next leg in this race came in 1974, when White Whale’s assets were sold at auction to satisfy creditors in bankruptcy. When the hammer came down Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan had bought full ownership of all their old recordings, making them a rarity in the music biz: the workers owning the means of production.That’s when they were able to start re-releasing The Turtles music, either in original form or on Greatest Hit packages; a cottage industry that continues to this very day.

And, that’s where this Fable Du Jour really begins: Remember how stupid the boys were that they signed away their own names? [See above.] They’ve learned a lot in 5 decades. Especially, Mark Volman, who is also known these days as Professor Mark Volman. According to the WikiWackyWoo:

[A]t age 45 he started his bachelor’s degree at Loyola Marymount University. Volman graduated with a B.A. degree in 1997 Magna cum Laude and was the class valedictorian speaker. During the speech he led the graduates in a chorus of “Happy Together“. CBS Evening News covered Volman’s graduation and interviewed his parents who were perplexed at their son’s academic accomplishments.[1]

Volman went on to earn a Master’s degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in screenwriting
in 1999 also from Loyola. Since that time, he has taught Music Business
& Industry courses in the Communications and Fine Arts department
at Loyola. He has also taught courses in the Commercial Music Program at
Los Angeles Valley College. He is currently an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Entertainment Industry Studies Program at Belmont University in the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business and conducts seminars about the music industry for various academic institutions from junior high school
to University level. In addition, he offers consulting on music
business and entertainment through the website Ask Professor Flo.[2]

With no personal knowledge whatsoever, I suspect Volman was the partner who figured out SiriusXM was ripping them off. [To be fair: If you’re working in the music business it’s a good bet that somebody’s ripping you off.] Last year Flo & Eddie, Inc. launched a $100,000,000 lawsuit against SiriusXM, arguing that the company was not compensating them for playing recordings made before 1972. SiriusXM argued it didn’t have to.The judge said, “Hold on there, Buckaroos.”

Copyright law is complicated. Musical copyright law even more so. Long story short: Essentially, musical recordings made before 1972 did not get copyright protection when the federal copyright law was drafted and passed. Therefore, pre-’72 recordings could be played on SiriusXM stations without having to pay compensation. Flo & Eddie, Inc. argued that California’s 1982 copyright law — which allowed payments for such use — should take precedence.

Long story even shorter: U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez agreed with Flo & Eddie’s lawyers and granted summary judgement against SiriusXM. [On anther issue, concerning music copied onto servers and provided on-demand, the judge wanted to hear further arguments.]

Owning their own recordings also means that
The Turtles can put out boutique items, like this
recently released vinyl set of 45 RPM singles,
recreating the original sleeves and record labels.

You can get one of your very own HERE.

There’s no downplaying how big this judgement is. The Hollywood Reporter called it a “crushing loss” in a “high stakes battle” in its Headline Du Jour and “legal earthquake” in the lede. Eriq Gardner goes on to say:

But overall, this is a whopping ruling with consequences almost impossible to overstate. In the short term, the ruling will likely be appealed as the plaintiffs eye a trial that will determine the awarding of damages. In the long term, it could compel SiriusXM, Pandora and many in the tech industry to strongly lobby Congress for new copyright laws that cover pre-1972 recordings. The ruling also will — or should — be read closely by other businesses including terrestrial radio operators and bars that publicly perform older music.


SiriusXM is facing another lawsuit from the RIAA in California as well as more lawsuits from Flo & Eddie in other states. Pandora is also facing a lawsuit by record labels in New York. And the ruling potentially opens the floodgates to more litigation on the issue of pre-1972 music.

This ruling applies to so much of the music that was recorded prior to 1972. And, it could change the entire business model of music streaming companies like Spotify and Pandora. However, kids, this fable is not about Pay Radio, or streaming services, or even multi-million dollar judgements. This is the story of how two Turtles, putting one foot in front of the other for the last 49 years, managed to outwit one of the biggest media companies in the planet and win one of the biggest races ever run.

And, it couldn’t happen to two nicer guys.

John and Yoko and Frank and Flo and Eddie

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John Lennon and Yoko One perform with Frank Zappa and The Mothers

Dateline June 6, 1971 – Frank Zappa and his newly formed Mothers play a notorious gig at the Fillmore East. This was the second night of a two night stand. As he had done previously, Zappa had a surprise for the audience: an encore set backing up John Lennon and Yoko Ono, just beginning their sojourn in NYC that ended so tragically.

The inner-sleeve from Lennon’s release
The minimalist cover as released by Zappa

Zappa had arranged for the night to be recorded, as he increasingly did for all live performances. He came to release the night’s performance by The Mothers as “Fillmore East – June 1971.” It was the latest chapter in the band’s “Touring can make you crazy” phase, which culminated in the movie 200 Motels. During the evening’s entertainment Flo and Eddie, alternatively playing both groupies and Pop Stars, document Vanilla Fudge having sex with a mudshark at the Edgewater Motel, meet Bwana Dik, reprise a few classic Zappa tunes, and eventually agree to sing their big hit song — WITH A  BULLET!!! — “Happy Together.”

Then Zappa sprung John and Yoko on the audience instead of the encore:


~~ Rare footage of Frank Zappa, Flo and Eddie and John and Yoko ~~

Frank Zappa turned the portion of John and Yoko’s performance over to him after the show. As was his wont, Lennon turned the tapes over to Phil Spector, who remixed the tapes and released it in 1972 as Side 4 of the “Some Time In New York City” double-record set. Frank Zappa was extremely unhappy with the results and lawsuits were threatened before it all got settled to everyone’s satisfaction. Frank Zappa tells that story:

Howard Kaylan tells the story from his point of view in his recently released autobiography Shell Shocked [reviewed here]:

If our first Fillmore show […] was wonderful, our second was transcendent. When the concert ended and the audience stood, waiting for their encore, it felt as if a herd of elephants had entered the auditorium as the world’s most famous couple walked onstage. The resulting jam was recorded by both Frank and the Fillmore and was released on two different albums. John released it as the 4th LP [sic] in his Some Times In New Your City compilation on Apple, although he took writing credit on every song, including Frank’s iconic “King Kong,” which h renamed and tried to publish. Frank’s lawyers had to sue John’s lawyers to straighten the entire thing out, and it really wasn’t all that great anyway, but at least I can say that I am among a handful of people, right alongside Paul McCartney, to ever share a writing credit with the immortal John Lennon. So there.

Zappa got the last laugh. He eventually released his own, remixed, versions of those recordings on the Playground Psychotics CD. He gave the songwriters the proper credits, but renamed one of the tunes “A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono.”

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Unpacking The Writer ► Hits and Misses

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Something happened overnight. I don’t know what it was, but I’m delighted.

When I woke up early this morning Not Now Silly already had 230 hits since 8PM last night. Normally there is only some 30-50 hits overnight, with an average of 350-400 hits for an entire day. That’s why this morning’s number was such a surprise.

Nearly half of those hits (97) were for what I consider to be a very important post. “Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka?” actually breaks new news about Watergate, some 40 years after the fact. In this post I accuse Fox “News” Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen of using his revisionist John Mitchell biography “The Strong Man” to cover up Richard Nixon’s treason. This treason is one of the lesser-known crimes of Tricky Dicky’s, which actually took place before he became president. While I only posted it in March, it’s become so popular with my readers that it already appears on my All Time Top Ten list at Number 6, leapfrogging my previous post that made fun of James Rosen — Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News” — during the night.

The 2nd most popular post of the last 24 hours — but with only 1/3rd the number of hits as the Rosen post — is Another Magical Tee Vee Moment ► Barbara Walters ► Katherine Hepburn ► Trees, a small bit of silliness I posted exactly 1 year ago today. However, I promoted that archival post yesterday, so it garnering recent hits is not much of a surprise.

In 3rd place for the last 24 hours (as well 3rd for the entire week already) is my recent review of Howard Kaylan’s book SHELL SHOCKED; My Life With The Turtles, Flo & Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. … Howard liked the review enough to have promoted it several times on facebook and Twitter. Thanks, Howie! [He wouldn’t have an ulterior motive, would he?]

Rounding out Today’s Top Ten:

Musical Interlude ► Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band
Day In History ► May 31, 1921 ► When Whites Went Crazy In Tulsa
Day In History ► Josephine Baker Born
Musical Appreciation ► Brian Jones [My All Time #1 blog post]
The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit ► Part Five
The Sunrise to Canton Road Trip For Research
Fox “News” Spin Cycle ► Episode 34

Still with me, readers? If so, click on an advert over there in the right column. >>>=====> See them over there? It will cost you nothing to click on an advert, but I get a few pennies when you do. And, I do mean few. However, that’s the only remuneration I get for the many hours of work I put into crafting these posts for your enjoyment. Clicking on an advert is the least you can do.

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Book Review: Shell Shocked by Howard Kaylan with Jeff Tamarkin

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Actual cover by the actual Cal Schenkel

SHELL SHOCKED; My Life With The Turtles, Flo & Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. . . .
by Howard Kaylan with Jeff Tamarkin

A few years back my buddy Alan scored some tickets to Hippiefest, the Rock and Roll nostalgia show then schlepping across ‘Merka during the Summer of Love, aka 2009. As is our wont when attending concerts, we went early for the people watching.

It could have been was the name “Hippiefest.” Or else it could have been the fact that Hippiefest included, along with The Turtles featuring Flo & Eddie, Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night, Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals, Joey Molland of Badfinger and Leslie West with a tribute to Mountain; all ’60s icons. Regardless, the audience was a veritable sea of tie die. Alan (who is 13 years younger than me) and I laughed and made fun of all the old, decrepid Hippies wallowing in ponytails and nostalgia — until I realized I was one.

Howard Kaylan, of the aforementioned Flo & Eddie’s Turtles, has now written his life story, which turns out to be a very funny book about far more than Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll — although it’s got plenty of that, too. This is a book about the very continuum of Show Bidnezz itself, filled with unexpected twists and turns and populated with cameos by the unlikeliest of people, including Soupy Sales, Ian Whitcomb, Aston “Family Man” Barrett, Care Bears, Johnny Carson, Jerry Lewis, Orson Bean, and Twiggy, just to name a few. And, of course, the book is also jam-packed with stories about those in the music business that you’d expect, like Marc Bolan, Frank and Gail Zappa, Ray Davies, John Sebastian, Chip Douglas, Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper, The Beatles, Brian Jones, and Jimi Hendrix, among many others. [The last 3 encountered on the same magical night.] The list of cameos goes on and on, but none of it comes off as name-dropping on Kaylan’s part. He’s just telling his stories.

Flo & Eddie’s Turtles at Hippiefest during the Summer of Love of 2009

For me the most revealing scene takes place near the beginning of the book. Howard was still a kid and he’s on his first great Road Trip, riding in the back seat as his dad drove clear across the country to take a job with General Electric in Los Angeles. The Kaplan [sic] family stopped in Las Vegas and took in the free lounge show of Louis Prima and Keeley Smith. Kaylan admits:

Louis and Keeley invented a style of cabaret that my singing partner Mark [Volman] and I later adapted (all right, we took it, okay?) and still use in every single performance. Louis would clown it up, big time, while the lovely Indian maiden, Keeley, would stand as stiffly as a mannequin and sing in her mesmerizing style, seemingly oblivious to her husband’s mad antics. Only eight or nine short years later, those two fat front men in the Turtles were cashing in by doing the very same thing. If you don’t know who they were, maybe you remember David Lee Roth’s big hit “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody”? That’s a note-for-note cover of Louis Prima’s arrangement. Seriously, if you are still drawing a blank, get a DVD or go on YouTube and check out their nightclub act from the ’50s and ’60s. They were amazingly ahead of their time. Hey, Sinatra loved them. The whole business loved them. They molded me.

[Full disclosure: “Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” is a song that I have nailed many times during drunken Karaoke nights. I always do the Prima version, even though the Karaoke machine thinks it’s David Lee Roth’s version.]

By the time you get to the end of Shell Shocked Kaylan has detailed several more Road Trips, each more hilarious than the last. However, it was Kaylan’s stories about The Business of Show, like the Prima/Smith tale above, that gave me a new view of the entertainment industry. I had always viewed the invention of Rock and Roll as The Great Dividing Line™ between then and now. The Brill Building had figuratively burned down. Nothing was ever the same. However, Kaylan’s life story comfortably straddles that line between Old Show Biz and Everything That Came After. Show Bidnezz is, and has always been, a continuum, with Kaylan’s memoirs just the latest piece of the puzzle.

One of the most amusing stories in the book is also the subject of “My Dinner With Jimi,” the 2003 movie about Kaylan’s first visit to Swingin’ London, flush with his earliest Turtles fame. I won’t give anything away other than to say the telling of the story in the book is much funnier than the movie (written by one Howard Kaylan, tackling his first full-length movie script). I don’t know if it was the direction, the silly ’60s costumes and wigs, or the barely adequate acting, but the movie never grabbed me. However, Howard’s telling in the book makes it clear why someone wanted to film that story. It’s HIGH-LARRY-US. As a Show Biz Raconteur™ Kaylan delivers the goods time and time again in Shell Shocked.

Freak Out was the antithesis of bubblegum

What makes Howard’s story so interesting is that he’s far more than just a single thread in the great Rock and Roll tapestry. Yet so few people know him by name. They’ll be familiar with hits like “Happy Together,” “Let Me Be,” and “Elinore,” but The Turtles were not a group known individually.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Johnny-come-lately to The Turtles oeuvre. Oh, sure I knew the hits, but back in the ’60s I had a predjudice against anything I considered “bubblegum.” That’s why I was a Zappa fan from Day One. Freak Out had one of the ugliest bands I had ever seen on the cover and bought it for that reason alone. I listened to it so much I knew every note and I could quote by heart the liner notes that said:

“I’d like to clean you boys up a bit and mold you. I believe I could make you as big as the Turtles.”
~~~~~A Noted L.A. Disc Jockey

That’s why it was such sweet irony that a few years later the two lead singers for The Turtles, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, had joined Frank Zappa and not the other way around. However, due to what must have been one of the worst contracts in the entire music bidnezz, Volman and Kaylan were not only prevented from using The Turtles name, which is slightly understandable, but were also prevented from using their own names, which is simply incomprehensible. That’s why they were forced to adopt the noms de song of The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, eventually shortened to Flo & Eddie.

It was only as members of Zappa’s band that I came to appreciate Kaylan’s backstory and the subversive quality to The Turtles music, especially the latter LPs. However, it was as the voices of Zappa, singing about how touring can make you crazy, that gave Volman and Kaylan street cred, not only to me, but millions of Zappa fans around the world. Sadly their connection with Zappa came to an abrupt end when the 1971 tour disintegrated in disaster. First came the fire in Montreux, which burned the stage and all their equipment; an event witnesses by Deep Purple and memorialized in the song “Smoke on the Water.” The band gamely voted to continue the tour with borrowed equipment. A week later, while performing the encore at London’s Rainbow Theatre, a jealous fan jumped onstage and pushed Zappa into the orchestra pit.

At this point in their career Flo and Eddie were forced to reinvent themselves and strike out on their own again. [Even more full disclosure: It was at this low point in their career that I met Flo & Eddie and came to their rescue. I tell that tale in Flo and Eddie and Mark and Howard.] Flo and Eddie albums followed, as did backing vocals for some of Rock’s most iconic artists and songs, and then comes the family-friendly cartoons. Name any other artist talented enough to go from singing about sex with mud sharks to Care Bears.

All of these twists and turns are told with great verve and humour by Kaylan (although he chose to leave our meeting out). Kaylan kept a diary from his earliest days, which must have been an enourmous help, considering the Rock and Roll lifestyle makes many mornings cloudy.


A Zappa era song sung by Flo & Eddie about the Rock and Roll lifestyle.

Any quibbles I have with Shell Shocked are minor: 1). While Kaylan dishes the dirt, with most of the stories being told on himself, the most negative portrayals in the book have to do with ex-managers and other Show Biz people who ripped him off. However, Kaylan avoids naming names. Someone must have warned him about defamation lawsuits; 2). I had hoped to learn more about how he felt during the Kafkaesque period when he wasn’t allowed to ply his trade under his own name. Sadly he doesn’t talk about his feelings here (or elsewhere) in the book; 3). The actual business dealings with Zappa and, post-Frank, Gail Zappa. Gail continues to release posthumous Frank Zappa recordings that feature Flo and Eddie. My understanding is that Howard sees no money from these releases. However, Kaylan was very circumspect in describing Gail in the book and I get the sense he held a lot back.

Howard Kaylan, star of stage, screen, and now book lists

This is mere nitpickery on my part, only realized in retrospect for this review. I certainly didn’t miss it in the reading. From cover to cover Shell Shocked is a terrific, rollicking trip through the world of Rock and Roll. It gets the Aunty Em seal of approval.

SHELL SHOCKED; My Life With The Turtles, Flo & Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. . . . by Howard Kaylan with Jeff Tamarkin; Backbeat Books, Paperback, ISBN 978-1-61780-846-3 304 pages, index, pictures

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Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels Gets The Full Treatment

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Circle the date. On October 23rd Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels will get the full orchestral treatment for the first time since 1970, when the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed it live in the movie of the same name.

In fact, the entire score has never really been performed by just an orchestra, the movie soundtrack having been augmented by The Mothers of Invention, newly-reformed by Frank Zappa in 1970 to make the movie. This group of Mothers featured members of the hit-making Pop-Rock act The Turtles on vocals. However, due to a shitty contract that Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan signed with White Whale Records, as teenagers, they were not allowed to use their real names for recording, so they took the names Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, respectively.

But, I digress . . .

According to Billboard Magazine, Gail Zappa has been in negotiations with the L.A. Philharmonic on and off over the years to bring Frank’s music to the ‘Merkin concert stage. While Europeans have had the experience of hearing Zappa’s music played by full orchestras, that pleasure has been denied people on this side of the pond . . . until now.

“I believe in my heart of hearts that someone on the board (of the Philharmonic) said it’s about time,” Zappa’s widow Gail Zappa told Billboard. “This music was written before our children were even conceived and they have never had a chance to hear his music in a proper concert hall.”

L.A. Philharmonic president and CEO Deborah Borda said “a lack of resources and imagination have kept it from getting to the concert hall. [Conductor laureate] Esa-Pekka [Salonen] said the first person to call and welcome him (in 1992) was Frank Zappa. Beyond any Esa-Pekka connection, it’s our connection to L.A.” Zappa died in 1993.

Frank Zappa explaining the scene from 200 Motels in which “The Girl Wants to Fix Him Some Broth.”

200 Motels was a movie way ahead of its time. It’s nice to see the L.A. Philharmonic catching up. However, I can just imagine Walt Disney turning over in his grave when the orchestra begins playing “Half A Dozen Provocative Squats” in the concert hall which bears his name.

Coming soon: A review of Howard Kaylan’s autobiography “Shell Shocked; My Life With The Turtles, Flo & Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc. . . .” which will feature an exclusive interview with Mr. Kaylan. You can read an excerpt of the book at Rolling Stone Magazine.

Me and Flo and Eddie and Mark and Howard ► A Musical Appreciation

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“I’d like to clean you boys up a bit and mold you.
I believe I could make you as big as The Turtles“
~~~~~Noted L.A. disc jockey

A mere 3 days ago I wrote about Frank Zappa, one of my musical heroes. Today I want to tell the story of how I met Flo & Eddie. 

I’m telling this story because I am sure Howard Kaylan left this chapter out of his forthcoming book, “Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc.” That’s why it has been left to me to tell the unabridged story. Get comfortable, kiddies.

Three days ago, when writing about the Zappa LP Freak Out, I said: 

Not to brag, but I was there from the beginning. I discovered Frank
Zappa some time in 1966 when I first set eyes on the cover of Freak Out
at my local Kresge’s record department. As one descended on the
escalator into the basement, a gap opened in the wall revealing Kresge’s
2-rack record department. The farther one descended, more of the record
department was revealed in the expanding triangle of the record
department. As teens we’d crane our heads into that crack to see what
was new each week.

One day in 1966 my eyes spied what was the ugliest record cover I had ever seen. I had to own it.

Inside the gatefold cover of Freak Out was a quote — almost a throw-away line inside a cover jam-packed with words and collages — from a “Noted L.A. disc jockey” who said about The Mothers of Invention, “I’d like to clean you boys up a bit and mold you. I believe I could make you as big as The Turtles“.

Clearly Frank Zappa had other ideas about that. In less than 5 years, Zappa would co-opt The Turtles and hire Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan — the former-lead singers of The Turtles — as vocalists for the Mothers.

Unfortunately, Mark and Howard had signed the worst record contract in all of show biz, or so it seemed. Not only were they prevented by White Whale Records from using the name of their former-group, which no longer existed, they were also prevented from using their real names. That’s why, and how, Mark and Howard became The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie, which was shortened to Flo & Eddie. That name appealed to me because it’s a pun: A river can flow and eddy.

Flo & Eddie appeared for the first time on a Zappa LP with Chunga’s Revenge.

I want to take you all the way back to the mid-to-late ’70s, before the earth had cooled, or warmed, or the climate had changed, or something.

I no longer lived in Detroit. I now lived in Toronto and worked at the best record store in the city, Round Records on Bloor Street. I was still a Zappa fan, as the Mothers seemed to get uglier and uglier. I naturally followed the Zappa arc of LPs that started with Chunga’s Revenge and ended with the movie 200 Motels, all which featured Flo & Eddie on lead vocals. The entire theme of the Flo and Eddie Mothers’ Years is that “touring can make you crazy” and who would know that better than those two guys who had a hit single on the charts — WITH A BULLET!

Who knows how long Flo & Eddie might have stayed with Zappa had it not been for that disastrous 1971 European tour? After the episode that spawned the song “Smoke on the Water,” the band was stuck in Europe with several more concerts on the tour and all their equipment destroyed by fire. Frank took a vote and the band wanted to continue the tour, even if it meant on borrowed, inferior, equipment. At the very next gig, at the Rainbow, a deranged fan pulled Frank Zappa offstage into the orchestra pit. He sustained terrible injuries, which ended the tour and Flo & Eddie’s participation with Frank Zappa.

However, Flo & Eddie started to release records on their own, which were just as terrific as The Turtles or Mothers records. I started following Flo & Eddie and had several of their records, which is why, when Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan walked into Round Records, I turned to the rest of the staff and said, “They’re all mine!”

Round Records was the last real alternative record store (remember those
black things?) in Toronto. How Flo & Eddie had heard about us I
don’t know, but when they walked in the door I recognized them
immediately. I already knew the broad outline of their entire career up to that point.

So, I just acted cool behind the counter and gave Flo & Eddie about 15 or 20 minutes to browse. I watched them collect more and more records under their arms. The waiting was killing me! When they finally had about 15 or 20 LPs under their arms, I approached and asked if I could help them.

[Approximating and paraphrasing the conversation.]

“We’d like to take these records,” says Mark.

“Okay, I’ll ring them up.”

“No, you don’t understand.  We’d like to take these records.”

Wait!!! What???

They explain how they’ve been hired to give record reviews on a new Cee Bee Cee tee vee show, “90 Minutes Live,” with Peter Gzowski and just want to borrow the records for a day.

Peter Gzowski: A face for radio.

I have to explain this show for ‘Merkins. When CBC decided to launch a program to go up against Johnny Carson (really!) they chose Canada’s most respected RADIO broadcaster, Peter Gzowski. Peter’s radio show was a wonder. Altho’ broadcast across the nation, Gzowski had the warmth and empathy of a man sitting at your kitchen table, talking with the luminaries of the day. His show was a National Conversation, an institution. This Country in the Morning and, later, Morningside were a very big part of the fabric of Canadian society. Nothing like it exists in the U.S. of A.

When Cee Bee Cee tee vee turned to Gzowski to host 90 Minutes Live it turned, as the old joke goes, to someone who truly had a face for radio.  Not that he was ugly or anything, but no matter how much CBC cleaned Gzowski up for the camera, he still came across looking somewhat like a rumpled bed.  90 Minutes Live might have been a great show, if you closed your eyes.

Gzowski eventually went back to radio.

To recap: Flo & Eddie have this gig at The Cee Bee Cee and they want to borrow the records overnight. For some stupid reason I said I had to check with my boss, who was at lunch at the time. However, I guaranteed them that I’d have the records at the studio on Yonge Street by showtime.

My boss thought I was an idiot for not turning over $100.00 of records to Flo & Eddie on nobody’s say-so. No matter because, at the appointed time, I showed up at the CBC studio with a stack of records under my arm. My name was on a guest list. I handed over the LPs and I was shown a place just off-camera to watch the show.

I wish I could remember the records being reviewed. Some of the LPs were highly praised and some were trashed. I cringed as I watched those records that didn’t get the Flo & Eddie Seal of Approval™ get flung across the studio. YIKES! I have to try and sell those tomorrow! I do remember them as being very funny and not letting Peter get a word in edgewise.

At the end of the segment the albums were collected and handed back to me and none’s the wiser.

The show only lasted 2 years, but it became routine for me to take a stack of records to the Cee Bee Cee to get thrown around by Flo & Eddie. And that, kiddies, is how I met Flo & Eddie.

My First Band ► Cobwebs And Strange ► Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be

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When I was growing up, like every other kid in ‘Merka, I wanted to be in a band. The Beatles had just broken worldwide and it seemed like the easiest thing in the world. All you had to do is grow your hair long and shake your head every once in a while, right? No, it turns out being in a band actually involved learning an instrument. That’s where I fell down on the job.

We had a crappy acoustical guitar in the house and I would spend hours fumbling on it trying to make it sound like a guitar. It never sounded like a guitar in my hands. That’s when someone suggested I take lessons. Lessons?!?!?! Who knew?

I took many lessons and never seemed to improve. I’d practice for hours V-E-R-Y  S-L-O-W-L-Y and could pull it off the runs and scales. However, the second I tried to speed up it all started to fall apart on me. I could never make my left hand do what I wanted. Eventually my guitar teacher, as gently as he could, told me to give it up. Now keep in mind: he was getting paid for these lessons and could have strung me out forever, earning money on my fumbling. Yet, he was honest enough to tell me that in his career he had seen a couple of people like me before. Slow, I could play anything he gave me. However, the minute we tried to speed it up to anything resembling music, it all fell apart. I had an uncoordinated left hand that wouldn’t obey commands from my brain. I was heartbroken.

It turns out that time proved him right. Over the years I have learned that my left hand is pretty useless for most tasks. When I smoked I couldn’t even use my left hand to hold the cigarette because I managed to drop it so many times. Trying to use a remote with my left hand? Forget it! I’m the EXTREME opposite of ambidextrous. Hell! I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

I was heartbroken until I saw bands like The Turtles and The Rolling
Stones and The Doors. Those bands had lead singers who only had to know
how to shake a tambourine. So, I bought a tambourine and I practiced shaking it, for hours on end. When I felt I had that down I added my next signature move: I’d shake the tambourine, occasionally hitting it with my left hand. Once I perfected that I moved on to Lesson Three: Hitting my thigh with the
tambourine. That was much harder because on Day One of Lesson Three I
created a huge black and blue bruise on my thigh.

Eventually my right thigh toughened up and I could bang a tambourine
with the best of them. It was time to find a bunch of backing musicians.

Dean Donaldson, my childhood friend from Gilchrist Avenue

The truth of the matter is the band kind of fell together
organically. Across the street from me lived Dean Donaldson who had
taken up the drums. I can still remember how excited he was when he got his
first pair of drumstick and a practice pad, before he ever got his first
drum set. He came over to the house and put his practice pad on our
kitchen table and said, “I can play ‘Downtown’,” the Petulia Clark hit
that was at the top of the charts right then. Then he started singing
and banging on the pad. Every syllable was punctuated with a thud, alternating hands: ♫
WHEN YOU’RE A-LONE AND LIFE IS MA-KING YOU LONE-LY. YOU CAN AL-WAYS GO
[pause] DOWN-TOWN ♫ and at this he did a little para-diddle. It sounded
like real drumming to me. What did I know? I had just perfected the
tambourine.

I went to summer camp with a fellow named Mark Levine, who played Farfisa organ, and another kid named Howard Deitch, who played guitar. Both were not only proficient on their instruments, but had real equipment with real amplifiers too. That was almost more important than being proficient in those days.

So, now I had a band and we needed a name. One of my favourite songs at the time was a demented instrumental by The Who, written by Keith Moon, called “Cobwebs and Strange.” I don’t remember how I convinced the rest to name the band after this song, but they went for it and Detroit’s “Cobwebs and Strange” were born. Actually, I know why Dean voted for it, because we also did the song and he got to do some wild soloing during that song.

Here’s The Who version. Ours was never recorded for posterity.

The set list was, for the most part, mine. It had to be. I was always the final determining factor for any songs we did, because the song had to be in my very limited vocal range. We did a lot of Doors, The Who, Animals, and Mothers of Invention, The Turtles (which is ironic, due my later friendship with Howard Kaylan; we even did Happy Together and I didn’t have to pay Howard 17 cents either). All those influences were mine, as were the Frank Sinatra covers we did.

Mine, mine, mine!!! ALL MINE!!!

Why am I obsessing over a band I started 45 years ago this year, Daylight Savings Time? Because there’s a web site out there called “My First Band” with a page on Cobwebs and Strange in which I was totally written out of the band’s history, even though I formed the band with my childhood buddies and had the most influence on our set list. Under the rubric of “Cobwebs and Strange/The Greenhalgh Band” it says:

Bill, Howard, Dean and Mark formed “Cobwebs and Strange” in 1967. They won a battle of the bands contest at Cobo Hall (Detroit), winning some equipment. The band did a lot of Doors, Who and Mothers. Also some Motown and Moby Grape.

Dean, Bill, Howard and Mark in 1969, after I
had already left the band. I never knew Bill at all.

There is no mention of me anywhere on the web site. I have on 3 separate occasions written to “John Kanaras” for a correction to no avail. He provided the information to “My First Band,” and replaced (according to his own suspect band biography) Mark Levine in Cobwebs and Strange in 1969, having come from Johnny and the Junglemen, which (I’m guessing) was later called The Greenhalgh Band. I have never gotten a response.

Writing to the owner of the web site would do no good. Aside from the fact that he says “we’re no longer taking submissions,” he has a very cleverly worded disclaimer:

The publishers of My First Band™ do not check facts submitted by contributors. All information is expected to be as truthful and factual as possible. My First Band™ is not responsible for any lapses in memory, lack of good taste, assassination of character, disparaging remarks on musicianship, outing of sexual preferences, public exposure of alcohol or pharmaceutical abuse, paternity suits, or any other kinds of vindictiveness festering over 40 years. Information submitted is the sole responsibility of the contributor.

My First Band™ accepts no responsibility for erroneous or fabricated information concerning the bands or individuals listed as members of said bands, so if you’re out to humiliate that guitar player that got all the girls and kicked you out of the band, piss off, we’re just trying to have a little fun here.

A version  of Cobwebs and Strange I was never in

“Having a little fun here” was the whole reason I started the band in the first place. That and the fact that deep down inside I was a frustrated musician after not being able to play guitar. Maybe that’s why I later went into music promotion and managed several bands.

By 1969 I had already left Cobwebs and Strange because I went to be a councellor at Camp Tamakwa in Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada and, by the end of that summer, had met a Canadian gal I eventually married. I didn’t live in Detroit a whole lot of time after that and spent 35 years in Canada before returning to the States to take care of Pops.

Me onstage on the venerated El Mocambo stage (where
The Rolling Stones also played) with Drastic Measures.
I love this pic because it appears as if I am singing with
Drastic Measures. I am not. I’m just introducing the band.

The sad, sad truth of the matter is Cobwebs and Strange were probably better off with
out me. I am, to be generous, a mediocre singer with a limited range.
When I do Karaoke, there are some songs I can nail. I do a mean “Sixteen
Tons;” have great fun doing the Otis Redding arrangement of
“Tenderness,” rocking out at the end on the stuttering part; but my favourite is to do the
Louis Prima arrangement of “Just A Gigolo/I Ain’t Got No Body” with my
Louis Armstrong voice. These 3 tunes always go over big because I have
’em down pat. But more importantly, they are in my range and don’t
require me to harmonize. I can’t harmonize worth shit.

Once I was visiting my friend Tony Malone, who I also had the honour of managing when he was the leader of Drastic Measures. He was building up tracks on a song at his home recording studio and asked me if I wanted to add a backup vocal. I was thrilled because I’d finally be on a Tony Malone song. He played me the song and then sang me the part I needed to sing as harmony to his main vocal. I had no trouble singing the part he wrote for me to sing. That is, until he hit playback. Every single time I fell off my harmony line and sang the main melody that the recored Tony was singing. He gave me a nearly a dozen attempts and I did the same thing every time. Without the playback, I had no problem singing that very simple harmony. With the playback, I was a total vocal idiot. Frustrated, Tony gave up on me and sang the harmony line in ONE TAKE! One fucking take!!! I felt humiliated. But I also knew I was watching a true professional at work.

Anyway, that’s my story of My First Band and I am reclaiming my history starting NOW.

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