SoundBoard

It’s a real riot! Just check out Sylvia’s Mother.

I promise to make no attempt to paint Dr Hook as anything other than what they were: a down-and-dirty Jersey bar band whose tunes more often than not crossed the line into novelty rock, an outlet for the pop-lyrical efforts of countercultural humorist and children’s author Shel Silverstein, and, later, a banal disco band specializing in workmanlike ballads such as “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman”…

At the front of the stage are the two lead singers of Dr Hook and the Medicine Show, Ray Sawyer and Dennis Locorriere. Dr Hook wasn’t named after Ray Sawyer, but he looks like it could have been. With his eyepatch (a memento from a near-fatal 1967 car accident) and battered straw hat, there’s something of the pirate and something of the raving hillbilly about him. There’s also something of the gigolo; though Sawyer isn’t particularly attractive, he’s often inappropriately sexual…

In some ways, Sawyer’s moves and attitude are taken from the same lead-singer handbook that Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop must have studied, but when the older and less androgynous Sawyer - with his handlebar mustache and full chest of grayish-looking hair—does the same routine there’s something off-putting, even disturbing, about it.

Dennis Locorriere, the other singer, is a chubby, bearish man, a dirty-looking beard crawling up his cheeks, an Ovation acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder… he’s got a boyish, almost cuddly quality, like a teddy bear someone left in the back of a garage until it became tattered and covered in dust and grime…

• Lineage:
  Recorded probably with a National/Technics Tuner set to “Mono” position because the signal is a bit weak. I was living too far away from the transmitter; recording is not free from interferences! There were also many dropouts, I hope I fixed them all with Audacity.
• Recorded to BASF Longplay tape with my Sony TC-377 (four track) at 9,5 cm/sec.
• Played back with Revox B77 Mk2 to Tascam CD-Rw 402.
• Cd-R ripped with EAC, track seperation done with Cd-wave Editor.
• Dropouts erased with Audacity, Flac Files (level 6) with Trader’s little Helper.

Official Releases: