The various 60’s projects of Curt Boettcher are an addiction I come back to every couple of years. There’s a 30 minute Andrew Hickey episode on “My World Fell Down” that tells the full, ultimately sad story. Here’s what I know: “My World Fell Down” was originally a flop single by the Ivy League, a British band. Across the pond in LA, Gary Usher* thought it could be a hit, but he could find no takers. So he got some studio musicians (a pre-fame Glen Campbell on verse lead vocals and Bruce Johnston on chorus lead vocals) to record it. He pitched it to an A&R guy at Columbia who signed the “band.”
But there was no band, which Usher didn’t mention. Friend Curt Boettcher had a band called The Ballroom, mostly a studio project. Boettcher had made a name for himself by writing amazing vocal arrangements for the Association, among others. It’s his work you hear on their hits. He was a Brian Wilson type (BW admired him and was likely influenced by him) who spent many studio hours on a single song, which was unusual back then for anyone not named the Beatles or Brian Wilson. Anyway, Usher brought in Boettcher and the Ballroom to complete an excellent album which was released under the name Sagittarius. Boettcher ended up dominating the project. “My World Fell Down” and “Hotel Indiscreet” were released as singles. The first did ok on the west coast but flopped nationally. The other just flopped. Both single versions had Musique Concrete sections that were edgy for the time.
Boettcher’s next project was The Millennium. They made one album, Begin, which is brilliant, a sunshine pop masterpiece with far less filler than the Sagittarius album. At the time it was the most expensive album ever made due to CB’s obsessiveness. It flopped, so Columbia dropped them. Perhaps it could have gone somewhere had they not been so studio obsessed, or maybe sunshine pop needed the novelty of a family group like the Cowsills to sell it. I also wonder if the burgeoning acid rock scene up north in the Bay area rendered them passe. I’m not sure about the timing, but tastes changed very rapidly back then, and vocal pop was getting to be old hat.
And maybe it still is. Back when we were doing Music League, I posted a couple of the songs above, and they tanked. But but give them a shot. Some of it sounds twee, but the musical ideas are outstanding. I think all of the released music is available for streaming. Word is, there’s strong work that’s never become available. Even the released music used to be very hard to find. “My World Fell Down” appeared on Nuggets, and Various CD releases of the Sagittarius and Millennium albums trickled out over the years, but a small box of all the Millennium sessions didn’t come out until 2021. We’re in extreme cult territory here…
”Another Time” would have been perfect for The Carpenters.
*producer of the Byrds and Beach Boys, and best of all, the horror hot rod/surf album Dracula’s Deuce by the Ghouls, featuring such classics as “The Little Old Lady From Transylvania” and “Be True To Your Ghoul.”
“My World Fell Down” sounds like it belongs on Odessey and Oracle.
This is crazy. Boettcher co-produced a “mixture of garage rock with psychedelia and sunshine pop” by the Bards, on The Moses Lake Recordings.
Moses Lake is in my original, remote neck of the woods and I had never heard of these guys. Listening to them now.
Another music rabbit hole, thanks!
He wrote songs for Peter and Marcia Brady, pre-ABBA Benny Andersson, and produced Blog Favorite Mike Love’s debut solo album!
That’s wild about the Bards. First I’ve heard about them. So much going on in the PNW at that time.
Ok, I listened to some unfamiliar work and re-listened to the familiar. So let me shine a light down the rabbit hole:
1. The first Sagittarius album, Present Tense is excellent, with several great songs and a bit of filler, but not too much.
2. Their second album, The Blue Marble, unreleased until decades later, is a bit of a let-down. Some very good tracks. No tracks equal the best of the first album, and there is more filler.
3. Some of the work from that period attributed to The Ballroom is also very good and worth a listen.
4. Some of CB’s collaborations with Sandy Salisbury from this period are outstanding and better than the weaker Sagittarius tracks. They are on an album called Trying for the Sun. On YouTube if not on your streaming service of choice.
5. CB really hit his stride with The Millennium. Begin is a great album. Almost as great is a compilation called Pieces, which contains outtakes and (I assume) material for a shelved second album. This was clearly a band firing on all cylinders. The later Original Sound Sessions release I mentioned above is a shorter version of Pieces but contains two tracks not on the former.
6. As for the 70’s: he released an album called There’s an Innocent Face that’s good but not great. It’s worth a listen. There’s a compilation of other 70’s material called Chicken Little Was Right that’s supposedly good, but I haven’t heard it. A third compilation called California Music is pretty bad, as CB began trend surfing to try to sell more records. He also did a disco arrangement of the Beach Boys’ “Here Comes the Night” which is truly awful. I posted it here a few years ago. It’s a sad coda to a brilliant career.