 "On rare
occasions, I hear music for the first time and have a driving
compelling force to start writing about what it made me feel.
Tony Scheuren's music did that to me."
By:
MuzikMan (2003-01)
"This music is archetypal period rock music. In fact,
it is all very Beatlesque. There are harpsichords,
flutes, and a decidedly psychedelic flavor and atmosphere."
By: MuzikMan (2002-09)
Tony and I were close friends and collaborators for several
years. We met in 1967 through mutual friends, the Boston band
Ultimate Spinach, which we would both eventually wind up
joining. Tony was working as their road manager. We started
swapping song ideas and soon began working together writing
songs. We had similar melodic tastes and sensibilities, and so
it was an easy and natural collaboration. Our songs together
were among the most successful (artistically) of any I have
done. He came up with parts I would never have thought of, and
vice-versa. It was a quintessential case of "two heads are
better than one."
When we met I was already under contract as a songwriter to
New York producer Alan Lorber. Lorber encouraged me to get
another band together (my first band, The Lost, had been on
Capitol records with a couple of regionally successful
singles). He told me as soon as I was ready he'd produce an
album with me. And so it was that Tony and I set about laying
the groundwork for our band, Chamaeleon Church. The name was
inspired by our first song together, "Camillia Is Changing,"
which turned out to be the single off our first and only
album, recorded in early 1968. The two other members of the
band were Kyle Garrahan, the former lead guitarist for The
Lost, and Chevy Chase, a guy I had met in New York who was
always hounding me about starting a band so he could be the
drummer. It was more his sense of humor than his drumming that
induced me to finally let him have the gig.
While rehearsing and putting that album together I became
even more impressed with Tony's seemingly effortless ability
to pick up just about any instrument and play it convincingly.
I was envious too of his vocal quality, which had an
"airiness" I always strove for but never quite attained.
After The Chamaeleon Church dissolved in 1968, Tony and I
moved back to the Boston area, sharing a large house with
various musicians. When the Spinach decided to replace their
founder and lead singer, Ian Bruce-Douglas, Tony and I were
offered the positions of lead singers/songwriters. We were
already under contract to Alan Lorber, who was also the
producer of Ultimate Spinach, so it seemed an all-too-natural
transition. We recorded the third and final Ultimate Spinach
album in late 1968. Tony and I wrote most of the songs, some
together, and some separately.
Tony and I drifted apart for a number of years when I moved
out to California in April of 1969. I didn't see him again
until around 1977 when he was in Los Angeles working for the
touring company of National Lampoon's show, Lemmings. He
showed me his new songs, and we even did some recording
together when he was in LA. But what really impressed me were
these parody tapes Tony had made for the National Lampoon's
radio show. They were brilliant: perfect vocal impersonations
of people like Dylan, James Taylor and Neil Young. What's
more, the songs they sang were completely original, new songs,
with rippingly funny, satirical lyrics, and in the exact style
of that artist. For instance, there was a Dylan send-up called
"Queen Of the S.L.A.," chronicling the exploits of Patty
Hearst in the style of Dylan's Hurricane Carter song, or there
was a biting James Taylor parody called "Methadone Maintenance
Man" where he would nod out before the song was over. I was
knocked out by Tony's amazing talent for parody, urged him to
turn it into a new career direction (this pre-dated "Weird Al"
by at least five years). He would have the market cornered on
a brand new sub-genre. But Tony poo-pooed the whole thing as
just a sideline - something he had done as a lark and to make
some money with the Lampoon show. He was determined to make it
as a serious singer-songwriter, and to be recognized as such
by his peers and the world.
I guess what I could never get him to see was that the
world does not conform to the script you write for it. We're
all just actors on this stage, not the playwrights. He just
couldn't accept the way things are in this world. I only hope
they're better where he is.
-- Ted Myers-April 2000
Reviews of new comedy, rock and country releases
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
THE BEST OF NATIONAL LAMPOON
RADIO HOUR (Rhino)
Long ago there was a very funny show from New York that
starred John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray,
Billy Crystal and featured the sarcastic writing of Michael
O'Donoghue, Anne Beatts and many other East Coast collegiate
smart alecks.
Sometimes it was even funnier than the show they did later
- ``Saturday Night Live.''
Before tampering with TV, the National Lampoon Radio Hour
crew blew up all the existing conventions of radio
broadcasting. This three-disc retrospective from the show's
cultish 1973-1975 run contains plenty of drug references,
phony commercials and pot-shots at The Man, including this
typical announcement: ``Uh, uh, uh, don't touch that dial. The
National Lampoon Radio Hour will be right back after this
insincere commercial message, written by some cynical Nazis
solely for the purpose of ripping off your parents' money.''
Political incorrectness abounded, way before anybody knew
what that meant, and while many of the irreverent bits now
sound either heavy-handed or simply not very funny, the best
ones are classic, including Belushi's oft-used Marlon Brando
impression, Bob Perry's hilariously mundane Canadian Newsreel,
Christopher Guest's foppish portrayal of show-biz insider
``Ron Fields,'' Tony Scheuren's spot-on imitation of James
Taylor, and Gilda Radner's abusive encounter with Bill
Murray's "Evil Santa."
I suppose they could do this on radio today, but they
won't.
--RICK SHEFCHIK
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