#bill cowsill

[misquotedmosquito]

[fancycolours]

THE COWSILLS. (Circa 1968.)

[shadowland]

Bill Cowsill Nervous Breakthrough (1971) MGM Records

[texasthrillbilly]

Bill "Will Robinson" Mumy forming a band with other bygone rock stars and calling it Action Skulls is such a Venture Bros coded thing to do.

Makes sense, tho, as he is the partial inspiration for Rusty Venture.

Excuse me while I look up their music.

[remus-poopin]

What Neville Longbottom listens to in the greenhouse

All 60s psychedelic pop and early 70s Baroque pop!

Track list:

1. Leaves That Are Green - Simon & Garfunkel

2. Pink Lemonade - Peppermint Rainbow

3. Lonely Leaf - The Peanut Butter Conspiracy

4. The Rain The Park And Other Things - The Cowsills

5. Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow - Strawberry Alarm Clock

6. Little Dreams - The New Wave

7. Your Mother Should Know - The Beatles

8. Technicolor Dreams - The Alan Bown

9. Skip-A-Long Sam - The Sugar Shoppe

10. Sunshine Superman - Donovan

+more!

Other playlists:

Lily Evans, Bill Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, James Potter, Ginny Weasley, Fred and George Weasley, Sirius Black, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood, Severus Snape

[radiomaxmusic]

Feature LP / Cowsills - Global (1998) / 4pm ET / 11-14-24

The Cowsills are an American singing group from Newport, Rhode Island, six siblings noted for performing professionally and singing harmonies at an early age, later with their mother. The band was formed in early 1965 by brothers Bill, Bob, and Barry Cowsill; their brother John joined shortly thereafter. Originally Bill and Bob played guitar and Barry played the drums. When John learned to play…

[vickiabelson]

Butch Patrick Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson

What a fun chat with Butch Patrick, aka Eddie Munster, who’s warm,  easy and so comfortable in his skin that it’s impossible to not feel like an old friend coming home. Butch makes everyone in his path feel seen, heard, and important. What a gift. 

We talked about current events… living in Arkansas, his Munster Mobiles, getting out and meeting his fans, his girlfriend, how they met, and how they keep it going. And we went back… how a 7 yr old got his start in film, had a career in TV, and at the age of 10, a starring role on one of the most iconic and endearing television shows of all time. Thank goodness Bill Mumy took a pass. There are no accidents. This was Butch’s path. 

We talked Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis, Yvonne De Carlo, The Cowsills, and The Monkees, and his amazing episode and time shooting with them at the height of all of their fame. 

There were crazy days and trouble. Pot, booze, and drugs, and then, 13 years ago, getting sober. Butch’s ease and commitment to his sobriety, and helping others. It’s a beautiful thing.  

The upside of the pandemic is that it led the way to interview celebrity gems who live far away. I hope one day to meet Butch in the reals and feel his great energy sans a screen between us, but I’m grateful as hell for these opportunities to spend time getting to know this once boy who gave this girl so much childhood joy, and as a man, moves through the world with so much kindness and grace.

Butch Patrick Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson

Wednesday, March 20, 5 PM PT, 8 PM ET 

Streamed Live on my Facebook

Replay here:

[onehandtypingb1]

MMMM: Summer!

Robin selected today’s theme, “songs about vacation – destination, activity, transportation, anything related to vacation.” Well, I came up with a dozen songs that more or less fit the bill. You’ll find the playlist here. The Cowsills, “Indian Lake” Freddy Cannon, “Palisades Park” Paul Revere & The Raiders, “Where The Action Is” Sly & The Family Stone, “Hot Fun In The Summertime” The…

[kaleidoscopr]

💌 & 🔊 for anhope.. ik shes not like canon or whatever but shes canon in my heart and thats what matters

Fluffy headcanon: Because of their sleep schedule being a little wonky, they like to go out to those 24/7 restaurants at night, and sometimes go with other people when she can't sleep. Sometimes she might bake in the middle of the night when sleeping isn't working, and after going to bed at 6am, there are cookies now. Also, they have some house plants, and talk to them sweetly or sing to them. Plants like when you talk to them. Also, she shares clothes with Ingsoc even though they're different sizes.

A song (more than one in this case, I think Anhope is neat) that reminds me of them: Sweater Weather by The Neighborhood, Mr Brightside by the Killers, and the day goes on by Bill Wurtz, Central Time by Vansire, Talk to Me by Cavetown, Float On by Modest Mouse, I Love the Flower Girl by the Cowsills, Would You Rather by Crusher, What the Hell by Avril Lavigne, Love Grows by Edison Lighthouse, Heaven Can Wait by Meatloaf, A Town With an Ocean View from Kiki's Delivery Service, Windy by The Association, Firecracker by CamiCat, Just Leave Everything to Me from Hello Dolly, It's Time by Imagine Dragons, Punx by Ivan Trevino, Record Player by Daisy the Great, that jazz arrangement of Bonetrousle by insaneintherainmusic, Nyan Cat, YMCA by Village People, Starlight by Muse, Pompeii by Bastille, frog song by Eva Sterett, That's My Jam by Owl City, Deck Park Tunnel by Josh Gottry, As Summer Was Just Beginning by Larry Dahen, Fireflies by Owl City, Sad Machine by Porter Robinson, My Way by Frank Sinatra, Sinners by Lauren Aquilina, Singin' In the Rain from Singin' In the Rain, Dream Sweet in Sea Major by ミラクルミュージカル , Wanderer's Lullaby by Adriana Figueroa, and I Dare You by the Regrettes

@lmaoidkwhatnametochoose Tagging you so you still get notified

[thefrogholler]

Musical Birthday Notes - January 9th

Musical Birthday Notes – January 9th

[freddyfreeman]

Bill Cowsill ❤ 🐺 ✨

[cowsillsflower]

[lonelyasawhisper]

Records

Creem, 1st March 1979

The Royal Screw, Part VII

QUEEN Jazz (Elektra)

by Mitch Cohen

For a few weeks in 1978, an FM radio station in New York City was trying, earnestly and imaginatively, to create rock ’n’ roll counter-programming. A ratings turnaround didn’t happen fast enough, so it changed its format to something called “the Rock Champions” (i.e., more AOR elitism). This was around the same time that every film clip of The Yankees on television was scored with “We Are The Champions,” and the movie FM attempted to pass off “We Will Rock You” as the “We Shall Overcome” of the rock revolution. I started to despise Queen; a two-sided platinum single of aristocratic, pompous, triumphof-the-will arrogance in 4/4 time (if marches are to resound over the .airwaves, better Ace Frehley’s “New York Groove” any day) summed up for me the worst in royalist rock, and I couldn’t remember more joyless, numbing, contemptuous music reaching a mass audience. Frankly, I was wary of the implications.

I needn’t have been. I still despise Queen, but their music is so absurdly dull on Jazz, so filled with dumb ideas and imitative posturing, that it’s impossible to feel threatened by a barely competent rock group singing “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” (real 70’s-think: can you imagine a Queen Army, a pack of mascara’d lounge lizards walking in lockstep?). “Fun It” is their disco number for Christ’s sake, and it still sounds like a funeral march, with lyrical babble about dynastic movements. And no lead singer who evokes Joel Grey’s slimy Cabaret smarminess and who writes “the first Moroccan rock ’n’ roll song” (it sounds more like his haftorah) can truly be scary, just genuinely awful.

Queen used to make enjoyably ludicrous records like “Liar” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Roy Thomas Baker gave their music an entertaining art-rock veneer that he adapted so successfully for The Cars. But now, even their best jokes—“Let Me Entertain You”, a parody of their own worthlessness; “Dreamer’s Ball,” an extravagantly condescending jazz-blues—are pummeled by the approach to the material. All four of Queen’s writers seem to know what a song is (they’ve learned and stolen from the worst of The Beatles just as Cheap Trick have absorbed and adapted the best) and when to stop, qualities lacking in many of their progressive competitors, and stripped of their pretentious overlays, the tunes on Jazz turn out to be swipes from The Cowsills, “Holly Holy,” Magical Mystery Tour, Disraeli Gears, Mott The Who-ple. If only Queen could lock into the simplest formula without attaching dead weights, if Freddie Mercury weren’t such a screeching bore (even his cock-rock, like “Don’t Stop Me Now,” is flaccid), if their arrangements weren’t on the basic level of Mel Brooks’ “Prisoners Of Love,” then Jazz could be studied as a catalog of pop-rock sources.

Mercury, surprise of surprises, may have turned into the weakest link of the quartet (although the rhythm section does plunge to deeper depths, it does so less frequently); his compositions dominate side one and they are, without exception, earsores: “Mustapha” (the weirdest lead-off track in the history of rock albums?), “Let Me Entertain You” (a pure rocky horrorshow). Guitarist Brian May handles all the jazzing up around here, with his rollin’ and tumblin’ “Dead On Time” and “Dreamer’s Ball,” the only song that even approximates the LP’s title (if Queen pulled a Kiss and released four solo albums, May’d be the best bet (o be their Ace), but as he is also responsible for the sniggery “Fat Bottomed Girls,” it would be a misrepresentation to exempt him from blame.

Maybe Queen thinks all this is funny, that their undisguised condescension (“rock ’n’ roll just pays the bills”) and operatic mannerisms atop a beat more Rockette than rock is entertainment, but it’s not my idea of a good time. For me, their snappiest one-liner is on the inner sleeve: “Written, arranged and performed exclusively by Queen.” As if anyone else would want to.step forward and take credit.

Bonus:

Mail

Creem, 1st May 1979

FAT-MOUTHED BOYS This letter is dedicated to some guy who calls himself Mitch Cohen,' they sapling who dares take credit for the review of the LP Jazz by Queen. (CREEM, March 1979)

The review he presented to us CREEM readers finally solved the mystifying question that has been baffling us since the beginning of time. The question being: Does listening to hours of shit (some assholes prefer to refer to it as "music") performed by such tirds (Or "musicians" as those same ball heads call them) as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Dead Ted Nugent, and other similar assorted nymphos deteriorate the brains and eardrums of rock critics? For those of you who are suffering from the listed ailments (Or worse. You could be trapped in a closet with a hi-fi crooning Black Sabbath shit), the answer is Y-E-S. That spells yeah.

One of the few remaining remedies for those conditjons is Q U-E-E-N. That spells excellency.

Disco is dying.

Punk is putrid.

But QUEEN is KING.

Fun it.

All Hail Their Majesties,

Fresca A. Randazzo Dover, NH

(And this month's winner in the Critic Hatred Sweepstakes is Mitch Cohen! Previous record holder Billy Altman distinguished himself with the hate mail received after his Who Are You review. Queen fans: we wanted to run some representative of your many amusing letters, and this is it; unfortunately the rest concentrate on what you see as Mr. Cohen's sexual and medical problems, and are hopelessly rank with spittle, with nary a defense of their music. Instructive, no?—Ed.)

THAT'S NOT A BANANA... Hey! RE: Your review-putdowns of Queen's latest, Jazz in your March issue:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU'RE SO DAMN RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You told 'em!!!!!

Baby Face Toronto, Ontario

P.S. And that's not an opinion. That's a FACT!

Retrieved from The Creem Archive

[shadowland]

In Need of a Friend The Cowsills on A Family Thing (TV special, 1968)

[louisepalanker]

Joe Austin

I entered high school at the age of 13 due to a November birthday and no inclination at that time to give an immature little imp like me a cushy, extra year of pre-k. We called it nursery school back then and if you could flush a toilet you were on to Kindergarten.

So, barely out of my tweens, I remember exiting the bus, walking through the doors of Williamsville South High School and  bracing for verbal attack. The kids here were intimidating. I felt so very naive and unsophisticated. I was a chubby, pimply open target. But as I navigated my way towards homeroom, I quickly noticed that nobody noticed me. Middle school had been so stocked with nasty. But refreshingly, High School kids seemed too busy getting to where they were getting and doing what they were doing to side-eye a dorky, incoming Freshman.

And so the year proceeded. I had my Mill Middle School friends and I welcomed new ones. I joined chorus and theater and the newspaper staff and made my way through the year.It was immediately clear to any incoming member of the student body that the biggest name on campus was Joe Austin. He was quarterback of our football team, The Williamsville Billies. (We are a suburb of Buffalo, home of The Bills, and our town name is Williamsville. Our mascot is a billy goat. It’s adorable.) 

Anyway, when I told Media Path Podcast producer Dina Friedman that the star quarterback’s name was Joe Austin she said, “Oh, my God. It may as well have been Johnny Football.” But honestly, that was his name. Joe Austin. I was an obedient Freshman. I went to the obligatory compliment of games and pep rallies. “Go Billies!” I was in dutiful  awe of the team, led to victory by our own Joe Austin. We all understand high school football stardust. It's like having celebrities on your campus. If we passed Joe Austin in a hallway, we’d jab each other and jerk our chins in his direction. You didn’t want to stare but, come on. It was Joe Austin, walking right past us. Carrying books, like a person.

I was so insignificant a high school ripple that the yearbook misspelled my name in the homeroom photo. As you can see, I defiantly carved an “r” IN INK over the “z” in Palankez.The year progressed. The seasons changed. From football to baseball. Joe Austin played baseball because, of course he did. We had absolutely nothing to do with one another. I never spoke to him. I never even imagined speaking to him. 

That’s the year I enrolled in an acting class at The Studio Arena Theater and got to take the Main Street bus downtown and ride home with my Dad. That’s the year I skipped that acting class one day to watch The Cowsills on The Mike Douglas Show in the TV section of AM & A’s department store. That’s the year I become obsessed with the three part vocal harmony stylings of The Lettermen and began collecting their rich catalogue of records. That’s the year O.J. Simpson came over to our house for dinner! That’s the year our theater department put on Mame starring Bob Hinshaw, my actual senior crush. He could sing and dance and by the time he graduated, he had a beard. What a man. I had auditioned for the show with Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head and It turns out that Bacharach is very rangey. So, I was on the stage crew. 

There was a lot going on during my Freshman year of High School. Joe Austin and I were in very separate orbits. The school year came to an end and that summer I decided to learn golf. I believe I was searching for acceptance. My natural interests had met with a ton of interference in our household. I wanted to play the drums, join a little league team, have a paper route, wear baseball caps, hockey skates and high tops. None of the above was “for girls.” So, OK, let’s try golf.

Every golf course has a driving range and a putting green. That’s where you take lessons and practice and both are situated fairly closely to the first tee of the course where there is a tiny building called the starter’s hut or shed. The Starter is an employee who is responsible for the orderly and timely movement of tee times, controlling the pace of play and thus ensuring that golfers are less likely to get beaned by the foursome behind them. The starter was equipped with a clipboard, a watch and a list of names organized into threesomes and foursomes. The job requires comportment, multi-tasking and grace under pressure as country club personalities can often be described as "challenging."

That summer, the starter at our country club was Joe Austin.And that summer, Joe Austin and I became best buddies. Nothing romantic. Just great pals, roaming the Westwood Country Club together, sharpening our games and talking about whatever mattered to us as dusk settled on the golf course. He was a delight. Bright, funny, kind. There was nothing mystical or magical about our friendship. We just liked each other. 

The Universe had presented me with a perfect leveling of compatible humans removed from societal sorting systems such as High School. That’s how it felt from my perspective. To me, Joe had seemed unknowable. It’s possible that to Joe, a country club kid like me was from a different world. It’s hard to know. But absent any organized hierarchy, caste or strata, we were pals.

My friendship with Joe Austin lasted only the course of that summer but the lessons it taught me are sustaining. I belong anywhere I aspire to go. I may have to work to earn entry and acceptance but I can get there and I can build meaningful friendships with kindred souls.

The summer ended. I moved on to three more years of high school. Joe headed off to college or somewhere outside my view. 

We enter each other’s lives to share lessons. I learned a lot from Joe Austin.