Monday, December 09, 2013

TOO MANY MONDAYS! - KISS and B.J. -- also Mary and Mann

TGIF is well known. Not so much JFCIM (Jesus Fuckin' Christ It's Monday).

Also not well known is the genial Mann-Weil song "Too Many Mondays." It doesn't express much existential angst over heading to work. Maybe the song's lack of success is that it reflects the laid back early 70s, when hippies cut their hair and became Yuppies, and started to accept the idea of having to earn a living in the real world. The song certainly has none of the sourness of "Mr. Businessman," or even the masochistic irony a Ray Davies might express in being home in Shangri-La on a sunny afternoon, ignoring the taxman.

In the 70's the song was recorded by two guys, a girl, and a group. I first heard it via author Barry Mann's solo album on Columbia, done about a decade after he had a novelty hit with his single "Who Put the Bomp." His mature voice was all right, but at the time the singer-songwriter category was dominated by Southerly stylings (James Taylor and Elton "Tumbleweed" John) rather than urban New Yorkers. A more folkie version turned up on one of [Peter, Paul and] Mary Travers' solo albums, and B.J. Thomas also sang it, probably glad that the Monday at least didn't involve a forecast of raindrops.

The most obscure version comes from the rock group Wicked Lester…which evolved into KISS. Yes, that's Gene Simmons on lead vocal. And it would be a few years before a Monday involved Gene sitting at the Aucoin office and having an interview with me, which ended up with some un-PC and unpublishable comments on everything from horror movies to Gene remarking on the strange high-pitched sound that can only be made with a stadium full of screaming Japanese fans.

As a few fans of the blog know, items are only posted on the 9th, 19th or 29th. Not too often has that number landed on a Monday, but now that it did, here's...

FOUR VERSIONS OF…. Too Many Mondays

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