Bubblegum was a strange thing. The cynicism of it was standard enough: after a decade of simplistic pop being bought by the shipping container load by tweens the suits knew that you could throw the whole band loyalty out the window as long as you supplied enough of sugar-beat goodness. No one over twelve was allowed in there. You had to dance like a tantrum and sing along like in music class. But the thing was that it didn't just make good business sense, it worked emotionally.
When I say bubblegum, I don't just mean pop music or even sugary pop music as such. I mean the lab-designed units sprayed over the nations of the world from herculean crop dusters of inhalable media. As in a dystopic sci-fi movie from the time (late sixties) the spooring only affected the younger population and fired them on to great feats of .... well, much the same as before except they bought a lot of records that previous band/brand loyalty might have impeded.
It was a sub industry that preferred the one hit wonder, such constant newness did it promise. Yesterday's 1910 Fruitgum Company was today's Ohio Express. While some of these bands actually existed none of them really had to as it was the same crew of session players who did the recordings, anyway. Except for the voice. They needed the voice. So when Johnny Varongo (real name: Edward Harris (not his real name)) was spirited away from his photogenic garage band it was only for a few afternoons while he got the vocal right.
If there were Johns Pauls Georges and Ringos they were limited to the confines of the great tween zine tide in which the band photos might well have been shopped versions of a single Ur photo and only those whacky names could distinguish them from each other. But even if that didn't work there really wasn't much of a barrier between what came out of the candy coloured pvc portable record players and the tv where shows like The Archies, The Monkees and The Banana Splits, Whacky Races, Cool McCool, Scooby Doo etc etc blended into one red food dye #134 fuelled happiness circuit. Bubblegum was a way of plugging in and consuming from an early age and, as such, was as much a gateway drug as the cartoons to the consumerist conformity that was and remains rock music. A few years later things like rum and coke made the initially vile tasting alcohol attractive.
That said, it still worked. So what if it introduced a generation to the next mass consumerism, that is still the chief means of expressing social mobility on the planet until the great anti-con revolution that will never happen. But underneath the big smothering blanket of buy there remained a kind of sincerity. Even cartoon characters have to win you in some way. It might be pure pragmatism but none of these would have sold a unit without remembering the way children think and feel, especially when they're about to shunted into adolescence.
For starters here we have the initial crunch of palm muted guitars: chunkchunkchunkchunk. This gets a bigger boost on more guitars and a piano sforzando which intensifies the crunch. And then we break on through to the syrup centre with a raspberry flavoured vocal: "Yummy yummy yummy I've got love in my tummy and I feel like a lovin' you..." Goes straight to the nerve centre when all those crushes and wobbly feelings take on the ineluctable might of Sucrose Prime which bursts in and floods through to every cell, equalising inside with outside. And, kinda like sugar, kinda like spices, it just keeps reinforcing with falsetto harmonies are not the micro chorales of The Beach Boys but better, cleaner, simpler, more direct an injection. And then, not even a token solo we leap a full tone for the last verse, elevating something that was already pretty high: yummy yummy yummy. And end on the refrain that doesn't have words because they're just not needed - ba ba bababa ba ba bababa ba ba - as the sweet rasp cuts through like a new flavour. Hey, that's only two and a half minutes, exactly as long as it takes to get through one raspberry splozodrop! Solution? Have another one. Now!
If you're eleven years old and you feel love you spend half the time enjoying the hit and half denying that you feel anything. When I was eleven it was Diane. When I was twelve it was Veronica. The very thought of these girls ran through me like a charge. I rode to school on a bike drawn to them like a tram cable. And when I was there across the desk from them I acted like a five year old, spitting out petulant disdain and wisecracks. Once I saw Mark Robinson talk smoothly to Veronica and her positive and easy response brought me to the brink of morbidity with jealousy. Coulda done with a hit like this but it was years past the era. Sherbert or Skyhooks? Do me a favour.
But those chugging guitars and spun sugar vocals would have been the treat. Something else that seldom gets admitted is how much bubblegum informed punk. Everyone's ready to press the buzzer and yell Stooges or New York Dolls but few remember or admit that the backings of these cartoony lozenges took the best bits of contemporary hard rock to stabilise the sweetness and more directly informed The Ramones or Stiff Little Fingers. It wasn't just gooey gooey chewy chewy but plenty of crunch as well. If you fell from the preteen crush you might have loved the eviscerating intensity of Merry Clayton's solo vocal in Gimme Shelter but you had to listen to about four minutes of build up. Bubblegum started at the build up and only needed to get a little higher and they didn't sing about nasty stuff like "raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape and murder" but stuff you understood.
Understanding is the key notion here. Just as confectioners understand that we want our sugar administered in the right kind of package by proportion of sweet to sour, of squirty syrup to hard shell crunch and if the balance is wrong they go out of business. They know that their client is the human nervous system and once comprehended, is a client forever. This song like the best of bubblegum temporarily stabilises the wobbling heart of the tween with the force of a hospital dose. When that's over repeat:
chunkchunkchunkchunkCRUNCHchunkchunkchunkchunkCRUNCHchunkchunkCRUNCHchunkchunkCRUNCHCRUNCHCRUNCHCRUNCHCRUNCH: yummyyummyummyI'vegotloveinmytummy
Try Buy!
AGAIN!
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