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.

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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.