Saturday Night Fish Fry

*

Following a bit on last night's subtext, here's another band and song for "purists" to hate---this time, "rock purists."



Yes, I know the costumes and slap-happy comedy was lame, and certainly performed for edification of the emergent teeny-bopper cult. Also, while I don't know anything about their production methods, it would not surprise me if most of Paul Revere's big hits were laid down by studio musicians even though the lads could play their instruments. But the hard rock sensibilities of the Raiders jab holes through the facade and production value. It would have been very uncool to admit to anyone that I liked Paul Revere upon my arrival as a buzzcut nobody at Hillcrest High School in 1967. But as I began collecting 45 rpm singles in the 1970s I could hear, through more well informed ears, that lots of pop acts---including this band and the Monkees, for example---had much more going on for themselves than the era's longhairs would ever acknowledge.

I don't think a person has to listen too hard to hear some Stones-like guitar and energy in "Good Thing" and other Raiders tracks from the mid-60s. Of special interest to me in this tune is the movement of parallel fourths and/or fifths both in the vocals and guitars---they're the odd-sounding harmonies that sound vaguely oriental and a little incomplete, which Aerosmith and many others made heavy use of decades later and to this day.

The most capable dancer, which some of the YouTube commentators seem to think is Goldie Hawn, is featured near the front of the set and distracts attention from the weird gunplay subplot that ends up getting under another dancer's feet. "Good Thing" was issued in Chicago about this time of the year in the winter of 1966-67, when there was a shortlived pop music style fascination with the Victorian and Roaring 20s eras, which accounts for the dancers' flapper-style dresses in the midst of American Revolution drag. Anyway, it's a bit of flavor from an eclectic time in American pop music; three minutes of upbeat full-color rock, dancing, and tomfoolery.

Good Thing, Paul Revere and the Raiders (1966, from "The Spirit of '67," Columbia Records CL 2595 [mono], via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.