Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is my look back at a greatest-hits LP called Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four.
An infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Although my Bobby Fuller piece is about an album rather than an individual song, The Bobby Fuller Four's one big hit "I Fought The Law" is sufficiently central to my BF4 story that I'm also using this as a chapter about "I Fought The Law" in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I dedicate that to the memory of my brother's luckless old red Alpha Romeo.
Bobby Fuller's tragic real-life history, combined with the separate autobiographical account of Tommy James (of Tommy James and the Shondells) and his music-biz brushes with organized crime, served as the inspiration for The Beat And The Sting, my unfinished notion for a comic book story starring the 1966 TV version of The Green Hornet and Kato. This is not a roman a clef; my singing star Arnie Bennett is not Fuller (or James), Ben Arnold and the Turncoats aren't The Bobby Fuller Four, and, y'know, The Green Hornet and Kato are wholly fictional.
Or so we've been told.
Anyway, you can read my teaser for The Beat And The Sting here, and you can read its first few pages here. Unless I continue this as fanfic or reimagine it as something else, this project has no viable path forward, and likely ends right there. Breaking rocks in the hot sun.
That still leaves the true story of how I became a fan of a doomed rock 'n' roll star named Bobby Fuller, and the LP that introduced me to his sad story. Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four provides the subject for the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.
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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:
Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio: CD or download
Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1)will contain 165 essays about 165 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1). My weekly Greatest Record Ever Made! video rants can be seen in my GREM! YouTube playlist. And I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl
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