On Stage

BUBBLEGUM MUSIC IS THE NAKED TRUTH

Edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay

Feral House

326 pages; $19.95



Bubblegum music has enjoyed a massive rejuvenation in the past five years, with the proliferation of easily digested, chart-topping fare by Britney Spears, 'N Sync, O-Town, and seemingly ad infinitum. But a decade before these artists were even embryonic, pop culture bore the youth generation of the late '60s an even greater array of guilty pleasures.

The challenge of Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth—a collection of nearly 100 essays that chew on numerous facets of the genre—is defining exactly what the "bubblegum" comprises. Of course, there are such obvious contenders as the Archies, the Partridge Family, and the Banana Splits, but editors Kim Cooper and David Smay explore less apparent sides of assembly-line kitsch that will catapult baby boomers back to a time when Bobby Sherman's latest single could be found on the back of a cereal box, "Schoolhouse Rock" was ubiquitous with Saturday mornings, and Clive Davis—as president of Bell Records, later to be renamed Arista—was promoting Robbie Benson, not Whitney Houston.

The exhaustive, 326-page volume goes beyond the obvious to explore how teeny-bopper sounds have affected such seemingly disparate musical forms as new wave (the Cars, Cyndi Lauper, Toni Basil), punk (the Ramones, New York Dolls), and "black music" (Jackson Five, the Sylvers); it also surveys a who's who of the genre's taskmasters—songwriters Boyce & Hart (who wrote most of the Monkees' hits), TV producers Sid & Marty Krofft (H.R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund & the Sea Monsters), and Hanna-Barbera (the Impossibles, Cattanooga Cats). The tome also takes care to delve into the '90s with a chapter called "Dextrose Rides Again," giving proper notice to such modern-day confections as Aqua, Hanson, Spice Girls, Swedish pop producer Max Martin, and the Now compilation series.

As is mandatory for this kind of manual, there are numerous lists, including a campy, broad-minded Bubblegum Top 100. The Beatles cartoon series lands at No. 87, the classic Brady Bunch line "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" is No. 67, and the Go-Go's stand at No. 60. Villains on the Batman TV series are No. 46, while AM radio jocks are No. 38. At No. 25 is Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. And No. 1, by unanimous agreement, is faux group the Archies.

Cooper traces the origins of bubblegum to the late '60s, a time when "the American economy was in great shape, and for the first time a whole generation knew nothing of the deprivation" of World War II and the Depression. "In direct response emerged a startling variety of kiddie-driven commodities: comic books and skateboards, goofy plastic paraphernalia, Sea Monkeys—and a whole new kind of rock'n'roll."

Early contenders included such kid-targeted fare as "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" from the Royal Guardsman—which reached No. 2 in 1966—not to mention the Fifth Estate's obscure No. 11 hit in 1967, "Ding, Dong! The Witch Is Dead," a pop/ novelty take with Renaissance pepperings on the Wizard of Oz staple.

Author Carl Cafarelli theorizes that the genre saw its authoritative launch with the Lemon Pipers' "Green Tambourine" on Neil Bogart's Buddah Records, which topped the Hot 100 in February 1967. "The Lemon Pipers themselves had little interest in becoming bubblegum's favorite sons," Cafarelli writes, "but they knew they'd be dropped by Buddah if they didn't record the tune, which Bogart saw as a surefire hit."

Buddah fostered similarly giddy radio favorites from 1910 Fruitgum Company ("Simon Says") and the Ohio Express ("Yummy, Yummy, Yummy"), and Bogart found himself in need of a catch phrase to define his company's unabashed signature sound. He found it via A&R gurus Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz, who signed the two acts. "We would gear (songs) to the teenagers, the young kids," the duo tells Cafarelli. "At the time, we used to be chewing bubblegum and [we would] laugh and say, 'Ah, this is like bubblegum music.' "

While the editors claim the initial bubblegum boom popped in 1972, the species has obviously endured, cultivating its most fertile latter-day period in the past half-decade—corresponding to another economic boom time. With the times no longer so flush, let's see if bubblegum's flavor lasts.

CHUCK TAYLOR