5/30/07: The Cyrkle “Murray The Why” (1969)We now mark the 40th anniversary of The Summer of Love—which started with The Cyrkle pretty much disappointed by youth culture. The previous year had gone well. They opened for The Beatles, had a #2 record with “Red Rubber Ball” (written by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley), and released two of the finest pop albums of the decade. Actually,
Neon—where the band’s own compositions rivaled some brilliant covers—was released in January of 1967, but enough time had passed for the band to see there wouldn’t be another hit single.
Tom Dawes and Don Dannemann could tell that their ambitious and mature folk-pop was too good for a world where
Sgt. Pepper’s would be treated like a big deal. At this point, The Cyrkle were even better than the nascent Monkees. So it didn’t seem like a bad idea for the two to take a job writing a soundtrack for a detective film called
Squeeze Play. Things didn’t turn out for the best—but it turned out that The Cyrkle had the perfect mindset for an innocent project that ended up as an X-rated movie.
Squeeze Play wouldn’t see release until 1969, retitled as
The Minx and with sex scenes spliced into the final product. The Cyrkle probably weren’t surprised. They’d seen the puppet masters behind the free love and hippie biz. Dawes and Dannemann had plenty to think about when they began the project in mid-1967. A film about liberated prostitutes working as industrial spies must’ve seemed like an appropriate setting.
The soundtrack to
The Minx is loaded with great Cyrkle songs and mockingly mod instrumentation. The recurring theme is sentimental disgust. “Murray The Why,” however, is a peppy masterpiece of a pop indictment. As Dawes says of a legendary disc jockey, “I thought Murray the K was the quintessential bullshit self-promoter, so I took my vitriol out on him with this happy nasty little song.”
The final product is one of the rare songs that tried to save the kids. “Murray The Why” takes on more than one man, as you can see by the opening lyrics:
Who’s on the radio?
Who runs the all-night show?
How do I know he’s cool?
Well, I just know
How do I know he’s hip?
Because he tells me soThe song goes on to note that the man who cops the attitude also gets the interviews. Kids also didn’t get much sympathy from The Cyrkle if they were the type to turn to Murray for advice. We’re not pretending that others weren’t equally suspicious of corporate hippiedom. The afore-mentioned Monkees were certainly treated as easy targets. The Cyrkle, however, were going after sanctioned cool.
The Minx had an unhappy ending, but that’s okay. Dawes and Dannemann went on to greatness—beginning when Dawes wrote up a jingle for 7-Up’s ad campaign as The Uncola. He’d go on to be the Paul McCartney of the two, writing hits such as “Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz” and “Coke Is It.” Dannemann is more of a John Lennon, but he’s also enjoyed a lucrative career in the ad business. The capitalist cred continues with knowing that The Cyrkle can be seen in
The Minx performing “Murray the Why” in a nightclub scene. The band wasn’t ashamed or afraid to show their faces. Well, at least not until those sex scenes were added.
Make it your own: Good luck finding a copy of the film, but
the soundtrack to
The Minx was reissued on the Sundazed label in 2003. That earlier quote from Dawes comes from the very useful liner notes. Sundazed also reissued
Red Rubber Ball and
Neon with plentiful (and important) bonus tracks. Before that, fans had to settle for
Red Rubber Ball (A Collection).
We can’t discuss The Cyrkle without mentioning innovative drummer Marty Fried, who wrote one of
Neon’s most memorable tunes. He went on to law school. Also, Stephen Friedland co-wrote a few impressive songs with Dawes on the
Red Rubber Ball album—and that’s just one of the many aspects to
that guy’s baffling career.
