Got Crabs?

After Curt Boettcher's Millennium/Sagittarius projects, Michael Fennelly - and I'm going to pause for a moment here to point out the double-letter possibilities of that handful of names - joined the none-more-Tap Stonehenge (straight outta Sunset Strip), replacing a lead singer who couldn't write songs and couldn't sing. Duh. Fennelly fit right in, excelling at both. The band changed their name to Crabby Appleton, and released a nifty, swell, and bitchin' first album on Elektra in '70, produced by FoamFavorite© Don Gallucci (another double-letter offender). The single Go Back did okay in the charts, they toured with big name bands, and you'd think nothing was wrong with this picture.

But the band didn't feel the album captured their live ability to, er, rock out. Rocking out, AKA kicking ass, was important in the early seventies. So they gave the production of their second album to - a folksinger producer. Right. The result disappointed everybody. Even people who'd never heard of the band were disappointed. Irving Kowznofsky (Pork Bend, Wis.) puts it best: "the band seemed to have lost direction and focus. Some of the album is swell, but there was no single. I never listened to it."

It's worth reflecting - if you're the thoughtful, bookish type - on the covers. That first one is great, and having no text was unusual for Elektra. Everything about it is swell. Like the album. The second - er - features a large photograph of a rotten apple core.

I think I remember a non-album single, but I could be wrong.