MON., JUNE 16, 2008
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eMusic Selects Feature: Mingering Mike, Pt. 3
by J. Edward Keyes
The products of these sessions are raucous and bursting with joy, stomping combinations of rhythm and blues, field hollers and gospel shouts. "Coffee Cake" is a delirious funk jam, Mike and "D" chanting the name of the titular treat over and over, creating a kind of jug-band thump. "Hey You" is a simple soul ballad, Mike coyly asking, "Hey you — how 'bout a date?" with an unaffected sweetness that would make Marvin himself proud. The tracks that comprise Super Gold Greatest Hits are the original artifacts — the songs Mike and "D" recorded in the bathroom in the late '60s. And while they're undeniably unpolished (most of them consist of little beyond some tape hiss, Mike's soulful singing and "D" mimicking various instruments), they are also undeniably songs, songs with clear, hooky choruses, sturdy structures and passionate lyrics. To listen to "Sunny" once is to have its "guitar" line stuck in your head for weeks.
"I started out with the songs and tunes," Mike says. "It wasn't until two or three years later that I started developing the albums."
Mike's tunes are winning but primitive, but his albums are his masterpieces. For each batch of songs, Mike constructed covers out of cardboard, decorating them with magic marker illustrations that look alarmingly similar to the soul albums of the era. The cover of Do I Love You depicts Mike and D wooing a confused woman with flowers and a box of candy. His imagination didn't end with the artwork: Mike slid some of the covers inside cellophane shrink wrap, affixing price tags and creating labels that boasted, "Free 45 in this one only," and "Contains the Hit Single 'Eat Myself Silly.'" On the flipsides, in addition to the tracklisting, Mike scrawled elaborate, often hilarious, liner notes. The back of Minger's Gold: Supersonic Greatest Hits boasts, "Mingering Mike has shown you millions and millions of times of his capabilities as a successful songwriter, composer and, last but not least, singer. A true artist in every sense of the word." When Mike noticed his empty covers wilting when he stood them upright, he cut out cardboard LPs, spraying them with a black lacquer paint to replicate the shiny look of vinyl. Each individual LP was properly labeled, the tracks perfectly timed to fit on one side of an actual vinyl record. Each cardboard LP has the passion and poetry of a love letter, the product of a person who cherished, studied, revered and often disappeared inside pop music. As Mike matter-of-factly puts it, "It was just something that had to come out. I used to go to the local drug store. I just bought color cardboard sheets. It's an overwhelming thing, so sometimes I'd buy the material in advance, in case I thought of something later on."
The covers, which can be viewed at the Mingering Mike website or, better still, in Hadar's book Mingering Mike: The Imaginary Career of an Amazing Soul Superstar are spectacular, meticulously designed and expertly drawn. Mike issued "albums" on countless imprints — Decision Records, Fake Records, Mother Goose Records. Each record had its own catalog number, and each label boasted a roster of dozens, all of them based loosely on Mike's friends and family. In addition to Mingering Mike & the Big "D," there was Ramblin' Ralph, whose debut album In My Corner features such hits as "Think I'm Going to Have to Pawn My Set or Eat My Pet." There was Joseph War, whose debut album proudly proclaims, "Joseph War stands for peas and hominy." And there was On the Beach with the Sexorcist, the cover of which featured two teenagers cavorting behind a giant beach ball. Mike's imaginary success wasn't just a local phenomenon. The back of Can Minger Mike Stevens Really Sing? (which, collectors will want to know, was issued on Fake Records in 1969, catalog number 5-2158) contains a testimonial: "With a look of success, singing and dancing, boy he's a mess." The quote is signed, "James Brown."
That the records are made of cardboard are almost beside the point; Mike's covers are an artifact from a time when a record's lineage and presentation was just as important — if not more so — as what was etched in the grooves. Ditto Mike's stage name, which came to him when he saw a street sign that read "Merging Traffic" and fiddled with the first word a bit; it's perfect, the kind of near-sense non-word that conveys heaps of implied meaning without an iota of the literal kind.
Viewing Mike's records chronologically offers a kind of History of Soul in miniature. Early Mingering Mike platters, loaded with love songs like "There's Nothing Wrong With You Baby," slowly give way to records that are spiritually searching and socially-conscious. The cover of Mercy the World by the Outsiders shows Earth slowly being submerged in boiling water. The cover of Joseph War's Ghetto Prince is ornamented with ominous needles and pills. A drawing of an enormous skull adorns the inner sleeve of The Drug Store; across its cranium, Mike scrawled a poem. It opens with the line, "More death's in the neighborhood." (When I ask him what inspired him to make so many records about drug abuse, Mike laughs and replies, "The 1970s!")
To read more of J. Edward Keyes' feature on Mingering Mike, click here.
"I started out with the songs and tunes," Mike says. "It wasn't until two or three years later that I started developing the albums."
Mike's tunes are winning but primitive, but his albums are his masterpieces. For each batch of songs, Mike constructed covers out of cardboard, decorating them with magic marker illustrations that look alarmingly similar to the soul albums of the era. The cover of Do I Love You depicts Mike and D wooing a confused woman with flowers and a box of candy. His imagination didn't end with the artwork: Mike slid some of the covers inside cellophane shrink wrap, affixing price tags and creating labels that boasted, "Free 45 in this one only," and "Contains the Hit Single 'Eat Myself Silly.'" On the flipsides, in addition to the tracklisting, Mike scrawled elaborate, often hilarious, liner notes. The back of Minger's Gold: Supersonic Greatest Hits boasts, "Mingering Mike has shown you millions and millions of times of his capabilities as a successful songwriter, composer and, last but not least, singer. A true artist in every sense of the word." When Mike noticed his empty covers wilting when he stood them upright, he cut out cardboard LPs, spraying them with a black lacquer paint to replicate the shiny look of vinyl. Each individual LP was properly labeled, the tracks perfectly timed to fit on one side of an actual vinyl record. Each cardboard LP has the passion and poetry of a love letter, the product of a person who cherished, studied, revered and often disappeared inside pop music. As Mike matter-of-factly puts it, "It was just something that had to come out. I used to go to the local drug store. I just bought color cardboard sheets. It's an overwhelming thing, so sometimes I'd buy the material in advance, in case I thought of something later on."
The covers, which can be viewed at the Mingering Mike website or, better still, in Hadar's book Mingering Mike: The Imaginary Career of an Amazing Soul Superstar are spectacular, meticulously designed and expertly drawn. Mike issued "albums" on countless imprints — Decision Records, Fake Records, Mother Goose Records. Each record had its own catalog number, and each label boasted a roster of dozens, all of them based loosely on Mike's friends and family. In addition to Mingering Mike & the Big "D," there was Ramblin' Ralph, whose debut album In My Corner features such hits as "Think I'm Going to Have to Pawn My Set or Eat My Pet." There was Joseph War, whose debut album proudly proclaims, "Joseph War stands for peas and hominy." And there was On the Beach with the Sexorcist, the cover of which featured two teenagers cavorting behind a giant beach ball. Mike's imaginary success wasn't just a local phenomenon. The back of Can Minger Mike Stevens Really Sing? (which, collectors will want to know, was issued on Fake Records in 1969, catalog number 5-2158) contains a testimonial: "With a look of success, singing and dancing, boy he's a mess." The quote is signed, "James Brown."
That the records are made of cardboard are almost beside the point; Mike's covers are an artifact from a time when a record's lineage and presentation was just as important — if not more so — as what was etched in the grooves. Ditto Mike's stage name, which came to him when he saw a street sign that read "Merging Traffic" and fiddled with the first word a bit; it's perfect, the kind of near-sense non-word that conveys heaps of implied meaning without an iota of the literal kind.
Viewing Mike's records chronologically offers a kind of History of Soul in miniature. Early Mingering Mike platters, loaded with love songs like "There's Nothing Wrong With You Baby," slowly give way to records that are spiritually searching and socially-conscious. The cover of Mercy the World by the Outsiders shows Earth slowly being submerged in boiling water. The cover of Joseph War's Ghetto Prince is ornamented with ominous needles and pills. A drawing of an enormous skull adorns the inner sleeve of The Drug Store; across its cranium, Mike scrawled a poem. It opens with the line, "More death's in the neighborhood." (When I ask him what inspired him to make so many records about drug abuse, Mike laughs and replies, "The 1970s!")
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