POP-A-LOOZA: THE EVERLASTING FIRST! Eclipso, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Ellery Queen, and the Everly Brothers

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 another installment of The Everlasting First, this time offering Quick Takes of my introductions to Eclipso, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Ellery Queen, and the Everly Brothers.

A DC Comics super-villain, a '70s British pub rock group swept in with the initial onslaught of punk, a fictional detective, and a pair of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame siblings. In 2016, the early editions of The Everlasting First blithely mixed comics characters and pulp fiction properties with rockin' pop performers. Eventually, I realized that the audiences for funnybook heroes and rock 'n' rollers sometimes diverged, so I separated the subject matter from that point forward.

I, of course, continue to dig both comics and pop music equally.

I've never circled back to write anything more about Ellery Queen, and my own collection of Ellery Queen paperbacks was surrendered in my 2020 quarantine clean. Eclipso was referenced in this piece about rockin' pop artist Mr. Encrypto; man, I really can't keep my subjects separate, can I? Eddie and the Hot Rods have turned up in my 10 Songs series (here and here), and their signature tune "Do Anything You Wanna Do" will be discussed in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). The Everly Brothers' "Gone, Gone, Gone" is also in most blueprints for my GREM! book, that chapter based in part on a few paragraphs contained in this mixed comics and music piece.

The Everlasting First will return with...I dunno yet. A comic book character whose name starts with the letter U, or a musical artist whose name starts with the letter U. You never know with me. I never know with me. For now, my introductions to a bunch of guys called E serve as 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.

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TIRnRR # 4, Track By Track: Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers, "Home On The Radio"

This is part of a series of short pieces discussing each of the 29 tracks on our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4. The CD can be ordered at Kool Kat Musik.

29. MR. ENCRYPTO & THE CYPHERS: "Home On The Radio"



The 1990s and early '00s gave us a brief but righteously enjoyable mini-surge of magazines nominally devoted to power pop. I doubt any of these sold in great numbers, and none of them survived for very long. I'm not talking so much about Jordan Oakes' now iconic Yellow Pills or the late Gary Littleton's Audities; I'm thinking of slicks like Amplifier, Popsided, even Pat Pierson's much-missed Yeah Yeah Yeah, though the latter mag was really about more than just power pop. I loved all of these. And it was in the pages of one of 'em that I first spied a 2001 ad for a new album called Hero And Villain In One Man! The real name behind this work was a Southern California musician named Bruce Gordon; as a recording artist, Bruce billed himself simply as Eclipso.




A little back story: in the '60s, one of the stars of DC Comics' House Of Secrets was Eclipso, "Hero And Villain In One Man." In these comics, a scratch from a mystically-powered black diamond cursed scientist Bruce Gordon, turning him into the super-villain Eclipso whenever an eclipse occurred. And lemme tell ya, there were a lot of eclipses in the DC universe. This Jeckyll-and-Hyde character never really caught in with readers; Eclipso's sole pop-culture immortality came via a battle with Batman in The Brave And The Bold # 63, and even that only because the book included a scene of the Caped Crusader publicly spanking the lovely Marcia Monroe.



Nonetheless, having the same name as a comics character inspired the real-life a-rockin' and a-rollin' Bruce Gordon to choose Eclipso as his own nom du bop. And, of course, the release of Eclipso's Hero And Villain In One Man! CD allowed Bruce Gordon to edge out The Shazam in the race to be the first 21st century pop act to receive a cease-and-desist from DC Comics. The album's title was shortened to Hero And Villain, and Bruce became Mr. Encrypto.

I don't recall the sequence of events that brought Bruce Gordon and This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio together. I think Dana had a copy of Hero And Villain before I did, but man, we both sure loved that album. "The Last Time," "Long After Long," and a dreamy cover of Len Barry's "1-2-3" were immediate TIRnRR faves. Bruce was appreciative of the appreciation, and we all became friends. Somewhere in this vague time frame, Bruce also hipped us to his way-fab concept Let's Be The Beatles, which explores the idea that The Beatles' influence has been so vast and pervasive that every single track The Beatles released has inspired one (or usually many) attempts by other artists to rewrite the song as a theoretical original: "I Saw Her Standing There" begets "She's The One" by The Chartbusters, "Taxman" begets "Start!" by The Jam, "She's A Woman" begets "She's About A Mover" by The Sir Douglas Quintet, and so on. The concept is so rich and rewarding that Bruce has visited Syracuse four times already to host "Let's Be The Beatles!" editions of TIRnRR--and we're still only up to late '64/early '65!

Bruce followed Hero And Villain with the likewise intoxicating Secret Identity Crisis in 2003. Secret Identity Crisis is highlighted by "Rock And Roll Is Killing Me (Softly)" and "Rock And Roll Is Killing Me (Loudly)," acoustic and electric versions of the same song, bookending another winner from Mr. Encrypto.

Sadly, this has been the last Mr. Encrypto album released to date. But don't despair! Through TIRnRR, Bruce met guitarist Joel Tinnel and Spongetones bassist Steve Stoeckel; with drummer Stacy Carson, these four became Pop Co-Op, whose debut CD Four State Solution is your favorite album of 2017. The fact that each of the band members lives in a different state has prevented them from playing live--or even in the same room--but Bruce and Steve played as an acoustic Pop Co-Op duo at the 2017 International Pop Overthrow in Los Angeles.

Right as This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 1 was going into final production in 2004, Dana played a new track he'd just received from Bruce. It was an a cappella version of the Hero And Villain track "The Last Time," and it was just gorgeous. There had been a tease of this version as the virtual inner groove of Hero And Villain, but hearing the full version? I wailed and cursed, bemoaning the fact that the track arrived too late to include on TIRnRR # 1. We made damned sure to include it on Volume 2. It is now one of the dozen or so tracks that define TIRnRR's long and storied history.

Years later, Bruce also sent us an unreleased track he billed as by Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. "Home On The Radio" speaks to the raison d'etre of little mutant radio shows like ours: our signal may be weak and thin, but pick us up and we can bring you in. It is the perfect song to close This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4.

Hero and villain in one man? Bruce is always the former, never the latter. The music plays us out, and the people are safe once again: home on the radio, thanks to Mr. Encrypto.

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THE EVERLASTING FIRST: Quick Takes For E

Continuing a look back at my first exposure to a number of rock 'n' roll acts and superheroes (or other denizens of print or periodical publication), some of which were passing fancies, and some of which I went on to kinda like. They say you never forget your first time; that may be true, but it's the subsequent visits--the second time, the fourth time, the twentieth time, the hundredth time--that define our relationships with the things we cherish. Ultimately, the first meeting is less important than what comes after that. But every love story still needs to begin with that first kiss.

ECLIPSO



My sister's boyfriend gave me all of his old comic books in the summer of 1970. Eclipso had been featured in DC's House Of Secrets in the early '60s; the character was a sort of Jeckyll and Hyde, as good-guy scientist Bruce Gordon transformed into the evil Eclipso whenever an eclipse occurred (an event I'm guessing is more commonplace in the DC universe than it is in our boring ol' universe). Shortly after reading these early Eclipso adventures, I read a Batman giant devoted to the women in the Caped Crusader's life; that giant included a few panels from The Brave And The Bold # 64, which told the tale of a spoiled hussy named Marcia Monroe. Ms. Monroe stole Batman's heart, but then jilted him, and teamed with Eclipso in some evil attempt to do evil things. Evil! Decades later, a talented musician--also named Bruce Gordon--decided to embrace his evil namesake; Bruce called his rockin' pop act Eclipso, and released a stunningly good pop record called Hero And Villain In One Man. DC's legal representatives then demonstrated their superhuman lack of any sense of humor, so Bruce changed his nom du bop to Mr. Encrypto, and shortened his first album's title to Hero And Villain.  Mr. Encrypto released a second album called Secret Identity Crisis, and Bruce told me this weekend he's working on some new material right now. Whatever name he uses, Mr. Encrypto makes terrific records, so go buy 'em both: Mr. Encrytpo. Evil must not win!

EDDIE & THE HOT RODS



Another Phonograph Records Magazine discovery, though I believe I also read about them in Playboy. The 1976 Live At The Marquee EP was their initial jolt of rock 'n' roll greatness (with a smokin' cover of Bob Seger's "Get Out Of Denver"), but I probably didn't hear it, or the debut LP Teenage Depression, until much later. The Flashcubes covered "Get Out Of Denver" in their live shows--'Cubes guitarist Paul Armstrong credited Eddie & the Hot Rods, but introduced it as "a song Bob Seger wrote ten years ago, when he was still cool"--so that was my intro. The 'Cubes also covered an Eddie & the Hot Rods original called "Do Anything You Wanna Do," and that was sufficient motivation to pick up the Hot Rods' 45 of that incredible power pop tune. I soon added the Hot Rods' second album, Life On The Line, to my collection as well. I love Eddie & the Hot Rods, but The Flashcubes' version of "Do Anything You Wanna Do" is definitive.

ELLERY QUEEN


Probably the TV series, starring Jim Hutton? I had heard of private detective Ellery Queen, and I'm sure I'd seen issues of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but I may not have read anything until after the short-lived TV series debuted in the fall of 1975. But I adored that TV show, and that inspired me to seek out the books.

THE EVERLY BROTHERS



I was born in 1960, so I don't know of a world without The Everly Brothers. That said, I don't have any specific memories of the Everlys, either. We had the A Date With The Everly Brothers LP in the family record collection, with "Cathy's Clown" and "Love Hurts," but none of this made an impression on me in the '60s. It would fall to TV ads for oldies records in the early '70s to introduce me to "All I Have To Do Is Dream" well after the fact, but no matter; great pop music has no expiration date. I'm delighted that I had a chance to see an Everly Brothers performance at the New York State Fair many years later. My favorite Everlys track is "Gone, Gone, Gone," but there is just so much great stuff in their catalog, including some wonderful records they were making in the '80s. A world without The Everly Brothers? Not this world, not ever.



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Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here.