:: Moonflight ::

:: Everybody's On Strike ::

Yes, more manna from Buddah. If you've learned anything from reading the Robot, it's that Buddah was a strange label that really pushed things with marketing and trends, particularly when it came to extremely hit-or-miss genres like Bubblegum and Disco. This single is a whopper, even for them.

The first break-in, or cut-in, songs were made in the 50's by a guy named Dickie Goodman, with help from his friend Bill Buchanan. The idea was to have interviews, based on breaking news stories, where the answers to the questions were given in spliced phrases from popular songs. There's a very long and very interesting article on the phenomenon and how it affected sampling and artists' rights (yes, even back then) right here.

So this is basically a ripoff of the old Goodman-Buchanan cut-in, "The Flying Saucer," with evidently nothing but Buddah songs spliced in (including Quick Joey Small!), so they wouldn't have to pay any royalties to outside parties. So who is Vik Venus? He was a DJ named Jack Spector, who worked for WMCA in New York City. What became of Vik/Jack? According to the deadrocktarsclub.com website, he died on the air in 1994. Way to go, Jack!

The b-side, Everybody's On Strike, is definitely not Jack Spector, though it's credited to Vik Venus. It's got to be more of the Buddah studio guys who formed the other 38 fake Bubblegum bands on their roster. Keeping with the spirit of the a-side, this song has a novelty ending.


Tony

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