Rob – Your careers have lasted over fifty years. There are songs we wish we’d never recorded though. Rob – Are there songs that you have carried with you throughout your careers that you have never recorded and wish you had? They shouldn’t have wasted their time with Seashell. There were a couple of other songs on that album that should’ve been singles, A Million Smiles Away, Lady Of The Lake and Love Me Again. It failed to chart so that’s when they decided to release Barefoot In Baltimore which was a hit in Baltimore and made it #67 nationally. The third album called The World In A Seashell, had a title song, Seashell, written by the guys that wrote the lyrics to I and P. It was the theme song of a then released Dick Clark produced movie, Psych-Out! They released Sit With the Guru as the next single from the second album when they could’ve promoted the flip side of that record, Pretty Song From Psych-Out. They easily could have milked the success of the first album while doing a proper release of the second album to coincide with its first single. (so to speak).Ĭonsequently, that second album didn’t chart at all. The result, Tomorrow got to #23 but its namesake album came out months later and Tomorrow was off the charts. The only problem was that Tomorrow was supposed to be the lead single of our next album, Wake Up It’s Tomorrow, which wouldn’t be done for months. He did that by having Mark and Ed write a new song, Tomorrow, and release it to follow on the coattails of the I and P success. So, the manager who was mostly responsible for that felt he had to make it up. Basically, cheated out of a ton of money. The reason for this was that two of our band members, Mark Stephen Weitz and the late Ed King wrote the music to I and P and were not credited. Namely, Birds in My Tree and Paxton’s Backstreet Carnival, both of which showed up as “B sides” of later singles from two different albums. They could have culled a couple more songs off that album, which was #11 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, and released them as follow ups to I and P. Incense was a huge hit, #1, and what should’ve happened didn’t. GB – In a word, YES! Starting with our first album. Is there a song that you recorded that you thought should have been a single and wasn’t? Rob – You all have had two major hits and numerous top forty charting songs in your career. I doubt if people are that aware of whose writing or playing on today’s digital downloads. We also had the album cover to read and learn who did what. Now with all the streaming and digital downloading kids get instant gratification. We used to wait for what seemed like an eternity, for the next Beatle or Stones album to come out. GB – It’s somewhat the same but there’s so much to choose from nowadays, many artists and many mediums. Rob – For those of us old enough to say we grew up with Dick Clark and American Bandstand, which show you all appeared on, what are your thoughts on the varied nature of the access today’s youth have to new music? Some of us had classical and jazz training while the rest were street schooled. That led to us finding our own desire to write songs. In the early days, before the stardom, we were basically a garage band playing first, surf music and eventually British invasion and Doors covers. We thought of ourselves as experimental and original creative rock. Unbeknownst to those labelers the title was a pot smoking reference, Incense to cover the smell and peppermints when you got the munchies. Back then, and even now, the dreaded term was Bubble Gum, simply because we had peppermints in the title of our big hit. GB – Back in the day (67-69) they hadn’t defined a genre for us, so they said we were Jazz, Raga, Rock, classical and experimental. What would you categorize your music as being? Rob – You guys have had music labels thrust upon you like Psychedelic Rock, Acid Rock, Sunshine Rock, etc. Our fifth album, released in 2012, is called “Wake Up Where You Are” and subtitled “It’s About Time”. The song that closes the first album says, “the clock says we must go” and was called Unwind with The Clock.Īnother song on that album is titled Pass Time With The SAC. Our second album was called “Wake Up It’s Tomorrow”. GB – Of course, we bring it on ourselves. Yes, as you can imagine, I’m having a terrible time not making time puns. Rob – Thanks fellas for taking the time for this interview. TEN QUESTIONS WITH GEORGE BUNNELL OF THE STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |