Intentionally banned from radio

I have a place in my heart for dark themed music.

Especially if it is OUTSIDE of the stereotypical 'dark' genres that folks get all up in arms about like metal, or emo, or what have you.

Let me tell you, between the blues, Irish music, folk, opera, and even sometimes country, there is some dark dang stuff out there, and I challenge anyone to find something that could shock me at this point when it comes to lyrical content. 

So anyway, I was reminded this morning of just how MESSED UP some music was from the early 70s, and I'm not even talking about Black Sabbath's early albums.

So there was this part-time session producer/musician/song writer called Rupert Holmes. Ultimately, he's famous for the Piña Colada song, but he's written songs recorded by people from Barbara Streisand to Brittany Spears. Plus, he's written plays, and for TV, and a whole manner of media over the decades.

But in 1969-1970 he was still a fairly unknown session producer/song writer who worked with Scepter records.

He encountered a band from the Scranton PA area called the Buoys. Eclectic sound, nice kids and all. He convinced Scepter to sign them, but Scepter would only agree to do ONE single, and promoting it was NOT part of the deal.

He and the band decided that if they wrote a song so shocking and distasteful as to be BANNED from radio play, the controversy would be free publicity ... and they were right!

In Feb of 1970 they released the single "Timothy".

Musically, it's a bit unremarkable, really. A light pop/rock bounce with a bit of horns and strings and a bit of a hook in the chorus.

But it was the lyrical theme.

It got some play on radio stations in 1970 and didn't really go very far. But listeners started to catch on to what the song was about. They started requesting it. So much so that the song ended up by April 1971 at number 17 and was on the charts for eight weeks.

Once the radio stations caught on to lyrics, they banned the song.

Even more controversial, the story was eerily close to an historical event in PA from 1963, although Rupert Holmes was completely unaware of that when he wrote the lyrics.

So here we go ... TRIGGER WARNING

I give you: Timothy - by The Buoys.