This album has two fun bubblegum singles: I’ll Meet you Halfway and Doesn’t Somebody Want to be Wanted. Besides these two hits for the TV teeny bop band of the 1970s, the album contains innocuous filler, many from the professional songwriting team of Wes Ferrell and Gerry Goffin.
I went into this album hoping there’d be a surprise hidden gem but nah. It’s all pretty mediocre stuff. But I like the hits.
If you don’t already know it, David Cassidy and Shirley Jones are the only ones who had record time along with their camera time on the insipid TV show The Partridge Family. But I watched it — heck I was 11 years old and kind of liked the notion of screaming girls chasing me, um, David around.
The Cowsills, the Rhode Island family band who actually did play their own instruments, were the inspiration for the TV show. If memory serves me the TV producers wanted the family but not Mrs. Cowsill — the mom. Not because she wasn’t a good musician, but because Shirley Jones, who starred in Oklahoma, wanted this chance of being a Rock and Roll mother as she rolled into her middle age.
The Cowsills deserve to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, alongside other family acts like Sly and the Family Stone, the Allman Brothers, the Staple Sisters, the Jackson 5 and others. They could be in the family band section, if there was one.
I have to admit I just recently bought this record for $2 at Birmingham’s Seasick Records, one of several great pre-owned record dealers in the area. Nice prices and nice selection for folks like me trying to do a blog on this stuff.. Although I have 678 of my own records to count down,
Among the myriad reasons they should be in the Hall, the website post argues is that they wrote and performed the theme song for the TV show Love American Style. I loved that song and watched that show every Friday night, as a youngster. It came on some time after the Partridge Family, I believe.?
This record was a nostalgia purchase. I couldn’t resist buying it. Because it tweaked early early rock and roll memories.
I remember in 5th grade coming over to a friends house in Athens, Ga., and my friend’s brother was dancing on the coffee table with ‘Hair’ going full blast. I think it also fueled my dislike of haircuts in the late 1960s, early 1970s.
Kind of strange that this appealed so much to young kids. The song came from the Broadway musical of the same name, notorious for its nude scenes. The song was also a #2 national hit for the Cowsills. Not surprising as they turned it into a silly but arresting pop single –which is the correct interpretation of such a goofy song — as opposed to the more serious take from the musical.
And, i’m not kidding you here: They could really sing and play as this live album shows. They were the model for TV’s popular Partridge Family, and musically, they would have blown most of the Partridges back to their high school drama classes. Some were amazed at the Cowsills pulling off the Beach Boys” Good Vibrations.’ live in concert — a difficult task as the Beach Boys themselves learned because of the degree of difficulty playing Brian Wilson’s masterpiece.
The Cowsills consisted of the mother, three brothers) and sister (Susan). The live album had lots of well-played covers and introduced me to tunes I would love later like Walk Away Renee, Monday Monday, Please Mr.Postman and Good Vibrations. Devil with a Blue Dress.
This website has has a dissertation’s worth of arguments for why the Cowsills should be in the HOF.
I see that others don’t find the value in the Cowsill’s concert disc that I, in my 40 years of record collecting say it warrants. Excellent music, family band cute, lots of drama over the years and nearly virtuoso playing and, get this, Discogs is listing this record at $1 plus shipping. What? Did they make 5 million of these things?
They should be as rare as a Bobby Sherman Remembering You record, I say.
I’m serious here. Sort of.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
