My bubblegum world

I loved bubblegum music in the late 60s--I was the perfect age for it, at the beginning of my adolescence (I was what would now be called a "tween")--and largely because of the memories I have, I still love to listen to much of the music of that era by the Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Boyce & Hart, The Cowsills, Tommy Roe, etc. To my mind, the first bubblegum music I heard was by the Monkees, but there is some controversy among true bubblegum believers as to whether or not The Monkees count as a true "bubblegum" act.

One of the first bubblegum records I bought was the single of "Chewy, Chewy" by the Ohio Express. Today, this song seems impossibly dirty ("Do it to me, Chewy/Chew me out of my mind") but at the age of 12, it was just catchy as hell and fun to sing along to. It might as well have actually been about chewing bubblegum for all I was concerned.

But what cemented my love of bubblegum was "Bang-Shang-A-Lang" by the Archies. I bought the single in the fall of '68, when I only owned a handful of records, and wore out the grooves. I loved Archie comics, and, though I watched the Archies Saturday morning cartoon show, even then I knew it was a pale version of the comic books (Archie's voice was all wrong, among other things). But the music was, excuse the expression, right on. Unlike "Chewy Chewy," for example, these songs sounded like they could have been written and performed by (very talented) teenagers. I even played the B-side, "Truck Driver," which for a while displaced the A-side as my favorite current song.

Then at Christmas of 1968, I got one of my favorite gifts ever, the Archies album! I don't even remember if I had asked for it, but my mom knew I'd like it, and I did. It was one of the first non-Beatles albums I owned. I can't make a rational case for it as a timeless masterpiece, but it's certainly a high point of bubblegum music. After all these years, it still holds up for me, and Ron Dante will always be the perfect voice of bubblegum, having sung lead on with another big bubblegum hit, "Tracy" by the Cuff Links.