---

From Wikipedia: “Other notable [Detroit] bands from this time period include Alice Cooper, the Amboy Dukes (featuring Ted Nugent), the Bob Seger System, Frijid Pink, SRC, the Up, the Frost (featuring Dick Wagner), Popcorn Blizzard (featuring Meat Loaf), Cactus, and the soulful sounds of Rare Earth and the Flaming Ember.”

Rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley was from Detroit; in 1955, “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets was the first big rock and roll hit. Hank Ballard and the Midniters had a crossover R&B hit in 1954 with “Work with Me, Annie”; this band also recorded the original version of “The Twist” in 1959 as a B-side that Chubby Checker catapulted to a nationwide craze the following year. More recently, the White Stripes is one of the primary bands that ignited the Garage Rock Revival of the early 2000’s, among a host of other like-minded Detroit groups.

Bandmembers were Mark Norton (vocals), Peter James (guitar), Dave Hanna (bass), and Robert Mulrooney (drums). According to Wikipedia, the last official Ramrods show was on January 28, 1978. Before the band broke up, Ramones manager Danny Fields and Seymour Stein of Sire Records had been interested in signing them.

Perye also writes: “I have heard countless stories from many Detroiter’s who argued that during the 1980’s there was no better soul-funk-party-new-wave band than the Lovemasters.”

Writing for the Detroit Metro Times website, Ben Blackwell writes of the Gimme Some Action CD: “The Ramrods are the name of Detroit frontline punk warriors. . . . Ramrods lead howler Mark J. Norton barks like a bored kid with an armload of bulldogs while guitarist Peter James’s scarred-yet-smooth soloing informs us that [the Stooges album] Raw Power was safely tucked under his pillow. While the ’Rods studio output is brief, the highlight of the disc is easily their 1977 live medley: ‘Helter Skelter’ [by the Beatles] catapults into a punk-painted ‘My Generation’ [by the Who] and declares the obvious in ‘Search and Destroy’ [by the Stooges] and cements its place in rock lore by adding the archetypical ‘I’m a Ramrod’.”

Robert Mulrooney recalls: “My first thought was, ‘What happened to all the fun rock ’n’ roll bands, like the Flamin’ Groovies or even Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers?’ I used to make up silly nicknames for myself all the time. One was ‘Surfer Bootsey’ as a joke because you’d never see any funky brothers surfin’ . . . and the name just caught on. We were Bootsey and the Banshies at first — we misspelled it that way just to piss off all the serious Goth fans around Detroit at that time. And then one night, I drove by a strip club and saw on the marquee: ‘Featuring Reggie the Love Master!’ I just thought that sounded cool.”

The Lovemasters opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers during the tour to support their second album, Freaky Styley (1985) when they appeared at St. Andrews Hall, an important Detroit music venue since its beginnings in 1980.

plus, everything else such a concept would involve (with flashes of George Clinton’s Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone, both of which were psychedelicized versions of the [James] Brown revue anyway). The act came complete with horns, keyboards, a jive-talking emcee (who doubled on sax), and the ever-present — and ever-hot — Sugarbabes of Soul. . . .

“And if that weren’t enough, the crew mixed it all with such perfect punk-ified covers as Neil Diamond’s ‘Brother Love’s Travelin’ Salvation Show’, Elvis’ ‘Kissin’ Cousins’ and ‘Suspicious Minds’, Roy Head’s ‘Treat Her Right’ (the instrumental that always announced Bootsey’s imminent arrival onstage), and perhaps the greatest cover of the O’Jays’ ‘Love Train’ of all time.”

Among other things, Motor City Blues was my introduction to a simply amazing street musician named One-String Sam who plays a handmade “unitar” and has a bluesman howl unlike any that I have ever heard.

Preceding “I’m a Ramrod” on both the LP and the CD is a terrific track by Bootsey X and the Lovemasters called “Pusherman of Love”. Credits given on the Discogs website give Bootsey X as the lead vocalist and also the record producer; Robert Mulrooney is listed as the drummer and also the songwriter – as noted, Bootsey and Mulrooney are the same person. Other players are Mark Kern (bass), Craig Peters (guitar), Gary Adams (guitar), Don Jones (saxophone), and “militant rap” by Valorie Dawn Moore.

The opening cut, “(Annie Got) Hot Pants Power” and their famous song “Genius from the Waist Down” fall squarely into that category. The Lovemasters also have a cover version of “I’m a Ramrod” that is every bit as tough as “I’m a Ramrod” by the Ramrods. In their version, there was at least one key lyric change; in place of a tacky sexual reference – surely the double double entendre of “ramrod” is enough after all (in both the song name and the band name) – they substitute a clause that even a lot of my Christian friends should be able to get behind: “. . . ’cause everybody knows that the world’s a cheat / Yeah the world’s a cheat”.

These three songs plus “Beat Girl” list Bobby Beyond as lead vocalist (that’s Robert Mulrooney in yet another guise) plus Gerald Shohan (guitars, backing vocals), Ricky Rat (rhythm guitar), Mike Marshall and Steve King (bass on two songs apiece), Jimmy Paluzzi (drums), and Sophie & Irene (backing vocals on “(Annie Got) Hot Pants Power” – mostly minimalist moans, ooh’s and aah’s).

For “Pony Down”, perhaps the slowest song on the EP (but just barely), the Lovemasters has a different line-up of musicians that is more like those who played on “Pusherman of Love”: Bootsey X (lead vocals, backing vocals, drums), Mark Kern (bass), Craig Peters (guitar), Gary Adams (guitar), Don Jones (guitar), and Mike Murphy (backing vocals).

The black guy in the cover shot leaning on the classic Detroit car (complete with fins) next to the gorgeous model flipping the bird turns out to be a drug dealer who happened to be watching the photo shoot in a rough part of town.

Dark Carnival was sort of a Detroit punk supergroup that was assembled by Detroit music promoter Colonel Galaxy, whose name was a nod to Elvis Presley’s longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Bootsey X was the first bandmember to be recruited; others included his bandmate in the Ramrods, Mark Norton, plus (as listed in Wikipedia): “Gary Adams from the Cubes [who was also a sometime bandmember in the Lovemasters], Mike McFeaters from What Jane Shared, Jerry Vile from the Boners, Sarana VerLin from Natasha, Greasy Carlisi from Motor City Bad Boys, Robert Gordon and Art Lyzak from the Mutants, Joe Hayden from Bugs Bedow, Pete Bankert from Weapons, [and] Larry Steel from the Cult Heroes.

“Later, Dark Carnival saw some turnover, with the ‘big’ names signing on: Niagara from Destroy All Monsters, Ron [Asheton] and Scott Asheton from the Stooges, Cheetah Chrome from the Dead Boys, Jim Carroll even came in from New York.”

Credits for “(Santa’s Got a) Bomb for Whitey” by the Lovemasters / Dark Carnival are Bootsey X (lead vocals), Ron Asheton (lead guitar and backing vocals), Gary Adams (guitar), Joe Hayden (bass), and Ron Cumbo (drums). I have no idea what the song is about, but the infectious repetition of “got a bomb for whitey” that recurs throughout the song typically runs through my head for weeks every time I play this CD.

He says: “[It is by] the Credibility Gap, the first group that featured Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and David Lander (McKean’s partner from Laverne & Shirley). It’s from their album A Great Gift Idea. . . . Pretty hard to come by these days (it’s never been released on tape or CD), but it’s well worth the effort to find. IMHO, it ranks with National Lampoon’s Radio Dinner, Firesign Theatre’s Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, and Stan Freberg’s United States of America as one of the all-time great comedy albums.”

As laid out by A. Templeton Goff, the dialogue is taken from a sketch by the Credibility Gap called “Kingpin”, the story of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. if told in a “blaxploitation” film. (Only the first two lines plus the fistfight are actually on the Lovemasters album):

• BUS DRIVER: Sorry, fella, you’ll have to get to the back of this bus.
• KINGPIN: Listen, you honky-donkey! No one tells Kingpin to get back! (Sounds of a fistfight)
• BUS DRIVER: I . . . I thought you were nonviolent, Kingpin!
• KINGPIN: Sure, man. Only when I’m . . . dreamin’!

I have a CD by Nathaniel Mayer called Why Won’t You Let Me Be Black? that was released in 2009 on Alive Naturalsound Records. The cover shot was taken at the same time (and also with the Eiffel Tower in the background) as the above photograph showing Nathaniel Mayer with Bootsey X (middle).

Items: The Lovemasters

* * *

Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.

March 2016 – 1980’s-2000’s punk/funk band THE LOVEMASTERS; Story of the Month on Pat Boone; also, Twisted Sister, the B-52’s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, ZZ Top, Deee-Lite, Katrina and the Waves, Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, the Ramrods, Robert Mulrooney, Bootsey X, Bobby Beyond, One String Sam, the Credibility Gap, Dark Carnival, Nathaniel Mayer.