You have found The GO Mechanism; an audio odyssey that will take you to places you didn’t know existed. It is hosted by Phast Phreddie the Boogaloo Omnibus and it initially airs on the Luxuria Music interweb streaming hustle as a Saturday Night Special. This one will first appear on May 18. In order to receive the complete and total GO Mechanism experience, it is recommended that one listen to the initial airing on Luxuria Music, follow along with this Boogaloo Bag post as your score card (no one stops to back announce records) and join us in the Luxuria Music chat room where the host will announce each selection as it airs. After its first air date, the show will be available as a podcast on the Luxuria Music website—look for the Saturday Night Special dated 5/19/2024. However you listen to The GO, it is imperative that this blog post is referenced while doing so.

In the middle of the program there is a Science Corner, a segment of the show where The GO Mechanism producers discuss an interesting music-related topic. For this GO, we will be discussing an aspect of the music publishing business using a song by the British rock group Spooky Tooth as an example.

In 1967, a British, arty, psychedelic band called Art added Gary Wright as a member and changed its name to Spooky Tooth. Wright was an American musician who was lured to London by the owner of Island Records, Chris Blackwell. Art’s lone album was produced by Jimmy Miller and issued on Island Records. Miller was also called on to produce the first Spooky Tooth album, called It’s All About. Also an American, Miller’s previous experience included other Chris Blackwell projects, such as Traffic, The Spencer Davis Group and Wynder K. Frog. Anyway, the Spooky Tooth album was released in England where it did pretty good business, then licensed to Bell Records in America (where it wasn’t given a name!). Around this time, Island Records started licensing records to A&M Records for release in the U.S. This co-opt deal would include Jimmy Cliff, Free, Fairport Convention, Blodwyn Pig and really hit pay-dirt with Cat Stevens. The deal with Spooky Tooth included the band’s music publishing.

Here we stop in order to give a very brief definition of ‘music publishing.’ A song is written by a composer (or composers). It is then published—which basically means it is registered—before it can be recorded and released, or around the same time. In the old days, a publisher dealt mostly with sheet music. In the modern era, the song is treated as intellectual property—sometimes called a copyright (though sheet music may still be involved). Music publishers became prominent in the early days of the recording industry because only they knew how to register a song in order for a composer to get paid for its usage. It is the music publisher’s job to collect the money that the song earns via record sales, being played on the radio (performance), and sync rights (when the song appears in a movie, TV show or commercial). The publisher takes a piece of the action for his efforts and pays the songwriter(s). The more a song is recorded, the more checks come in the mail.

Which brings us back to Spooky Tooth. For its debut LP, Gary Wright and Jimmy Miller co-wrote a song called “Forget It, I Got It.” It was never a single, however, someone at A&M’s Records’ music publishing arm—called Almo Music—must have thought it had hit potential, as the album track was cut onto 10” acetates and distributed to potential artists. We know this because a picture of one of them has been posted on Discogs. The song was recorded by at least six artists that we know of. The Science Corner started with a version by The Sisters Love, a female R&B vocal group that, at one time, included Merry Clayton and Gwen Berry. The second version heard was by Mel & Tim, a soul duo from Chicago that was modeled after Sam & Dave. This recording was produced by Gene Chandler—a Chicago soul legend. The record was released in 1970, a year after Mel & Tim’s R&B hit “Backfield in Motion.” The third rendering of “Forget It, I Got It” is by the afore-mentioned Merry Clayton. She is best known as the female vocalist on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” (from the Let It Bleed album, produced by Jimmy Miller).

Other versions of the song were cut and released as singles by the rock groups Ambergris and The Mauds, as well as The Raelettes, another female R&B vocal group (of which Gwen Berry was once a member). However, The Raelettes changed the song slightly to “Come Get It, I Got It.” We’d like to point out here that the Spooky Tooth song bears a slight resemblance to a 1967 song called “Forget It” by The Sandpebbles. Gary Wright is said to have been a fan of R&B records, so it is possible that he heard this song but didn’t quite remember how it went but brought his ideas to Jimmy Miller who helped shape it into the unique song that was recorded. At least, that’s the way things are imagined here in the Science Corner, and no one can tell us any different because both Wright and Miller are dead.

In 1956, Billy Stewart was discovered by Bo Diddley in Washington D.C. on a night when Bo Diddley was playing there. Bo Diddley (who recorded for Checker Records, a subsidiary of Chess) persuaded the Chess people to try him out. Backed by Bo Diddley’s recording band, which included Willie Dixon, Jerome Greene and Jody Williams, Stewart cut the two-parter “Billy’s Blues.” It came out on the Argo label (another Chess subsidiary) as well as on Chess. Although it did not chart nationally, it made some noise in some markets, but apparently, not enough for Chess to continue with him. Stewart’s next record is heard in The GO Mechanism. It’s called “Billy’s Heartache” and it was also recorded with Bo Diddley and his band, but in Washington D.C. Singing back-up for the Stewart recording session was a local vocal group called The Marquees that included a young Marvin Gaye. This recording came out on OKeh Records. For some reason, Stewart did not record again for a few years. In 1961, he returned to Chess Records to work with the producer Billy Davis and they were able to score several hits, including “Reap What You Sow,” “I Do Love You,” “Sitting in the Park” and the magnum opus “Summertime.”

Los Mirlos is one of our favorite cumbia bands. Many of the best cumbia bands hail from Colombia, where cumbia music was invented. Los Mirlos, however, are from Peru. In Colombian cumbia, the accordion is one of the key instruments. For Los Mirlos, it is the guitar. It is the main instrument on the song we hear in The GO. We’ve played it from a 1976 Mexican pressing on the Gas label, where it is called “Cumbia De La Selva.” In 1974, when it was released in Peru on the Infopesa label it was called “Lamento en La Selva.” Selva is Spanish for jungle. Many of the original members of Los Mirlos were from Moyobomba, a city near the Peruvian jungles on the east side of the Andes. They traveled to Lima on the coast to make their records and many of their compositions, such as this one, celebrate the jungle. We have several of the group’s singles and we’ll hear more from them in upcoming GO Mechanisms.

Calypso is a music that originated in the West Indies and was popular throughout the Caribbean area. In Cuba, calypsos were sung in Spanish; in Haiti in French. In Jamaica the music was known as mento and eventually morphed into ska, which begot rocksteady and reggae. Very often a calypso or two is presented in The GO Mechanism. In this GO, we have “Out de Fire” by Lord Flea and his Calypsonians. According to the liner notes of their 1957 album, Swingin’ Calypsos, the members of the band are Porkchops on banjo, Lord Fish Ray on bass and percussionists Count Spoon, Prince Charles and Count Largie. Lord Flea was the singer and guitarist. He and his band appeared in Miami, Las Vegas, New York City (at the Jamaica Room, a ‘calypso-only’ night club) and on the Perry Como TV show.

“Fire Waltz” comes to us from the Mal Waldron album The Quest. The musicians on it are Booker Ervin (tenor saxophone), Eric Dolphy (alto saxophone), Joe Benjamin (bass), Charles Persip (drums) and Waldron, the composer of the piece, on piano.

Malcolm Earl Waldron was born in 1925 in New York City. He took up the saxophone first, but set it down to play piano after hearing Charlie Parker and realizing he could never play that well. As a pianist, he worked with Ike Quebec, Varetta Dillard, Teddy Charles and Charles Mingus but he really got busy when he was introduced to the people at Prestige Records by Jackie McLean. At Prestige he became a first-call piano player when it came to recording sessions. He recorded with Gene Ammons, Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, Al Cohn, Phil Woods, John Coltrane, Paul Quinichette and many others. Around this time, he was also the piano accompanist for Billie Holiday’s live engagements and did that until she died in 1959. Plus, Waldron played on many of those ‘Music Minus One’ records. Cat was busy.

Mal Waldron was also a user of heroin. In 1963, an overdose lead to a breakdown that left him fairly incapacitated for a few years—unable to play the piano. When he recovered, he had an opportunity to score a film in Europe and he stayed there. He only returned to the U.S. for an occasional gig but by the mid-nineties he would come less often, due to the fact that he could no longer smoke in the night clubs he played. He died of cancer in 2002.

In 1971, the GO Mechanism producers and some buddies attended a show by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band at a place called The Bitter End West in Hollywood. They had front row seats. At one point, our friend Linda handed Captain Beefheart an Abba Zabba candy bar and requested the song of the same name from the group’s first album. The good Captain, took the candy, turned to the band and said, “Abba Zabba, hit it!” And they played it! The song is heard in this GO Mechanism as a tribute to Miss Linda P, who drove us to a bunch of cool gigs in the days before we could drive.

“Four Organs” is one of our favorite pieces of contemporary art music. Composed by Steve Reich, it also features a fellow playing maracas. Some folks find it to be monotonous. Indeed, during a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1973, a woman banged her head on the stage over and over and yelled, “Stop, stop! I confess!” We’ve jazzed it up a bit for The GO by mashing it with a nearly acapella song by The Zombies called “The Way I Feel Inside.” The listener will either find this incredibly obnoxious or totally genius; The GO Mechanism producers welcome either determination. The piece is then used as the bed music for The Science Corner. We dig “Four Organs” and it will most likely pop up again in future GOs.

“Rutebega Pie” comes to us from the album Soul & Salvation by Dizzy Gillespie. It was recorded in 1969, during a period when several jazz artists were experimenting with funk, most notably Miles Davis. On this album, all the compositions and arrangements are by Ed Bland. He also conducted the orchestra. Ed Bland was responsible for some great funk records by The Pazant Brothers around the same time; in fact, Eddie Pazant plays saxophone on the recording. Though some of the album sounds like music from a seventies police TV show, most of it is pretty good. We quite like “Rutebega Pie.” It was brought to our attention by our good friend and regular GO Mechanism listener Tom Gardner. He knows his trash, that’s for sure. Be sure to dig his radio show on Wednesday nights on KPPQ out of Ventura, California. Soul & Salvation has been recently reissued on CD by the nice people at Liberation Hall. Check it out.

Booker T. Jones got the call to compose the score for the film Uptight while he was recovering from a leg operation in California. For reasons too complicated to go into here, he wrote much of the score in Paris. If you want to know the story, read Jones’ autobiography, Time Is Tight: My Life, Note by Note. “Run Tank Run” is from the soundtrack to this movie.

“The Fox” is the title track for an album by tenor saxophonist Harold Land. It has achieved a sort of legendary status among aficionados of hard bop jazz. None of the players, Elmo Hope (piano), Frank Butler (drums), Herbie Lewis (bass) and Dupree Bolton (trumpet) including Land, are household names, but they are all excellent musicians who should be known to all.

Elmo Hope hung out with Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk and has a cult following among jazzbos who know their bebop. However, the most interesting musician on the track was the trumpet player.

Dupree Bolton started his career when, at 14, he ran away from home to play in the bluesy swing band of Jay McShann. He went on to work with the Buddy Johnson Orchestra, and then a band lead by Benny Carter. Bolton‘s drug activities got in the way, though, and he served several stints in prison. While incarcerated at San Quinten, he was able to practice his trumpet and he played with other imprisoned musicians, such as Art Pepper and Frank Morgan and it is where he first met Frank Butler. When Bolton was freed in 1959, Butler brought him to the attention of Harold Land, who was preparing to record his The Fox album. By then, Bolton was an exceptional player in the bebop tradition of Fats Navarro and Dizzy Gillespie. Bolton’s playing is fantastic on this recording. Soon after, he was arrested again. When he got out in 1963, he played on another fine hard bop album called Katanga. On that album, Bolton is co-billed with saxophonist Curtis Amy. For all intents and purposes, that was the end of Dupree Bolton’s career. He was arrested again soon after the Katanga sessions and spent most of the next 20 years in and out of prison—mostly in. When he was freed for the last time in 1983 he had lost the fire that he exhibits on “The Fox.” He died of a cardiac arrest in 1993.

“See Dem a Come” was the debut single by the reggae vocal group Culture. It was included on the trio’s debut album Two Sevens Clash in 1977. We found the album that year while record cruisin’ with our friend Jeffrey Pierce at Barton’s of Hollywood. Barton’s was a record store that sold all sorts of Caribbean music. It wasn’t located anywhere near Hollywood, though; it was in South Central Los Angeles. The album was recommended by a woman behind the counter. She played the first track and we were sold! The album is one of the best that reggae music has to offer.

The GO Mechanism producers first heard of The Last in 1977 when they were introduced to lead singer/guitarist/songwriter Joe Nolte by our friend D.D. Faye at the Wallichs’ Music City in Torrance where they both worked at the time. Joe was a skinny, wild-eyed fellow with stringy hair, a goatee and pale skin. He handed us a record by his band; a self-produced single—“She Don’t Know Why I’m Here.” So self-produced that the labels were blank with the artist name and record company ink-stamped on them and titles were handwritten. The picture sleeve was slightly over-sized and looked like they pasted it together themselves. It sounds as if it were recorded in a garage. But the song contains one of the greatest couplets in all of rock music:

• This one’s for you, you modified, petrified hypocrites, God!
• To raise your children like goldfish in plastic Naugahyde cells.

The fabulousness of the song and the performance are just so dynamic and explosive that the record can not be denied a place among the Greatest Records Of All Time.

Soon after the record was distributed—mostly among friends, as only about 300 were made—The Last played at The Masque, the dingy basement dive that was home to the young punk rock scene in Hollywood. Greg Shaw saw them there, screamed, “godhead!” and reissued the single on his Bomp! Records label.

The group’s intense performances gave them a punk rock following, especially among other punk musicians. Their psychedelic leanings made them influential to the Paisley Underground scene that hadn’t started yet, but was taking notes at The Last’s shows. The group’s memorable melodies made them popular with the power pop crowd. Two more excellent independent singles followed, and in 1979, The Last’s first album, L.A. Explosion was issued. The songs were great but the recording didn’t capture the excitement and energy of a live show. A second album, Look Again, was recorded but never got past the test pressing stage—until it was finally released in 2020! A third album, Painting Smiles on a Dead Man, was only released in France in 1983. By then, the momentum and buzz of the early days had waned. Joe Nolte has kept a “The Last” going over the years, usually with at least one or two of his brothers who’ve been involved with the band off and on over the years. The band would go on hiatus for long periods.

“She Don’t Know Why I’m Here” is one of the greatest rock’n’roll records of modern (ie, post 1975) times and, because of that, it is presented here to close this edition of The GO Mechanism.

The GO Mechanism is produced whenever we feel like it and it initially airs on the Luxuria Music interweb streaming hustle as a Saturday Night Special. The GO Mechanism producers sincerely thank the swingin’ folks at Luxuria Music for presenting The GO Mechanism whenever it is available. Luxuria Music is an extremely independent entity that can use some help. Please go to the Luxuria Music website and buy something from its store or sponsor something fun. Also, while you are at Luxuria Music, check out the other fabulous shows there.

If you are interested in previous GO Mechanisms, they can be found on the Mixclouds and here in the Boogaloo Bag. After a while the audio portion of this GO Mechanism will magically appear below…

Here is a list of all the records played during The GO Mechanism Number Twenty Two:

• Earl Bostic—Lester Leaps In (theme) (King)
• Thelonious Monk with Jon Hendricks—In Walked Bud (from LP Underground; Columbia)
• Ted Heath—(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (from LP The Big Ones; Phase 4)
• Slim Gaillard—Yo Yo Yo (Clef)
• The Fleshtones—Time Zone (from album Mondo Beat Volume 1; Face; Italy)
• Billy Stewart—Billy’s Heartache (OKeh)
• The El Torros—Doop Doop A Walla Walla (Duke)
• The Mops—朝まで待てない (Victor; Japan)
• Ivan Ward & the Swingsters—Congo Glide (Savoy)
• Los Mirlos—Cumbia de la Selva (Gas; Mexico)
• The Doors—Light My Fire—GO edit (Elektra)
• Lord Flea & His Calypsonians—Out de Fire (Capitol)
• Mal Waldron with Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin—Fire Waltz (from album The Quest; Prestige)(1)
• Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band—Abba Zabba (from LP Safe as Milk; Buddah)
• Olatunji—Kiyakiya (from LP Drums of Passion; Columbia)
• Count Rockin’ Sidney—Back Door Man (Woman Next Door) (Bold)
• The Marvelettes—Hunter Gets Captured by the Game (Tamla)
• Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band—Big Shot (from LP Gorilla; Imperial)
• Mothers of Invention—Zolar Czaki (from LP Uncle Meant; Bizarre)
• Tito Puente and His Orchestra—Caravan Mambo (Tico)
• Four Organs for Four Electric Organs and Maracas—Steve Reich (from LP Three Dances and Four Organs; Angel)
• The Zombies—The Way I Feel Inside (Parrot)
• The Sisters Love—Forget It, I Got It (A&M)
• Mel & Tim—Forget It, I Got It (Bamboo)
• Merry Clayton—Forget It, I Got It (Ode)
• Dizzy Gillespie—Rutabaga Pie (from LP Soul & Salvation; Tribute)
• Harley Hatcher Orchestra—African Safari Part 1 (Philips)
• Climaco Sarmiento y su Orquesta—Cumbia Sabrosa (from LP Cumbias y Gaitas Famosas 3; Discos Fuentes; Colombia)
• Booker T & the M.G.’s—Run Tank Run (from LP Uptight; Stax)
• Brass Rail—Do the Penguin Part 1 (Buddah)
• Harold Land—The Fox (from album The Fox; Contemporary) (2)
• The Deltas—Work Song (Philips)
• Darrell Banks—I’ve Got That Feelin’ (Atco)
• Wallias Band—Muziqawi Silt (from LP Éthiopiques 13: Ethiopian Groove – The Golden Seventies; Buda Musique; France)
• Albert Pía—Lado Mas Bestia De La Vida (from album Cover the World; Putamayo)
• Link Wray—Guitar Cha Cha (from album Walkin’ With Link; Epic)
• Boris Banço—Quelle Peste! (Disques Vogue; France)
• Lord Sitar—I Can See for Miles (from LP Lord Sitar; Capitol)
• Culture—See Dem a Come (from LP Two Sevens Clash; Joe Gibbs Globe; Jamaica)
• Captain Beefheart radio spot
• Curtis Mayfield—Freddie’s Dead (Boogaloo edit/closing theme) (Curtom)
• The Last—She Don’t Know Why I’m Here (Backlash)

Spoken:

Dylan Thomas—The Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London (during “Fire Waltz”)
Dylan Thomas—There Was a Saviour (during “The Fox”)