Spanky and Our Gang- Like To Get To Know You

One of my favs from the first quarter of 1968 and I never get tired of hearing it. Stu Scharf was a good friend of mine and we'd often talk about the sessions for the record. Sessions that were certainly an endless set of complex headaches.

Here's an interesting video I haven't seen before. Interesting lip-sync setup. Elaine's looking kinda yummy in this one, especially around 2:30. All the voices were so strong in the group.
Dunno who the bored looking panel is behind the band. Another one of those too hip talk shows from 68. Doesn't really look like a U.S show.

I remember when "Give A Damn" just started getting airplay a month or so later. Just at the microsecond when you'd hear about the John Lindsey etc poverty programs and then a split second later, RFK was shot here in LA. The Give a Damn record just sort of disappeared in that moment of chaos.

I really love everything going on in this record. "Like To Get To Know You". Such a cool song.

 

Agreed on "All the voices were so strong in the group." Speaking of which the full length, nine-minute suite version (with Stardust) starts out old radio style with Elaine and someone else : Man"Pardon me Miss", Elaine as random girl:"Yes"..like on a subway or party..then going into the song, on the Like to..title album.Typical SaoG (nice acronym) song typically really apprteciated on radio and records.

 

Great song. Great group.

 

Vastly underrated track, the last minute of the song is just stunning. I recently got the 20th Century Masters CD just for this song and ended up really liking all of the songs on it. Great vocals throughout. Oh, and as far as Elaine… it’s the bangs.

 

The director do much preparation for this one, did he? They don't show Kenny once, and he was co-lead singer.

What were the headaches? Too much goofing off or something of that nature?

 

Lefty Baker

 

I first heard this song on the Bob Stanley-compiled CD compilation, "The Trip" where it works wonderfully - good song, great singing, though it really comes alive for me when Spanky kicks in at 1:14 on the video above.

 

LOVE LOVE LOVE this song.

Lazy Day too

 

Were Spanky and Our Gang ever that big? I remember radio stations here playing their songs quite a lot back in the day, but I never noticed them denting the top 40 charts at all.

 

I rediscovered the album when I was making some needledrops a year or two ago and I've listened to it several times since then. Mellow vibe, definitely sets a distinctive mood. The title track is in kind of a sweet spot where it's familiar enough but wasn't overplayed on oldies radio, so I listen to it rather than just hearing it, especially as part of the party suite on side 2 (and then I dig up the single version and listen to that too). Interesting choice of covers on the album as well, "Echoes/Everybody's Talkin'" before Harry Nilsson made it famous, and I don't know if I've heard another cover of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne".

 

The group's first 5 singles were Top 40 hits.

Sunday Will Never Be The Same - #9
Make Every Minute Count - #31
Lazy Day - #14
Sunday Mornin' - #30
Like To Get To Know You - #17

All between '67-'68.

 

That is a great song.

 

Teriffic songs every one! "Lazy Day" epitomizes the sunny side of the 60s with a gentle spirit that will likely never be heard in pop music again. I recommend getting these before they disappear.
Spanky & Our Gang Like To Get To Know You [Import] Super-High Material CD, Japan - Import on ImportCDs
Spanky & Our Gang Spanky & Our Gang [Import] Super-High Material CD, Japan - Import on ImportCDs
Spanky & Our Gang Anything You Choose [Import] Super-High Material CD, Japan - Import on ImportCDs

 

This cd does not have the full length version of "I'd Like To Get To Know You". - Do any "best of" cds have the full length version?

 

I wonder what the band thought of Paul Stookey's song Give A Damn

You remember the song called "Give a Damn"
Some group sang last summer?
About people livin' with rats and things
The paper couldn't cover?
Well, it wasn't very popular
Nobody wanted to hear
And that's a shame 'cause a pretty tune
Was just what we needed that year

The first thing nobody wanted to hear
Was "damn" - that was on the label
I mean it's okay if you just read it there
But you didn't bring it up at the table
So the radio didn't play the song
Except on the FM stations
Until some looter worked his way
Down to the United Nations
Then word got around that there's this song
All about the riots and stuff
So, they played "Give A Damn" on the noon report
Just once, but that was enough
Some cameraman with groovy footage
Of glowing embers and charred remains
Put the pictures with the song on the six o'clock news
Following the baseball game
Then everybody said it was a real fine song
"Why didn't we hear it before?
Let's all blame the radio stations
For bringing on the domestic war
Oh sure, we'd seen some articles
We knew some people needed help
But social workers take care of that
I mean, why give a damn yourself?
Well, the reason that you didn't
And the reason that you won't
Is you think you got a lot to lose
And the other fella don't
Oh you give a damn, well so does he
'You think the rest of us are just fakin'?
I mean what do you need that you got to give
Less than what you're takin'?
Where could you go?
Who could you see?
What could you do the best?
The book is in your left hand
Your right hand knows the address
Address your questions, address your money
Address your telephone number
But above all else, please address yourself
To give a damn this summer

 

Here are two more compact discs I recommend. Both are out of print, but easily obtainable and worth the effort. The CD titled Spanky's Greatest Hit(s) has a unique mix of "Sunday Mornin'" that runs 6:12 and eventually degenerates into a hiarious state of chaos!
Spanky And Our Gang* - Spanky's Greatest Hit(s)
Spanky & Our Gang - The Complete Mercury Singles

 

It's also the source of my forum handle. Stuart Scharf did not care at all for his voice's presence in that sequence

 

Great video, never saw that before, thanks!

I started with the first album which I really enjoy still, though it has a bit of quirky filler items (redolent of the period you might say), and then the second album is at least as good. You could tell they labored over things trying to keep up with The Sunshine Company, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, The Association, The Left Banke, The We Five, Kenny Rogers & The First Edition, The Fifth Dimension, The Beach Boys, and especially The Mamas & The Papas of course! Such a great, and too short, period of pop music with real musical depth.

"Oz" Bach, who was only on the first album, turned up in a U.S. group called Wings with one album release shortly after leaving Our Gang.

 

My earliest exposure to "Like To Get To Know You" was on a Time-Life CD with songs from 1968. It was one of my favorites on the CD. I really enjoyed the ballad like sound at the beginning and then it moves a little faster before falling back into a ballad again. The piano intro is one of my favorite parts of the song. I always did like this video that I will embed of the song and how the members are seen in the foreground and background and the guitarists are all wearing different colored shirts too (Such a shame they have all passed since).

I don't plan on buying the full album anytime soon, but I have bought two 45 copies of the single with bad luck on both. One of the copies visually looked good at the record store, but sounded horrible on the system and my second copy of it came with the picture, but arrived cracked on arrival.

 

Not to mention the 45 version of Lazy Day which featured various voices saying hello after the line "Flowers bloomin', children sayin' hello".

 

Two of my fave tracks by this band:

Sunday Will Never Be The Same
Yesterday's Rain

And to quote Greg Kihn, they don't write'em like that anymore (unfortunately)

 

Actually, that was the Greatest Hit(s) version which was remixed by Spanky

 

Stu had an ambitious tracking agenda and there were limited tracks. I think Stu and Bob Dorough were both tackling this. There were a lot of instruments on the arrangement, a lot of trial and error as to how to bounce tracks, share tracks with hair-raising, spot mutes and punch-ins.

The vocals were layer slabs.... combinations of 6 vocalists on one mic passes (mono).... then of single voices doubled..... answering against stacks of 6 voice mono overdubs (some stacks with moving vocals within the chords).....against.... other stacks. Arranged to not collapse or collide into each other. Because a lot of the stacks were done in pieces and doubled, they had to be done early in order to maximize usable tracks for the various sub bounces.


Stu and I would talk about every little nuance of the track when we'd have long phone conversations....he was so funny, reminiscing with that dry sense of humor of his... he'd sometimes sit on the phone with me for an hour or so at a time and he'd have his guitar and plunk out various idea concepts that we'd talk about...... with the talk bouncing back and forth to bazillions of records and then back to the "Like To Get To Know You" and Give a Damn sessions.

I'd mention to him that at a couple of vocal points on the track (as well as what he had everyone doing on Give A Damn), what he was having the voices do was similar in concept....imo.... to what Clark Burroghs arranged for the Association to sing on one part of the "Never My Love" sessions the previous year. Which is, for NML, at the very end vocals where the instruments stop, Bones and Burroughs have a 4 or 5 part (doubled) mono "slab" of the guys singing "with me". Panned left. Followed 1 beat later with another slab (layered mono) of an overdubbed 4-5 part "with me" that is a completely different chord........and......almost.....almost....dissonant. But not really because.... it works beautifully. I attribute to Clark of course and his Hi Los work. I notice the Association never bothered to figure out a way to sing that particular stop live and I could always see why. That's hard to do.

There's a lot of that going on in Like To Get to Know You. Lots of vocal movement. Multiplied 10 times in Give A Damn imo. Very cool stuff. It was always so fun to talk with Stu. For two or three years, we were on the phone for an hour or two a couple of times a week.

Fitting all the ideas into the track limitations, doing the hard mutes, punchins, bounces, and then getting the larger string/brass overdubs on top of all that was apparently somewhat harrowing and noise was a problem. There was also some dissent on the sheer magnitude of the vocal work.

Stu told me he played the classical guitar outro on the track and he'd break into that on the phone several times on conversations.

In one of our early talks (he was being a wonderful mentor to me in the situation I was in), I said, "you know Stu, you have that string part by itself there towards the end, with the phasing cymbal build and ahh vocal.... and for the life of me I can't tell where the "1" is when you start playing the guitar. It's like you're starting on 3 or something in relation to when the vocals begin re-entering. The entrance of the hihat doesn't help (well, wasn't helping me). It was just one of those things I couldn't feel the beat on. Sort of like.... if you're listening "incorrectly", you can "feel" the beginning snare drum beat of "Come On Down To My Boat Baby" as being on the one. Which then makes for an entirely different feel when the bass drum comes in. Which.... is because the lone snare is actually kicking off the song on "2".

He'd count and play over the phone and I'd still say that didn't sound right timewise compared to how my ears hear the track. He eventually mailed a chart to me. I find though, that I don't do my normal "dissect this" type surgical listening on the track. I just get taken in by its coolness and let it take me where ever it is that the track always takes me.

 

If this is the case, was that only for the vinyl version as my cd of that album does not contain the hello part. I remember hearing it at the time with the hellos and then missing them when I bought the GH.

 

Yes, that's correct. CD only contained Spanky's mix for "Sunday Mornin"