BUBBLEGUM NEVER DIED!

BUBBLEGUM NEVER DIED!

FEATURES

IT’S JUST THAT NOBODY EVER WRITES ABOUT IT

by

Chuck Eddy

All I remember is bein’ in a classroom ...hadda be about fourth grade...endof-the-year school’s-out cake ’n’ ice cream party...Magnavox switched on with “Simon Says” (by the 1910 Fruitgum Company) and “Yummy Yummy” (by the Ohio Express) coming out, and girls dancing fast. I didn’t know it then (or care— this was my rude awakening to something or other hormonal), but both bands had the same singer, a guy named Joey Levine, and they weren’t even real groups. They sprang from the fertile imaginations of Buddah Records prexy Neil Bogart and the production duo of Jerry Kasenatz and Jeff Katz, a think-tank that satiated busting-out pre-pubertal passions the world over in the late ’60s by building an empire of cynical condescension and naming it “Bubblegum.” There’d always been “Hanky Panky”s and “Da Doo Ron Ron”s and “Iko lko”s and “I’m A Believer”s and “Hippy Hippy Shakes”s and other monstrosities of ingratiating meaninglessness to keep the 13-year-old contingent smiling. The lengthily-monickered Rock & Roll Dubble Bubble Trading Card Company Of Philadelphia 1941 even had a #62 hit called “Bubblegum Music.” But Kasenatz/Katz were the first guys to codify kiddiepap (via garageland-punk in their case) into a mass/machinemarketed commodity.

Bubblegum was great! Because unlike all of the astral-planing acidwreck dreck you were soon burning out to, bubblegum laid all its cards out, not disguising itself as anything (i.e.: “smart”) it wasn’t. Mostly it just strung lots of very obvious hooks together on a non-skewed straight line (unlike the skewed line airheads like Big Star would initiate a couple years later, thus making way for the travesty which, in 1987, we laughingly call “college radio”). You didn’t have to study these hooks paramecium-like under a microscope or anything; they were so blatantly cute on the surface you just wanted to tickle ’em under the chin. Which is fine, because rock’s not supposed to require much thought. You’re supposed to use it up and throw it away, just like everything else in this culture, right? Right.

Also, bubblegum songs had really silly words that didn’t make any sense nor pretend to, though sometimes the gobbledy gook hid some quite ribald sentiments. There were plenty of lines about “chewing” and how “sweet” people were (an idea expanded on years later by the Jesus & Mary Chain, in “Taste Of Cindy,” “Just Like Honey,” and “Cherry Came Too”). The most immortal gumtune, and (therefore!) the biggest seller (topping the charts in The Year Of Our Stooge 1969) was “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies, who were Saturday morning cartoon characters. (Something’s bubblegum if an only if you can imagine Betty shaking a tambourine to it.) “Sugar Sugar” had Archie Andrews (he of red hair with a black tic-tac-toe sign in it) repeatedly telling his main squeeze that she was his “candy girl,” asking her to pour her sugar all over him. Interpret this cryptic demand as you will.

Now, lots of octagenarians have asserted for years that all this good clean fun kicked the gutbucket around the time my classmates and I were switching to the FM dial—which is more-or-less also when countercultural marijuana festivals and mountains-coming-out-of-the-skyand-standing-there were becoming such big deals. Some even say it’s selfdestructive to keep searching for this callow ingenuousness we once knew, because we’ve lost it forever, and to deny that is to deny our own consciousness. Well, I’ve always figured that obituary garbage was just a lie perpetuated by ’60s snobs too indolent to play their Aerosmith records. What I know for sure is that wonder and bliss is out there somewhere (and I don’t just mean music-wise, either) for.anybody who’s got guts enough to look for it instead of just settling for the delusions of lethargy and necrosis we’re offered these days. If I didn’t believe that,

I might as well just kill myself, or at least give up writing about music and maybe go to law school. I’m here to tell you that bubblegum lives, even if Kasenatz/Katz don’t (and for all I know they might.)

In the ’70s, bubblegum became more an attitude than a genre, a sticky perky feeling that performers (or producers— Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn of Suzi Quatro/Sweet/Nick Gilder fame, were the Kasenatz/Katz of the me-decade) could draw on, as everybody from K.C. & The Sunshine Band to Motley Crue has done. Gumlike concoctions thrived with the glam and nouveau-Merseybeat movements (explicit reactions to rock-as-art) of the early ’70s, with disco and powerpop in the late ’70s, even with CHR’s girlgroup mini-revival a couple years back. Plus, the ’70s still had Tiger Beatteendream singing idols, though I think that idea’s gone by the wayside (whatever happened to Rick Springfield, anyway?). Rock ’n’ roll today’s too damn grownup—just scads of stonefaced egos bonovoxing all over the place. (Actually, I suspect Menudo’s got some swell tunes, but I’ve never heard ’em.)

Anyhow, what I got for ya is a Top 40 of ’70s/’80s bubblegum. What unites this apparently diverse collection is feel, sound, and words. By “feel,” I’m talking goofy and stupid, the more kindergartenworthy the better, with a whitebread gentleness and purity that’s the wimpy underside of the violence supposedly at the heart of “street” music but mostly’s just a load of crap. Soundwise, they only last a couple minutes, during which time all their stolen hooks make you pound your steering wheel real hard. Fast tempos are common, ditto for high-register (like they haven’t changed yet) vocals, with even higher surf/Beatles-type background harmonies; fuzztone riffs and drum thunder are encouraged, but only if they conceal a confectionary center. Lyrics are either of the playpen-bound goo-goo-ga-ga variety, or something only slightly more mature: about parents or cars or rock-as-religion or (usually) boy/girl predicaments free of adult neuroses. You know—playing footsie, having crushes, going steady. All the most exciting things in the world until some imbecile tells you they’re corny and you should only care about carnal knowledge, at which point it is my belief that you have started to stop living and begun to die.

My Top 40, which has more ’70s than ’80s product (because good junk, like fine Ripple, improves with age), indicates three basic gumstrains. The first strain (ABBA, Bay City Rollers, etc.) is real cheesy trash that exists exclusively to exploit you; this kind was way more viable back before computers commenced to generate all these homogenously mercenary quasi-hooks we’ve got now. The second strain (Raspberries, Nick Lowe, etc.) primarily consists of nostalgic tributes to a supposedly simple epoch, an endeavor which can risk both hyper-respectful cerebralness and smirky contempt, but which can ring as true as the real thing if the performance is warm enough to be taken at face value. Finally, there’s bubblegum from isolated lands (in the Far East and continental Europe) where music is apparently still thought of as an opiate for the masses with no aesthetic strings attached. Since I can’t understand the words, these records tend to come off as nonsensical as “Yummy Yummy” and “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and I can never tell whether they’re trying to be funny or not. Oh yeah: ’60s purists will' scoff at my tolerance of disco syncopation. But purists suck.

IT'S...IT'S...A BALLROOM BLITZ! THE BEST OF TWO DECADES

1. ABBA—“Does Your Mother Know” (1979). Some tender hoodsie’s hitting on Bjorn (or Benny?) at a bash; he says scram, but the guitar vroom (a snowmobile pillaging Scandinavia) tells her to stick around.

2. Kiss—“Rock And Roll All Nite” (1975). Crits labeled ’em a fascist threat, and their Army served Satan, but this abyss-anthem was comic book strut ’n’ shout at its dumb, body-flattening peak.

3. Bay City Rollers—“Saturday Night” (1975). A brogue spelling lesson from Tartan-clad Scottish lads who’ve got a date and just can’t wait.

4. Cheap Trick—“Surrender” (1978). Ma and Pa smoke your stash, spin your copy of Destroyer, get frisky on the couch; all you can think of are WACs with VD, your copy of Revolver, and not giving yourself away.

5. Ramones—“Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” (1977). Beach-baby falsettos and three chords chopping down skyscrapers. A way of life: the tough get weird when the going gets tough.

6. Shaun Cassidy—“That’s Rock ’n’ Roll” (1977). You’re 16, sick of school, Keith Partridge’s little brother. You buy an axe, get the fever, get down and get with it. Leif Garrett’s left choking on your exhaust fumes.

7. Sweet—“Ballroom Blitz” (1975). The most deliberately effeminate intro ever, into a rattlefuzz stomp where you dream a party-girl wants to “ball you.” Only it says “tell you” on the lyric sheet.

8. Vibrators—“London Girls” (1977). These part-time punks’ Pure Mania LP has sure held up better than the pathetic Never Mind The Bullocks, and this hilarious love-snarl is as catchy as an air-raid siren: “Useta be things were so neat, I can’t stand my life out on the street.”

9. Sweet—“Wig-Wam Bam” (1973). Tom-toms, Stooges licks, curly-lipped Elvis quivers, palefaces watching Minihaha tell Hiawatha “wig warn bam, bam shamalam.”

10.Nick Lowe—“Rollers Show” (1978). Dynamite semi-parody about going to see Tartan-clad Scottish lads, shouting, making noise, and really giving it to ’em.

11. Undertones—“Teenage Kicks” (1979). Not near as rancid as That Petrol Emotion’s records suggest, these Irish teenybop-punks were glitter fans, and their song title says everything you need to know.

12. Van Halen—“Dance The Night Away” (1979). Some freshman looker’s inebriated for the first time—in your basement and on booze from your daddy’s cabinet—swaying to your metal collection’s Latin lilt, and then what?

13. Tracey Ullman—“They Don’t Know” (1984). Her telly show’s a (good) joke, but this girlie smash (about how nobody understands love anymore except you and the person you’re in love with) cuts through her campist propensities like a pavement-saw.

1.4. Cars—“My Best Friend’s Girl” (1978). Streamlined and turtle-wax-sleek Boston pop-rock, with Ocasek droning almost-not-icily about the nuclear boots and drip-dry gloves of someone he wants back.

15. Cyndi Lauper—“Girls Just Want To Have Fun (1984). Best version is Arthur Baker’s long cubist remix; sounds recorded inside a house-of-mirrors, with all this popcorn flying around, and Olive Oyl getting feminist besides.

16.Raspberries—“Go All The Way” (1972). A restoration of pre-Pepper Lennon/McCartney via an ethereal chorus, a boogie kick, and the tip top adolescent dilemma.

17.Slade—“Skweeze Me Pleeze Me” (1973). “You got a sweet tongue, you sing love songs/Cantcha learn to spell?” Nope, but bellowing like a bullhorn, not to mention being the sharpest dressers in the gang district, was enough.

18.Poison—“Talk Dirty To Me” (1987). First song with a drive-in since what? First with a nursery rhyme since what? The Bay City Rollers fronted by David Lee Roth, with a gratuitous guitar solo introduced as such.

19. Osmonds—“Yo-Yo” (1972). Donny’s gone completely mad, his bros think they’re on Motown, plus this tuff little riff keeps walking the dog, Joseph Smith be damned.

20. T.Rex—“Jeepster” (1971). So what do Limeys know about autos? Not much; Cannabis-popster Marc Bolan even thought “Jaguar” had three syllables. But the bass pops up and down like the head on a mechanical monkey.

21. Blondie—“Sunday Girl” (1978). Wow, I could probably just list all of Parallel Lines. (Next best thing to Shirelles’ Greatest Hits, almost.) I like this slow one most because it’s unsarcastic, I think.

22. Redd Kross—“I Hate My School” (1980). They hate jocks, rah-rahs, surfers, brains and bookworms, too. Dig them Patty Hearst-inspired backup squeals!

23. Jackson Five—“ABC” (1970). Guess this is what Jim Morrison meant by “speaking secret alphabets’’; mayhaps Marlin and Tito were slippin’ somethin’ unorthodox into Mikey’s Gerber’s. Who knows?

24. Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta—“You’re The One That I Want” (1978). Fake-romance ’50s-revival post-Captain/Tennille schlock-duet at the height of disco, from an unarguably lame flick. An amazing record; trust me.

25. ABBA—“Waterloo” (1974). Either these Swedes had odd accents, or they just didn’t comprehend the words. But this slice of sunbeam indicates they’d learned lessons from history.

26. Nena—“99 Luftballons” (1984). Teutonic disco-wave with a hi-kicking stiletto-heeled warbler who really grinds up those “machf’s, a rhythm like a spinning top, and the shrewdest of bubblegum topics: nuclear annihilation.

27. Plastic Bertrand—“Ca Plane Pour Moi” (1978). How the Ramones would sound if they came from Belgium and wanted to imitate Brian Wilson in French but didn’t know how.

28. Billy Idol with Generation X— “Dancing With Myself” (1981). Whimpering about “Jukebox Jury,” William’s band was punk’s most commercial from the start. This one’s from right before he learned to be surly, and it ain’t about dancing.

29. Depeche Mode—“Just Can’t Get Enough” (1981). Am I sick, or what? I despise everything these twerps stand for, but this tidbit boings like a rubber Tweetie-bird manufactured by FisherPrice. I really don t ask for much.

30. The Knack—“My Sharona” (1979). Salacious sleazeballs drooling about what’s running down the length of their thighs, mixing Beatle suits with Bonham drums. Some people hated it. Some people have no sense of humor.

31. Joan Jett—“Fake Friends” (1983). More verbose than the tart she was circa “Cherry Bomb,” and more hookful, dishing one long run-on sentence about how toadies stab you as soon as your back is turned.

32. E.L.O.—“Sweet Talkin’ Woman” (1977). Classical bubblegum, believe it or not, with big and little violins working to keep love alive in an age of data-overload.

33. Shonen Knife—“Twist Barbie” (1985). Three Japanese women squeaking out pristine pop-punk about how they wanna have blue eyes and blonde hair like a Barbie doll.

34. Naif Orchestra—“Check-Out Five” (1985). You heard it here first: Italo-disco is the future’s only hope. Impiously infectious near-muzak, mainly synths and saxes, Gianni Sangalli’s sad ’cuz her baby’s bagging vermicelli on a Sunday.

35. Girlschool—“Tiger Feet” (1987). Dixie Cups voices meet Dave Clark Five beats meet AC/DC blare at a slumber party, and they all turn into rockabilly. Plus, the title almost sounds like a magazine.

36. Andy Gibb—“I Just Want To Be Your Everything” (1978). Like his siblings who got younger as they got older, Andy tapped the same cosmic lifeforce that delivered “Walk Like A Man.” Here, he tells his string-section he doesn’t wanna be a puppet on a string.

37. Romantics—“Talking In Your Sleep” (1984). Too prissy as a garageband, these Detroiters sold-out to CHR drum-pulse, producing this slick shimmy—which doesn’t say whether their girlfriend snored.

38. Tony Basil—“Mickey” (1982). The world’s only example of cheerlead-rock, not counting Al Yankovic’s “Rickey.” The bimbo wants a touchdown, but Mickey doesn’t.

39. Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam—“Head To Toe” (1987). Starts with a kiss, then this Hispanic N.Y. suburbanite who can’t sing to save her life ends up in the sack, with a Supremes bassline, no less.

40. Jesus & Mary Chain—“Never Understand” (1985). Okey-doke, finally, here’s my concession to the gloomy Bratpack fans who buy CREEM. The Shondells with fabricated feedback, ormaybe Joy Division after a bath. Or maybe like if Poison was new wave. All this cotton-candy garbage sounds thsame to me.