Tune Tag #111 with David Fore of Bubble Puppy: Pink Floyd, The Shirts, Queen, GoodBye Lenin, Tall Dwarfs, Incubus
📻David & Brad: Two Texans Tune Tag tussle! Bubble Puppy's 1969 hit broke out of Houston's Top 40 KILT-AM Radio....which Brad heard on heavy rotation, at age 14!🎵Taggin' Tunes, now, 56 years later!🤯
Tune Tag proudly welcomes its first Top 15 recording artist, drummer of on Substack, where he “dishes dirt and love on his crazy ride with ‘The Bubble Puppy’!”
“My sixth grade teacher asked me one day, ‘David, are you a drummer?’ because I was beating on my desk with my pencils. He could have scolded me, but for some reason he posed it as a serious question. I thought about it for a second, and said ‘yes.’ I took drum lessons that summer and have been playing ever since!
“As for my first instruments, I used to lug home the marching snare drum and bass drum from my junior high band hall! My mom finally bought me a set of 1963 Psychedelic Swirl Slingerlands.”
David’s song #1 sent to Brad: The Shirts, “Teenage Crutch,” 1978
Live, on UK’s Old Grey Whistle Test, 1978:
David’s rationale: They should have been stars. Their manager [Hilly Kristal] ran CBGB’s. He had all the music industry connections in the world. The Shirts were one-hit wonders like Bubble Puppy.
Annie Golden’s vocals are just fantastic. She brings this unique, expressive quality to the song—it feels so genuine and full of energy, perfectly capturing all those emotional ups and downs of being a teenager. Her voice just adds this authentic, vulnerable touch that fits the vibe.
Brad’s response: From about 1976 through the early-’80s, record companies were rolling the new wave/punk dice, each feverishly trying to out-sign the other, hoping to be the one to sign the “next big thing” in this new, suddenly-breaking genre.
Capitol Records had two high-profile (and heavily promoted) new wave guy bands, each led by a singular, idiosyncratic and original lady: The Shirts with Annie Golden, and The Motels, led by Martha Davis. Warner Bros. Records turned down an early demo The Motels submitted, and Capitol swooped in to offer them a deal. They turned it down and promptly disbanded, citing musical differences among the members, while their career was resurrected shortly thereafter….with Capitol.
According to Steven Lee from his The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB: a Secret History of Jewish Punk, “The Shirts auditioned for CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, which resulted in the band being hired, first to open for other bands, including Television and Talking Heads, then to play as the headliner band.
“As the band honed their skills and developed new songs, they played at other local venues such as Max’s Kansas City. Like many of the bands championed by Kristal, their sound was more pop and dance-oriented than the art bands that gained fame in association with CBGB.
“Although little interest was initially shown in [The Shirts] by American record labels, per This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of The Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century, “The Shirts were featured on a double compilation album featuring the major bands of the CBGB scene in the mid-’70s, Live at CBGBs: The Home of Underground Rock (Atlantic Records, 1976):
“However, Nick Mobbs of EMI signed the band to EMI’s Harvest (UK) label in the fall of 1977, and assigned Mike Thorne to produce their first album. Largely for corporate purposes, the band was signed by EMI in conjunction with its U.S. subsidiary label, Capitol Records, which had initially passed on signing the band. This formality would eventually have a significant impact on the band’s early history.”
Brad’s song #1 sent to David: GoodBye Lenin, “Teenage Crush,” 2010
Brad’s rationale: From “Crutch” to “Crush,” adolescent angst separated by 3 decades! I know nothing about GoodBye Lenin, and there’s precious little online!
David’s song #2: Tall Dwarfs, “Crush,” 1987
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