The Mike Douglas Experience

So Eric Carmen went to the big AOR lounge in the sky this week. He was the lead singer in the Raspberries. He’s rocking a mid-century Liz Taylor hairdo and making the appropriate “I’m on the Mike Douglas Show” faces in this video from 1974. Mike was a total square that put all sorts of interesting people on his midday talk and variety show, which sort of made him unsquare, I guess.

It’s a good piece of pop. It has one of those incredibly familiar intros. We tried to play the song in an oldies cover band once or twice. The problem is the song switches gears right after the intro is over, and it just sort of lies there. It’s like Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress by the Hollies. The intro is sort of stapled onto something else altogether. Girls would rush the dance floor because their big sister listened to the song on the radio, and they recognized it, but then they’d just look at you quizzically, and wander off. It’s a shame, because when the Raspberries go to the bridge, and do the outro to repeat the intro again, the song really winds up into something else and is really quite fun to play. By that time, you’re looking at nothing but parquet floor in front of the bandstand, alas.

I’m not posting it for any particular reason, except one. My wife told me that when she was a little girl, she and her sisters danced in front of the television when this came on. Put that on his tombstone, and he’ll rest easy.