Lemmings in Action -or- An Ocean of Potion

Why "the Lemmings?" People ask us this question all the time (with their eyes, really. Not out loud. But we know what they're thinking.)

I mean, isn't the lemming a negative namesake? A walking punchline? A creature the TV show Robot Chicken once called "Nature's Retard?" (Their words, not mine).

Most of you already know the story of how we got our name, but just in case... when we first started singing on the streets of New York, back when our hair, teeth, and major organs were all still intact, we noticed that if any one of us started wandering towards another street corner, the rest of us would just follow, blindly, mindlessly, until someone would suddenly say, "Wait. How did we get here?" This leaderless drifting was so prevalent, so DNA-determined, we decided that if it came to it we would probably follow each other right off a cliff into the sea like lemmings. And so the name was born. 

Which Lemming is in the limo?



The thing is we still do it! Only now, instead of street corners, we wander in e-mails. Case in point: I asked the guys to help me out with this week's blog. They came through, as always, but along the way I learned about Indian food, stereo components, groveling before David Letterman, profuse sweating, and a whole lot more. A typical Lemmings meander. Here now, the tale of the mail.

*actual e-mails from August 15, 2011

KEV (3:59 pm)

Guys -- I need your help. I've done 18 weekly blog entries in a row and I don’t want to end the streak. But I have bupkis for the next one. Here's an idea. Love Potion No. 9 then and now. I have video of us singing it in 1986 and 2009. Thinking if everybody shot me a couple of sentences about life then vs. life now, I'd have enough material for something decent. 

[KevNote: "Love Potion No. 9" was our very first Lemmings arrangement, done in 1983 during a group hang at Charlie's family cabin on Lake Winnipesaukee. We've probably performed it more than any other song.]

BILL (4:10 pm)

Petrosian, [Bill calls me Petrosian. Don't know why.]

The Love Potion idea is a good one. Our first big collaboration and I think back to 1986 more than ’09: it’s the ancient historian in me I suppose.     

- Gas well under $2.     

- This was six YEARS before Ross Perot, amazing.     

- Looking online I can see the Voyager Two probe made first contact with Uranus. (Is there anyone I should NOT count in?)

     

- Geraldo opened Capone’s vault, which should be a shrine for Lemmings when you think about it.

- Bill Buckner let the ball go through his legs, making him an honorary member.     

- I was in my first year teaching at Hackley School, still two years before buying my own car, had to hitch a ride with someone up to Lake Winnipesaukee.

- I had resumed my infamous career at Camp Dudley that previous summer...  Don’t live!

CHUCK (4:16)

1986 vs. 2009:  Reaganomics vs. Obamamania;

we had pimples then vs. psoriasis now;

Madonna vs. Gaga, and the list goes on….
[KevNote: This makes me curious about Chuck's iPod.  Meanwhile, here is that 1986 performance, a spontaneous rendition at Katharine's and my wedding reception.]

WINTHY (4:17)

All I remember is that we used to do Potion…at the Ballroom in the Vicki show as Tracy and The Truth. You have those photos, right? [KevNote: I do.]

Tracy and the Truth with Miss Vicki O.

CHUCK (4:19)

I believe we also did Potion at the Women in Transportation gig, but likely NOT on Don K. Reed?? Or did we?? [KevNote: Don K Reed hosted a venerable NY radio show called “The Doo-Wop Shop” on WCBS-FM. We were his guests in November of 1986 and we DID do Love Potion.]

BILL (4:42)

And we debuted it at the nearby camp, with Dr. Rhythm??

CHUCK (4:44)

You could certainly preface it with a bit of the Don K Reed story, and the story alone will buy us forgiveness for the performance! “It’s my show, gentlemen!” And when did we do King Tut? [KevNote: Here come the tangents.]

PAUL (4:47)

In 1986, I was 28 – not married, no kids, not yet in the profession I was destined to be in – a veritable tabula rasa.  Pre-e-mail, pre-my first cell phone, pre-my first PC (although I did have an Apple 2e computer and a Nakamichi tape deck), pre-the information super-highway:  life seemed simpler then.  And I had the time to go to Charlie’s house in Lake Winnipesaukee with my totie best friends, freezing my ass off as we struggled to construct our first Lemmings arrangement – Love Potion #9

.

In 2011, but for my wife and kids and my totie best friends, I am a veritable tabula chunka. [KevNote: That’s a reference to “chucks o’ sadness,” a term Vern coined to describe people with all the life sucked out of them. For some reason, the Lemmings find that hilarious.]

CHUCK (4:50)

;-) and I have to state for the record, that I also had a Nakamichi tape deck because Pablo took me shopping… he also took me out to every ethnic restaurant in NYC you can imagine to get me to expand my taste buds/horizons… through this I learned that one can find chicken in every culture. Of that experience, my favorite was eating mild chicken, while watching Paul’s face sweat while eating Chicken VINDALOO!!!

ME (5:09)

And what about "Wayne's organ"?  I have a distinct memory of Wayne playing the old pump organ at Charlie’s summer house while we were cooking breakfast. We came up with the arrangement up there. And didn't we play a little d&d that weekend? [Nerd Alert!] That's where Xaxxon Rhoidoflatch and Tarses the Sleepy were born, no? Dr. Rhythm stirred up a distant memory. Did we record a part on a boombox or something and play it back while we sang to it??

BILL (5:18)

We were lacking a bass, I believe, it may have been for a number other than Posh. [KevNote: That's shorthand for Love Potion, pronounced with a long O sound.] We played it along with the three of us singing, and then pause-played it saying “thankyouthankyouthankyou” afterwards. Oh yes, we did. Your observations of Wayne’s Organ and D&D were also correct. I think we can credit that weekend for Spandex Khahili and the bard named... Ed as well.

LYMAN (5:31) [KevNote: Lyman pulls us back on track here and delivers the motherlode.]

Random musings…
- I think we started working on Love Potion in a car on the way up to NH, is that right?   

- I recall us being pretty self-amused when we realized how many songs we could cram into the medley at the end.  

- I remember being amused at the “devil or angel” aspect of having basses sing “don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it” while the tenors sang “ drink it up, drink it up booooy”

- I think the arrangement was not written down for a long time – maybe until John McDermott sang it with the Octet  -- now there is a rendition! [KevNote: You can hear it by clicking here.]

- The Usual Suspects sang the song on Eureeka’s Castle, where we were green screen superimposed over a penguin covered arctic landscape?? Wha??

- It didn’t originally have the lyric “don’t you love this medley”… that came sometime after the 1,000th performance

- I think Paul once sent a tape to the songwriters Lieber and Stoller, or someone doing a project about different versions of the song?? I believe the silence was deafening ;)   
- For me, potion has some dangerous parts – like the “woah woah whoah WHOA” just before “I didn’t know if it was day or night”.  When I miss that high note, it’s not pretty (as we know) – nowadays I tend to shy away from that...

[KevNote: Here is that performance from Eureeka’s castle, back when Lyman didn't shy away from nobody, no how. The guest Lemming is our friend Tony Dowdy. Singing starts at 1:29.]

BRUCE (6:41)

Nice recall by the various totes herein. and I too had a Nakamichi! haha. In fact, just saw it at my mom's house where it has been a techno artifact/dust collector with the Yamaha tuner and Dual turntable for many decades.

Speaking of tape decks and random musings... I was remembering the other day that I once slipped a cassette of Kev's "Consider Me Gone" arrangement to Sting when I had the chance to interview him for something way back in the MTV days (I was cool for approximately 3 weeks in the late '80s). Not sure what we thought would happen ("This is bloody brilliant! I need these guys on tour with me, NOW!") but I wonder if he ever heard it?

CHUCK (6:46)

this reminds me also of when we were writing to/trying to get on Letterman… another lack of response. If a Lemming fell in the woods….

ME (6:47)

...no one would hear him fart.

PAUL (7:01)

I remember writing the super-self-deprecating letter to Letterman. I believe it ended "Please oh please give us the lucky break we don't deserve."

CHARLIE (7:59)

Photo attached is where I am right this second and also the room where poesh was created.

Merrymount

BILL (8:01)

The very place! Ohh, you must expire this instant. Set your camera on timer and show me the death-pose, draped over Wayne’s organ and clutching your chest. Do it now!!!

CHARLIE (8:10)

I didn't understand a word of that... And thankfully I have no timer on my phone...

But here is the only organ in this room I am willing to photograph.

Wayne's organ?

WINTHY (10:24 pm)

All I can say is… in the words Monica Harran (or "Gina" as she was known to Tracy and The Truth)…wait for it… "How 'bout that POTION?!?!?"

---------------------------
Okay, you get the idea. It's like life, or like a GPS that constantly says "recalculating". Somehow we manage to get there. And in this case, "there" is our most recent performance of "Love Potion No. 9," appropriately from '09, twenty-six years after the arrangement was hatched in the shadow of Wayne's organ. Here 'tis.

And now I bid you shutup. For some reason I'm hungry for chicken vindaloo.

--------------------------------
Postscript: I had just finished putting together this entry yesterday when I heard that Jerry Lieber, who wrote the lyrics to "Love Potion No. 9", had passed away at age 78. He and Mike Stoller wrote some of the most classic rock & roll songs of all time. "Hound Dog", "Stand By Me", "Poison Ivy", Posh, and tons more. So here's to you, Jerry Lieber. Thanks for Madame Ruth, mixing it up in the sink, and drinking it up, boy. The Lemmings salute you. 

I Want My LemTV!

Little known fact: MTV and the Lemmings are the same age. We were both born in 1981, so happy 30th birthday to us both.

In space, no one can hear you sing.

We each went on to fulfill our individual destinies. One of us became an influential, game-changing media brand and a touchstone of youth culture around the world. The other is a successful TV network. And on several occasions, our paths have crossed.

Lenin, Einstein, Joyce, and Leddy

In fact, Bruce, Charlie, Fish, and I all worked at MTV for a chunk of our lives. Lyman, Vern and Winthy did freelance stints there. Mark's wife aka Paul's sister Carole secretly runs the place. Wayne was at VH-1. Bill did some writing... etc., etc... and we all have the eBay-able T-shirts to prove it. (Except Lyman, who, always the big thinker, skipped the T-shirts and snagged a wife instead. Hi Daria!)

Dahhhhhhrrrrrhhhhhrrr...

So, in honor of MTV's 30th birthday, which took place just recently on August 1st, I have three Lemmings-meet-MTV moments for you.

Get some candles and blow me

The first is our appearance on the seminal game show Remote Control. Remember that show? Ground-breakingly awesome! So much of today's TV can be traced back to that show. Not to mention it gave us Denis Leary, Adam Sandler, Colin Quinn... and the Remote Control Chorus featuring Wayne, Charlie, Winthy, and our pal Tony Dowdy. Here they put the "music" in Music Television. Or at least the "Mo" in Remote Control.

(I like how they could never quite figure out the chord on the second to last "everything's coming up." I did the arrangement and was arrogant enough back then to insist they work on it until they got it right. Today I would just fix the stupid chord. Sorry, boys.)

Next, our first TV Theme Song thanks to Charlie and West Coast Julie Brown. Somehow, Charlie tricked his bosses into letting his a cappella group do the music for the show. We were probably "budget-friendly." Whatever. Here's one of our proudest moments, our claim to pop culture fame, the answer to a trivia question nobody ever asks... our opening to Just Say Julie. (bah Bah Bahhhhh, yeah...)  

That gig was a gateway drug to Joe's Apartment, a subject for a future blog entry. (BTW - If you want to hear the original demo from when JSJ was briefly called Miss Julie Brown's Video Show, click here.)

Finally, a personal favorite. When Bruce was producing The Half Hour Comedy Hour, he would sometimes use us totes as writers and extras. That picture of Lenin, Einstein, and Joyce above is an example. I once played a French mime fighting the Nazis. But my favorite was when he did a spoof of This Old House as hosted by Robert Smith of the Cure. Bruce is a mope-ily perfect Robert, and Vern (Vern!) is his confused carpenter.

So happy birthday, MTV. Thanks for the memories. Doodle doodle dee, wubba wubba wubba. Now back to whatever you were airing that makes me feel ancient.

POLL RESULTS: I've just decided. August is "National No-Poll Month." So that's one less thing you have to click. You're welcome.

Shhhhh.

Tales of a Swedish Supermodel -or- Our Love Is Here To Stay

It's possible I've overemphasized the role of the Swedish supermodel in this week's blog. But I'm hoping you'll forgive me once you read today's fantastic entry from guest scribe Bruce Leddy who will be taking you behind the velvet ropes, inside the process of Lemmings myth-making. And there IS a Swedish supermodel in there somewhere. So without further ado, I give you a woody... I mean, I give you our own resident Woody Allen... filmmaker, baritone, yamhead, Bruce J. Leddy. Bruce?

Lights... Camera... Tote!

Dear Timid Woodland Creatures:

Standing in the shadow of Bill's unmentionable blog from last week, I offer this week's ode to Lemosity. If any among you should question just how meaningful being a member of this group has been to me, look no further than the feature film I spent a solid 3 years of my life on: the valentine of all valentines to male bonding through harmony, "Shut Up & Sing," nay "The Wedding Weekend," er, "Sing Now or Forever Hold Your Peace."  

Some may even wonder why I would make such a gargantuan homage to our beloved pastime when I've never been much of a singer, never a soloist or star, and at best could be considered a utility player. It's like a chorus girl making a movie about how great show business is (only without the vagina). But I think part of what inspired me to write and direct a film about a mythified version of "us," is that I have been both an outsider and an insider to the group and that gave me an even deeper appreciation. It's like Ang Lee making "Ice Storm" (only much different). For a long time, I was among the spectators at parties, watching and listening with the same gee-whiz astonishment (and yes, I'll admit envy) at the beauty and humor and complexity of a Lemmings performance. I was enthralled with its magic, without knowing how the trick worked. 

...click...

And then I was let into the inner sanctum, permitted to view the workings of the machine which, far from dispelling the illusion, made it all the more incredible. I'm sure that you'll all agree that producing one part of a complex chord with a bunch of other people whom you know and love, using the original musical instrument of voice only, reaches right down inside you and lights you on fire (in a good way). Talk about a reltney! (see the Lemmings etymology blog). While the movie is not actually ABOUT a cappella, it's soul is there, and I felt that the unique musical experience of a cappella and the bonds that come with it, had never been depicted in a movie before (outside of gay pirate porn, that is. What?! I had to say it!). 

While I can safely say that "The Wedding Weekend" is one of the things I am most proud of in my whole life, it can also be said that it would not exist if not for all of you, my fellow singers and above all my friends. First and foremost is the fact that on a practical level, many of you worked hard on the film for little or no pay, a debt for which I will always be grateful. Some of you even contributed financially, a debt for which I will always feel grateful but guilty that the film didn't make it's money back. But all of you contributed by being part of the experience which was so inspirational to me. 

Art imitating life imitating Bill

Although none of you were actually translated into characters in the film (thank God no one has a wife like Molly Shannon's character!), there are certainly debts of detail such as Bill's monks robes being ascribed to Spooner, and of course our favorite inside vernacular of "shut up!" as a salutation, which is sprinkled throughout the film (sadly none of us ever actually hooked up with an orgasmic Swedish supermodel like Elsa... or DID WE?!?!). 

Some of the most memorable and meaningful things we ever did as a group, in my opinion, were singing at each other's weddings and so, this became the "inciting incident" of the film: the main character returns from abroad to inform his fellow singers that he's getting married and wants them to sing at the wedding. 

For my wedding to the lovely Doreen Squilla on September 12, 1992, I made the same request. So a subset of Lemmings (Kev, Charlie, Wayne, Paul, Winthy, Lyman) filled the Unitarian Church on Nantucket with a gorgeous rendition of "Our Love is Here to Stay." Here's that original inspiring performance. Even with pre-digital, lame camera-mic/back of the house audio, you can still hear the gold.

That moment so resonated for me, that I wanted it to be the climactic moment for the film as well. Someday I hope to write a blog about the making of the movie itself which is one of the most improbable experiences imaginable, full of the highest highs and devastating lows.  But for now, I will just give the broad strokes and, in late night talk show parlance, "set up the clip."  

Us but not us

By 2005 I had been "attached" to innumerable movies which would invariably fall through at the studios, and had sold a spec screenplay to Paramount which was orphaned and sits on a shelf to this day. So when I completed the script for "Shut Up & Sing" (which to be honest, I wrote in fits and starts over the course of about a decade), I decided to produce it outside the system, knowing full well that if a studio bought it, the first thing they would say is, "We want them to be a hip-hop group instead of a cappella." [Of course, this might've led to Will Smith being cast and I would now be an A-list director working with Naomi Watts and Clive Owen on a new Bond film. So maybe it wasn't the best decision.] 

I'm waiting for you, Bruce.

So with all my integrity intact but little money in hand, I put the project together through ridiculous schemes like home equity loans and family shake-downs.  Because the singing was going to be on-camera, I had to clear all the music ahead of time and pre-record it, which meant putting together an a cappella "super-group" to record the tracks, adding the voices of the actors who sang their own solos afterwards. [A couple of tracks like the opening version of "Take Me Home" were from collegiate groups.]  If memory serves, the group (Kev, Winthy, Wayne -- with a little guest appearance by Mark -- plus Sean Altman, Charlie Evett, and Elliott Kerman from Rockapella) learned all the parts for 5 songs in one day at my apartment. Then we headed to the Noize Factory studio where we worked with Jeff Thacher to produce the tracks.  Here's a bit of never-before-seen footage from the sessions on "Our Love." 

With casting completed, the imposter Lemmings (David Harbour, Reg Rogers, Sandy Chaplin, David Alan Basche, Mark Feuerstein, and Samrat Chakrabarti) were taught their parts by Sean so that they could believably lip-sync them on film. We shot 6 days in New York City (during insufferable August heat) and then headed to the Hamptons for the scenes of rehearsing and singing at the wedding. Here, then is my "Hollywood" version of one of the best moments of my life, inspired by the lot of you.

Having worn out my guest blog welcome, I thank you again for all the great memories and moments, and for allowing this singer of modest ability be part of something so magical. 

Verily I say unto you: shut up.

Bruce L 

Thank you, Bruce. You've set the bar impossibly high for the next guest blogger. And by impossibly high I mean they have to go out and make TWO movies about the Lemmings and then we'll talk. (Or maybe just SEE two movies. I'm desperate for guest scribes.)

POLL RESULTS: Apparently, when we think of things that are "hot", we think of Bruegel the Elder. Or of Mike Battey doing his impression of Bruegel the Elder. The data didn't really specify. This week, instead of a poll question, I want your answers in the comments section below. Who should have played you in the movie??

Shutup. And Sing.