The Now Generation--Hits Are Our Business (1970)

 

From the notes: "The Now Generation contributes their winning ways to the tremendous versatility of the group."  Someone must have won the 1970 Filling Space with Words Award for that.

Now, the big question: Is that Jimmy Buffett on the far right?  Does he appear on several songs?  So claims the Discogs entry for this album.  And, at a well-known record forum, one poster asserts that Jimmy was "involved in a covers-only band called the Now Generation circa 1969."  At eBay, Jimmy is the selling point for LPs by this group.  

So, was Jimmy a member of this group?  I'm guessing absolutely not.  I'm basing my guess on simple logic--The Now Generation, in this case, was completely made up.  Therefore, Jimmy could not have been part of it, because there was no group to be part of.  There were groups named The Now Generation, but this wasn't one of them.  No, this LP is clearly the usual Spar Records tomfoolery.  Spar was the parent company of Hit Records, Modern Sound, and Top Pop Hits, among other cheapo labels, and much of Spar's output consisted of fake hits.  I sound-compared three of these to their original 1965 and 1966 versions--they match, exactly--and the six then-current tracks (Down on the Corner, etc.) all appeared in 45 rpm form on Spar's Top Pop Hits label, credited to Hit Records holdovers like The Jalopy Five, The Chords, Kathy Shannon, and Bobby Sims.  There's no consistency in sound or style, and even if this was a covers band, there'd be some sameness in those areas, and there isn't.

Spar's Now Generation LPs all feature a mix of then-current tracks with older numbers, a sure sign that Spar was raiding its vaults in order to get the maximum mileage from its holdings.  Similarly, Spar's umpteen Hit Records/Modern Sound LPs of the 1960s were almost randomly tossed together, with the same tracks appearing on multiple LPs--which is to say, Spar was following the standard cheap-label pattern. Some of the overlapping could have been accidental, given that quality control was a thing of zero concern to the cheapies.

So, am I insulting the music here?  Not at all--these are all competent fakes, and most are quite fun.  The quality is a little surprising, since this company put out its share of dreadful sound-alikes (its Beach Boys and Jan and Dean fakes were especially terrible).  But today's tracks all fall someplace between okay and not bad, and much of the fun here lies in the weirdness of the line-up--Down on the Corner, Honky Tonk Women, and... It Must Be Him??  These Boots Are Meant for Walking and Wooly Bully are strange enough choices, "now generation"-wise, but Vikki Carr's comedy classic It Must Be Him is so utterly non-"now generation," we have to wonder why Spar didn't add Strangers in the Night.  (Likely, Spar never did that one.  Too bad--it's one of my Boomer guilty pleasures.)  I should note that, back in the day, anything that hit the pop Top 40 was played on AM radio--it could be Dean Martin followed by the Stones.  A surprising number of "older" pop stars hit the charts in the 1960s--the Beatles and Barbra Streisand played side by side (but not together).  When People was being played every five minutes on Top 40 radio (I was 6 or 7), I remember drawing a cartoon in which a character was grooving to the rock hits of the time, only to toss the radio out the window when Barbra came on: "People, People who need people. (CRASH!!)"

Here is the Now Generation.  Hits were their business.  Making them under multiple aliases was their game.  On the mp3 tags, I included the names of the groups and singers credited on the 45 rpm releases.  Many of those names are fake, too, but at least I'm giving you the authentic fake names, so to speak.  

Now for the Time Generation.  I mean, time for the Now Generation...

DOWNLOAD: The Now Generation--Hits Are Our Business (Spar Records 4807; 1970)

Lee