Don't know why but am enjoying this. Distinctly remember walking somewhere in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2004 or so, listening to this blasting on my headphones. Sort of a motley combination of Led Zeppelin's version of "Travelin' Riverside Blues" and the Stooges "Down on the Street" or something.
Music like this seems particularly cringe these days. And honestly, I never listen to this kind of shit at all. But sometimes, just sometimes, you want to hear the knockoff, the pastiche, rather than the original. There must be a German word for when you prefer the imitation of the imitation to the original. Also, let no one say that Jack White cannot play guitar. One a good day, he's probably as good as Jack Black. He may not be as good as Meg White is a drummer but he can indeed hold his own.
This song was a deep cut from the album Make the World Go Away from Donny and Marie Osmond, released some time in 1975 and written by Donny and his older brother Merrill Osmond, who was the lead vocalist (and bassist!) for the Osmonds. The song itself is an example of classic '70s pop craft, somewhere between Burt Bacharach and the theme from M.A.S.H. There's very little about the album that I can find online, especially who played what. The guitar is quite expertly played and suggests some slick session player, perhaps on his off-day from a Steely Dan session for Katy Lied.
For a very brief period in 1975, my older sister was a fan of the Osmonds, and by osmosis, I absorbed some of their music, including this track.
Interesting story about the producer of this track (and the album as a whole), one Mike Curb who (gulp) later on served as the Republican Party's Lieutenant Governor of the state of California in the early '80s. I guess he would be known as more of a Democrat these days, given how rightward the Republican Party has moved in the past three or four decades, given his early advocacy for gay rights, but in many other respects he was definitely a kind of fiscal conservative.
Curb scored music for A LOT of movies in the sixties and also was a lucrative songwriter of some repute too. More important, he started his own label which merged with MGM Records and Verve Records, and he, Mr. Mike Curb, became President of the new company in 1969. Yes, the company that released records by the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa.
In the 1970s, his subsidiary label (Curb Records, obviously) put out music by Eric Burdon, War, Ritchie Havens, Gloria Gaynor, etc. Apparently, Curb records is still a thing now (in 2024!), and Mike Curb still heads it at the age of 79. Good for him.
Other facts about Mike Curb:
- he headed the country and western subsidiary of Motown Records (yes, Motown Records) in the 1970s
- Curb organized the Inaugural Youth Concert to start the second term of Richard Nixon (!) in January 1973. Among the artists who played for Nixon were Jimmy Osmond (kid brother to Donny who sings here), Ray Stevens, and a bunch of other people I've never heard of. I wonder how they felt when in the subsequent months, the Watergate scandal broke.
- Curb, as President of MGM, fired 18 artists from their roster for their supposed promotion of "hard drugs" in their songs. Well, "Heroin" by VU will do that.
Anyway, so Donny & Mary Osmond -- yeah, the vapid duo at the center of probably the worst music made in the seventies, recorded this here song. I like it. What can I say. It captures so perfectly the ennui of a mid-70s TV movie's middle interlude when the two lovers have split up and their independent lives are soundtracked by the mourning sound of Donny and Marie.
