Rant #2,178: Echo Valley 2-6809

Echo Valley is a city in Washington State, where skiing is king.

It also serves as the basis of the name of a song by the Partridge Family, where David Cassidy laments that he should have called that number, because there was a girl on the other end of the line ... and when he finally calls the number, the number has been disconnected.

Oh well, there are a lot of fish in the sea, so David certainly moved on, but that sad song says it all.

Anyway, Echo Valley also serves as the name of a very interesting podcast that I discovered pretty much by accident.

Let me give you a little background first.

What is bubblegum?

We all know that it is a chewy candy that can lead to some nasty cavities, but it is pretty much part of our lives from early on.

(Me, I am not a candy eater to begin with, so I used to give whatever bubblegum I got to my sister, and the resultant cavities followed.)

Chew, chew and chew some more, until all the flavor goes out of it.

That is pretty much the idea behind bubblegum music too.

Bubblegum music, or at least when a certain type of music was denoted as bubblegum music, came to us in the mid-1960s, although its origins probably go back way before that.

But let's look at when a certain type of music was defined that way ...

The Beatles took the world by storm with their feel-good music, seemingly coming at the right time to help the world to heal after the assassination of one of our most popular presidents, both nationally and internationally, John F. Kennedy.

Hitting the American airwaves literally weeks after the assassination, the Beatles made us feel good about life again, and their boy next door looks--and that hair--really set the pace for us to get up by our bootstraps and move on from that terrible tragedy.

The Beatles sang about love, girls, relationships, and pretty much what other performers sung about back then, but they did it in such a novel way that even non-music lovers couldn't help but notice.

But there is only a short time when you can sing about those things without everything growing stale, and the Beatles moved on from that, or at least the way they handled their music moved on, and they began to produce music, pretty much starting in 1966 or so, that dealt with other subjects, including inner turmoil, in a more adult way (and yes, they still sang about love, girls and relationships, but again, in a more adult way).

A new generation of kids were starting to stand out in the world, taking over after their older brothers and sisters--who had grooved to the early sounds of the Beatles--had grown with that group and yearned for more progressive sounds.

The kids who were about seven years old to about 10 years old in 1966--my generation--wasn't yet ready to fully move on with the Beatles, and something called "The Monkees" was there to soothe our musical soul, talking about the same things the Beatles did but with that early-Beatle tone and mystique.

Music people saw that this type of music could sell millions and millions of records--they certainly saw it with the Beatles, and it was clearly perpetuated by the Monkees--and they believed they had a formula to create a new genre of music that would appeal to younger kids and do it with double entendre themes to make even older kids take notice.

Existing acts like the Monkees, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Tommy James and the Shondells, and Tommy Roe were categorized, sometimes unfairly, as bubblegum acts, but the genre needed a central axis, and it found it on one particular label.

And thus, around 1967 or 1968, came bubblegum music, with groups and phantom groups coming and going and making hit records on a label almost designed for this type of music, Buddah Records.

You had the 1910 Fruitgum Co., the Ohio Express, and countless other creations that spouted out "1,2,3 Red Light" and "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" with glee and kids ate it up, with these acts selling millions and millions of records.

The actual bubblegum craze lasted maybe two years, and the Buddah acts still were cranking out records, but another generation of kids had moved on.

There was still bubblegum music out there--Bobby Sherman and the aforementioned David Cassidy, anyone?--but heck, even the Monkees moved on from there with "Head," Tommy James moved on from there with "Crystal Blue Persuasion," and Tommy Roe and the Raiders would also eventually at least try to get out of that area.

Well, back to the podcast ...

I simply discovered this podcast by someone posting a note on Facebook about the Monkees' Micky Dolenz appearing on the "Echo Valley" podcast.

I downloaded the show, and the hour-long show featured maybe five minutes of Dolenz talking about his Monkees days, but the other 55 minutes featured an array of bubblegum music that I either did not know existed or hadn't heard in ages.

The premise of the show is that one Professor Bubblegum is the mayor, the librarian and the archivist of Echo Valley, which here is a fictitious town that is a haven for bubblegummers and bubblegum music.

So over the hour-long podcast--which now numbers 125 episodes at this writing, beginning in 2011--the Professor takes us on a whirl through the town and its inhabitants, everybody from the Monkees to the Partridge Family to the Groovy Ghoulies to Josie and the Pussycats to the 1910 Fruitgum Co. to the Lemon Pipers to ... well, I think you get it.

There is a mild plot to every telecast, which uses music from records, TV shows and TV commercials to carry out the show's theme.

This isn't all nonsensical bubblegum. One episode actually delved into the question of "What act was the first boy band?" and very interestingly, it was not the Monkees--it was, according to Professor Bubblegum, the Comedian Harmonists, a pre-World War II German act which was created with much the same resolve as the Monkees were--and a short history of the act was given on this particular podcast, even delving into the group's Jewish ancestry and their negative experiences when they came to the United States at the outbreak of World War II.

So yes, the show is as lightweight as air, but it can be a bit heavier, with mild histories thrown into the mix with bubblegum music, a story segment where the Professor reads from comic books and magazines of the day which touch on bubblegum and bubblegum-related acts, and just plain fun.

If you are interested in hearing/downloading this podcast, you can begin at its beginning at http://echovalleymusic.blogspot.com/2011/06/echo-valley-episode-1.html and go on from there.

And no, I have no idea who Professor Bubblegum is, and like many Buddah bubblegum acts, I don't really care to know what is real and what isn't ... just go with the flow and I guarantee, you will not be disappointed.

And if you don't choose to try this podcast out, like David Cassidy sang in "Echo Valley 2-6809," ...

I should have called that number ... ."