"The audience went nuts for it." [citation needed]
December 14, 2018 8:47 PM   Subscribe

The single for the Captain and Tennille's song Muskrat Love featured a locked groove in the 45 which would play little pitter-patter muskrat mating sounds, forever. Other albums with locked grooves. [via]
posted by jessamyn (49 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Story of the Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ Runoff Groove

It's even at the end of the Easy Star version...
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:08 PM on December 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


Very cool post. "Sorry squire - I scratched the record ", isn’t something I expected to be reminded about tonight. Also, I t's been a while since I'd mulled over the fact that Captain and Tennille had one hit song and wound up in a prime time TV variety show.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:09 PM on December 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Love Will Keep Us Together, Do It To Me One More Time, and a lot of other top 10 hits that weren't #1. Love Will Keep Us Together won a Grammy. They were a big deal. Muskrat Love "only" got to #4.
posted by hippybear at 9:42 PM on December 14, 2018 [19 favorites]


The 70's were weird, man. You'll never really grasp just how weird if you weren't there to experience it first-hand.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:49 PM on December 14, 2018 [25 favorites]


Love Will Keep Us Together won a Grammy.

Whatever...
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:52 PM on December 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


My college radio station had an Elton John record with Rocket Man on it, with a skip that made the line “Well I think it’s gonna be a long long time” -when he says it normal, then with high note on the “long, long time”at the end of the song- into a lock groove. It was pretty amazing, and I wish I had had these lists then!
posted by holyrood at 9:54 PM on December 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


I t's been a while since I'd mulled over the fact that Captain and Tennille had one hit song and wound up in a prime time TV variety show.

At that point in television history, they were giving TV shows to mimes. There's really no explaining it.
posted by MrVisible at 10:02 PM on December 14, 2018 [12 favorites]


The 70's were weird, man.

And just to make myself clear, that's in no way an adulation or endorsement on my part.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:04 PM on December 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


they were giving TV shows to mimes.

True, but to be sure they were very good (though the same cannot be said of the sound effects) mimes.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:11 PM on December 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


At that point in television history, they were giving TV shows to mimes. There's really no explaining it.

Variety shows were the reality TV of the era, cheap and could act as promos for other "talent" they wanted to showcase. It was something of a hold over from earlier years of TV as well, where movie stars on the decline would host shows, lending their name to provide a hint of credibility. So many weird hosts, The Osmonds, Sonny and Cher, the Brady Bunch, Jim Stafford whose biggest hit was "Spiders and Snakes", Tony Orlando and Dawn, Pink Lady and Jeff, and for kids, The Bay City Rollers and The Hudson Brothers. Lots more were given shots or specials like the infamous Star Wars Christmas thing.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:13 PM on December 14, 2018 [9 favorites]


At that point in television history, they were giving TV shows to mimes. There's really no explaining it.

Fun fact: back in the early 90s I was living in Sedona working at Robert Shields' silver jewelry production studio. He was exactly as you'd expect him to be.
posted by hippybear at 10:23 PM on December 14, 2018 [11 favorites]


I really don't have any how I'd expect him to be, to be perfectly honest.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:27 PM on December 14, 2018 [8 favorites]


Quiet, I'd imagine.
posted by MrVisible at 10:28 PM on December 14, 2018 [31 favorites]


I've sort of come around on 70s weirdness after Former Mefite James Lileks lost his g-d mind to wingnuttery. He hated the aesthetic of the 70s so much, and seeing where he ended up, I kind of started feeling affection for it in self-defense.

Anyway, I had never heard of a locked groove before, thanks for posting this!
posted by emjaybee at 10:36 PM on December 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


I’ve had so many records!! But apparently none with a locked groove Easter egg. Thanks for this post.
posted by greermahoney at 10:49 PM on December 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


I am intrigued (and impressed) as to what jessamyn was doing reading about the 16 things you never knew about the Captain and Tennille. I did learn that Mike Love of the Beach Boys gave the Captain his nick. Also that they were married for 39 years before they divorced in 2014.

Also, I wish I knew about locked grooves 40 years ago. Loved the 70s. Weird and fun times. Greg_Ace, I endorse what I remember about the 70's!
posted by AugustWest at 11:21 PM on December 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


Reminds me of Monty Python's three-sided album.
posted by fairmettle at 11:22 PM on December 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


Reminds me of Monty Python's three-sided album.

One of NIN's more recent EP vinyl releases features a second side which, when played, sounded odd. But my turntable has a reverse switch, and when played from the inside to the outside of the record it is the final tracks of The Downward Spiral.
posted by hippybear at 11:34 PM on December 14, 2018 [6 favorites]


I am intrigued (and impressed) as to what jessamyn was doing reading about the 16 things you never knew about the Captain and Tennille.

Long stupid story. I had seen a tweet about Spike Lee in a captain's hat and people playing grabass around it. I felt I could find a picture of the captain from Gilligan's Island and make some lulzy joke about the two of them "Three hour tour" and the like. Then I found the photo of C&T where the Cap looks like Weird Al and was like "What is that?" and clicked and there you go.
posted by jessamyn at 11:37 PM on December 14, 2018 [12 favorites]


Are the lyrics to Do It To Me One More Time supposed to be throwing shade? Every time I hear the song (it is on the regular rotation at the robot coffee shop nearby so that's more often than you might think/hope) I feel like it is kind of hurtful.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:45 AM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Can't believe that no one's mentioned the Starland Vocal Band's show and its most famous alumnus. (prev)
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:22 AM on December 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


The 70's were weird, man.

And just to make myself clear, that's in no way an adulation or endorsement on my part.


It's really, I think, that the context was so radically different. Consider the 1978 Olivia! ABC-TV Special with Andy Gibb & ABBA. THIS WAS "NORMAL" for the time.
posted by mikelieman at 5:27 AM on December 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Here's the thing, there are a lot of jaw-dropping moments in 1970s culture and Captain and Tennille are definitely easy to make fun of. It's not hard to imagine the Captain strutting around a fern bar and the Tennille/Dorothy Hamill hairdo hasn't aged well.

However they were actually very talented, take a look at this live performance of "Love Will Keep Us Together", it's a song that could have only been made in the 70s, with a deceptively simple syncopated beat, and some slightly bleak lyrics (written by Neil Sedaka)

Young and beautiful
But someday your looks will be gone
When the others turn you off
Who'll be turning you on?

But they are both playing the bass and keyboard parts, multiple synths are involved, all of which takes some skill (especially when singing).

The 70s had this weird way of commodifiying and distorting talent though, simple talent was not sustainable, it had to be turned up to 11.
posted by jeremias at 6:42 AM on December 15, 2018 [10 favorites]


Thanks for that link Jeremias. In the lip sync performances I have seen of this song, the Captain is playing and Toni is singing. I had no idea they both played on the record!
posted by wittgenstein at 7:19 AM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Modest Mouse had a cool runout groove on The Moon and Antarctica. The CD had a hidden track interstitial between Perfect Disguise and Tiny City Made of Ashes. That hidden track is the runout groove on Side A.
posted by hwyengr at 7:45 AM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


As long as we’re talking about 70s ephemera and “Love Will Keep Us Together” here’s Charo performing it.
posted by dismas at 7:56 AM on December 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


There was an excellent industrial / harsh noise compilation series in the '80s called Dry Lungs. One of the volumes was nothing but lock grooves.
posted by idiopath at 8:08 AM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Correction, I seem to have remembered a compilation that never existed. Maybe it was a different compilation with some of the same artists?
posted by idiopath at 8:12 AM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Not a match, but this looks amazing, the track list is a wonder.
posted by idiopath at 8:14 AM on December 15, 2018


Yeah, RRRecords' three Lock Grooves compilations are the lock grooviest things around.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 8:31 AM on December 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Wow, I remember the first time I heard of this, it was the B-side of Flipper's "Sex Bomb" 7-inch was a song called "Brainwash" which was a 17-second song that repeated beginning-to-end about a dozen times before ending in a locked-groove, which I thought was doubly hilarious. Here's the 5+ hour youtube fan-edited version, cued to the part with the locked groove.

LP-Mastering companies also have many ways you can fuck with your listeners with locked grooves, backward grooves, multiple grooves, etc.

Multiple grooves reminded me of Mattel's® Talking Football™ from the 1970's, which, you'd put one of a few disks into a special player, and depending on which angle you slid the disc into the player, the needle would start on one of six multiple grooves and announce how the play you selected turned out. Here's a link to all of the plays.

GREAT POST!
GREAT POST!
GREAT POST!
GREAT POST!
GREAT POST!
GREAT POST!
GREAT POST! ......

posted by not_on_display at 11:06 AM on December 15, 2018 [9 favorites]


The 70's were weird, man.

And just to make myself clear, that's in no way an adulation or endorsement on my part.


Really -- you kids are digging up "Muskrat Love" now? It's bad enough your accepting and even liking "Bohemian Rhapsody" (ironically or otherwise) -- sure, Queen was good, but all the tapes for both of these songs should've been degaussed, by executive order, during Carter's second term. Unfortunately, Reagan won, and in addition to removing the solar panels from the White House, he killed off any and all noise pollution regulation in the USA.

At that point in television history, they were giving TV shows to mimes.

Jeez, gusottertrout -- how could your list omit the original: Red Skelton?


One more interesting LP for you-all: You're the Guy I Want to Share My Money With, from 1981, by three disparate artists: Laurie Anderson, William S. Burroughs and John Giorno. A two-record set, each got one side... but the last side, according to Wikipedia, didn't have a locked groove, but it did have three:
Side 4 of this double album is multi-grooved. Depending on where the needle lands on the record, one of the following will play:
  • Laurie Anderson - "For Electronic Dogs / Structuralist Filmmaking / Drums"
  • William S. Burroughs - "The Name is Clem Snide / Mr. Hart Couldn't Hear the Word Death"
  • John Giorno - excerpt from "Put Your Ear to Stone & Open Your Heart to the Sky"
Listening to a scratched-up version that skipped would make you crazy.
posted by Rash at 11:17 AM on December 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


Here’s Charo performing it.

Wow, I remember all those famous people used to be introduced like that "From Hollywood...."
posted by jessamyn at 12:58 PM on December 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


‘Muskrat Love is one of those ‘songs’ I. Is really hate. That it includes actual muskrat mating noises only adds to the squickyness! It came out in an era when I found the music to be unpleasant. I’m kind of a confirmed folkie and I like music from different places.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 3:42 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Having watched the video in the "little pitter patter" link, I'm not convinced those are actual animal-made noises. They sound more like studio tricks with a drum or synth of some sort to me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:16 PM on December 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


‘Muskrat Love is one of those ‘songs’ I. Is really hate.
The original is better (via YT).
posted by piglord at 12:18 AM on December 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Wonderful post! Many, many thanks!

I've been a vinyl enthusiast all my life and never heard of the "locked groove" thing until today.
So I guess I'll see which LP's/45's in my collection have a locked groove. I can't think of a better
way to spend a rainy, cold Sunday.
posted by james33 at 7:13 AM on December 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


No discussion of the weirdness of the 70s can be complete without Battle of the Network Stars
posted by AugustWest at 3:13 PM on December 16, 2018


That's Incredible, Real People....

the 70s... man....
posted by hippybear at 8:25 PM on December 16, 2018


I managed to scratch my dad's copy of Dark Side of the Moon in such away that it occasionally would get into a locked groove in a section that's basically an ambient loop anyway; since it only happened every third or fourth time you'd play it, it often took an embarrassingly long time to notice.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:31 PM on December 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


...if you had the 8-track, the whole album was a locked groove...
posted by not_on_display at 4:22 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


I had the Monty Python three sided album. Except I didn't know it was three sided. I invited a friend over and put on the album so he could hear one of the routines that I liked. Instead of that routine playing, there were a bunch of other routines that I had never heard before.

I honestly began to question my grasp of reality.
posted by eye of newt at 11:48 PM on December 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Funny thing about Charo, she is an accomplished flamenco guitarist who adopted the "cuchi cuchi" persona to get noticed in the US. Like Carmen Miranda, who was also quite talented in her musical field, Charo too took on a role that pandered to white prejudice to win greater attention than she could have by her serious talents alone.

That US audiences needed to have those kinds of personae for Charo and Miranda to even register with them is obviously pathetic, but don't let that obscure their actual abilities. (There's also more to the story involving Xavier Cugat who married Charo when he was 66 and she was 20, and Cugat's own story of success, but that's wandering from the point.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:16 AM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


Holy cr*p,
I made that list, and several others, on Discogs.
I haven't read all the comments above, but I'll bet there are several references to records I've not listed yet, so, thanks, I will add them asap.

Please check this related list:
https://www.discogs.com/lists/Vinyl-Variations/175289

And this amazing collation of lists on Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/forum/thread/417171

And please, feel free to contact me directly with additions, comments, etc. related to these lists.
posted by soulchap at 1:15 PM on December 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


I just thought I'd add this record to the conversation.
No "deliberate" locked grooves, just a toddler going apesh*t creative on a beat copy of Donny Osmond's Puppy Love - a personal favorite:

https://www.discogs.com/Thuunderboy-Thuunderboy/release/712401
posted by soulchap at 4:57 PM on December 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


I just had a memory of my friend actually commanding that I leave his house because a particular skip on his copy of The Fixx's Reach the Beach, which he looooved, was making me laugh too much. I would sing the skip over and over and over. He was right to kick me out! But still... fail modes of any tech are funneh
posted by not_on_display at 8:39 PM on December 19, 2018


> just a toddler going apesh*t creative on a beat copy of Donny Osmond's Puppy Love - a personal favorite

This is like J Dilla Meets Diana Deutsch. Thanks for the sonic treat.

AND THATS HOW YOU WIN THE "CONNECT CAPT&TENILLE TO DIANA DEUTSCH" CONTEST!
posted by not_on_display at 9:31 PM on December 19, 2018


RIP The Captain.
posted by jessamyn at 3:55 PM on January 2, 2019 [2 favorites]


I just came to add that the Captain passed away. Thanks jessamyn.
posted by AugustWest at 8:01 PM on January 2, 2019


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