"Children of the Sun" by The Folksmen
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Outtake from "A Mighty Wind"
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"You Can't Fly to Heaven On the Wings of a Gun"
The move to electric guitars for their final, tragically malnamed album "Saying Something" may have been misguided, but their choice OF electric guitars was not.
The performance video of "Children of the Sun" on a 1968 appearance of "In the Groove" [available in the special features of the "Mighty Wind" DVD] features Jerry Palter on a jetglo 330 and Alan Barrows on a fireglo 360.
It's a fine line between late Folksmen and early Spinal Tap
LISTEN! to what the folks people say!
Isn't this early Folksmen? The one guy isnt bald yet and the other is still a guy.
Which came first?
These two groups have absolutely nothing in common. I can't even imagine any similarities👀
BRILLIANTLY SAID
Nobody rocks softer than the Folksmen!
I saw them in 59 two years before I was born and I remember being blown away. Easily the quietest band I’d ever seen.
No one soft-rocks like.......................
Springfield!!
Mellow rock, less talk! Folksmen rule(d)!
The Blue Jean Committee accepts your challenge.
Best line ever!
Cramming every '60's cliché into one three minute song is a testimony to their talent!
It also makes obvious just how shallow those cliches really were.
Check out ‘Listen to what the Flower People Say’.
@@scottmccrea1873 Nothing poisons a man's heart like a deep cliche.
@@KenLieck unless it's really, really funny.
@@scottmccrea1873 You're talking *really* deep, then. As in a sar chasm.
Not a lot of people know this but Spinal Tap was on right after this doing “Listen To What The Flower People Say” 🤯
LOL
What a load of rubbish.
They were on BEFORE The Folksmen!
Love, Lovvve, Looooooovvve!
Again with the damn flower people?
Pledge lines are open, so call now and help PBS keep these great acts on the air for many years to come
Ba-Ha-ha-ha!
dave atchison Perfect!
dave atchison LOL!
Nailed it.
You win
I showed this to my Mother in law a few years ago went right over her head and said she went to see them in the 60s
😂
@@HSBsoulsurfer😂 Brilliant!
😅🤣😂
Yes, I'm sure that happened.
Michael McKean is an incredibly underrated film and television talent.
I'll never figure out how those sixties bands got such great electric guitar tones without cables and amps!
The 60s were magical! Yeah, baby! - Austin Powers
The guitars themselves go to 11.
Unfortunately though, this was before the invention of Dubly.
invisible drummers
You just got to listen to the colors, man, and it's all clear.
This is widescreen video, so it's from the TV special documented in A Mighty Wind rather than vintage 60s video. (60s footage would have been in the 4:3 aspect ratio.) They could have used wireless connections to their guitars and bass.
This was the song that convinced me to burn my draft card.
LOL !!!
Oh man!! You just proved a conspiracy theory I just created!
If you play the song backwards it says “burn the card… Don’t go”
Of course it says “John Denver for president” if you put the hole in the wrong place.
@@captainarcher2 What's lol?
I remember bringing home my very first Folksman record.. It completely changed my life. I had a chance to see them play live, but I got shipped off to Nam the night before the show.
OK, I know I’m dense, but can someone tell me - are the Folksmen a REAL group or just a spoof?
@@sshelget, fake band.
I remember that night. I took LSD and burned my draft card and a bra I found in my sister's dresser. They found me 5 years later and took me in. I did 10 years hard time in San Quentin. Never did make it to 'Nam. Heard there was this asshole named Charlie or something.
I remember buying my first Folksmen record and thinking, "Um, why does this have no hole?"
@sshelget "Hey hey we're The Monkees..."
I remember the scandal it created when the Folksmen went electric. I was there, man. They were booed. After their first number.. people started throwing their underwear on the stage. I was too modest, so.. I just threw a sock.
JUDAS!!!
@@johnolson5538 - I dont believe you !
I was there too !! I had on a Martin's paint cap, I threw it on stage. I hit Joan Baez by accident. David St. Hubbins was there too. In fact he was good friends with The Folkman. They'd all hang out in Newport with Plant, Page & Joni Mitchell.
OMG I hope it wasn't THAT sock.
Snuffy Grunt ...Where was the sock??? 🧦
This is "Listen to the Flower People" in the parallel universe. Brilliant.
I like to think both songs exist in the same parallel musical reality that these 3 fine gents have created.
In the parallel universe "Listen to the Flower People" was a major international hit, but unfortunately similar popularity was not to be for the Folksmen.
@@wftjet Thanks to RUclips and new technology, it's nice to see the young people tuning in to these old songs. I bought a CD at their last reunion show, but unfortunately it shattered when I tried to punch a hole in the center. I need to dig through my old LPs and see if I can find my copy of Saying Something. Last time I put it on, Ma and Pa disowned me. It does bring back the memories of a simpler time.
@Jim McCracken And neither even bubbled under. Criminal.
Remember that The Folksmen have opened for Spinal Tap. Both acts were active in the 60's!
"Weren't you listening? Or are you just blind?" Ha.....awesome.
OMG!! Pure comedic genius that!! LOL!! : D
"They have a secret. We'll share it with you."
Genius
They masterfully captured the era when the guys in the control room discovered the effects box. “Use every wipe! We paid for this!”
Each wipe cost them $3.50. Then they find out that the studio manager was actually just the Loch Ness monstah.
By 1967, The Folksmen had not charted a song on the Top 100 in several years. Having been shifted down to the Folk-Tone label, the suits at Folk-Tone began to consider The Folksmen a liability for even their struggling label. Folk manager Irving Steinbloom continued to have faith that The Folksmen just need to shift their output and even their wardrobe. One morning in April of 1967, Steinbloom came into the recording studio where The Folksmen were in the middle of a session, He had a copy of the new hit record from a then rising British pop group. The single was (Listen) To The Flower People. "This is the new sound you guys need." That afternoon, Alan Burrows and Jerry Palter went into their hotel room, and on two dinner napkins, wrote Children of The Sun, which was (inexplicably) released in the fall of 1967, where it had the misfortune to come out the same week as Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, which doomed any chance of it charting. Folk-Tone barely put any distribution, even as they finally had managed to afford enough money to finally buy the processors that allowed a hole punch in the center of the vinyl, and even with Irving Steinbloom investing money to film a promotional video for the song, Children of the Sun was quickly forgotten, except by one surprising group of people. Spinal Tap lead singer David St. Hubbins bought several of the few copies that were released of Children of the Sun, and ultimately, He, Nigel Tufnel, and Derek Smalls invited The Folksmen, by then dropped by Folk-Tone, to open for them during their 1968 U.S Tour. It was the beginning of a long relationship between the two groups.
As for the hole, my uncle Ted invented a turntable that had no center post, precisely for this new recording technology. It never really took off because the big record companies were against it and Duffy Wormold from EMI shut down the presses. It was really a case of what came before, the chicken, the cart or the horse...
@@gregf1299Wrong. The pumpkin came before.
I think everyone knows all of that, but what about the limited edition EP that was supposed to appear on Deram in January 1968, the planned, but cancelled, appearance on the Dick Cavett Show later that year and the unfortunate incident with the kerosene truck and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown at the May 1968 Miami Pop Festival?
Furthermore, I _think_ I’m correct that the album ( _Saying Something_ ) from which this song originated was believed _jinxed_ because of its *title,* in that:
*1)* It contained TWO words, not one.
*2)* It didn’t end in _n apostrophe._
They say the "3D" lenticular image on the album sleeve cover was a nightmare to produce and bankrupted the record company.
The huge lava lamps really set the tone!🤣🤣
I was on the stage crew. It was such a toe tapping tune.. it interfered with the audio.
"Super Glue" had just premiered and it had come onto the scene, so.. we adhered their shoes to the stage. They just stepped in.. and the rest is history...
A classic in every way. I wept, I cried, then I wept again. Then I cried again. My life is so repetitive and boring. But at least I'll have this catchy tune ringing in my ears for all eternity. Thank you, Moonmen!
Yesss.
+@johnjdevlin2610+
I gave you 100 thumbs up.
@@libraryquiet It warms my heart to know that I touched your soul. For all intensive porpoises, I touched my own soul too. That's it in a nutshell. Thanks.
@@johnjdevlin2610It's illegal to touch porpoises like that.
That'll be bad news for my cousin Ethel. She invented the toilet snorkel for the purpose. Or should I say 'porpoise'? And as we all know, hell hath no fury like a woman's corns.
My dad worked on the set for this, which was from the "All Folked Up" tour that got caught in Duluth during the blizzard. He said the band paid for everyone's room at the Motel 4 and they all sang camp songs, except the one about sipping cider through a straw, which Barrows apparently hated.
Love the lava lamps!
I thought these guys all died when they were touring through the Midwest and Iowa and their plane crashed in a white-out blizzard?? Huh...
In '67, I was stationed in Dang Bang province and I stepped on mine and it went BANG, and I was like "DANG!", but even tho my legs were gone, I could still see the irony in the situation and was able laugh it off (like my legs). During a long recovery, I was thankful that the Folksmen's "Children of The Sun" kept me from blowing my brains out with a shotgun, so I only used a 9mm and I missed most of the cognitive areas of my frontal lobe and I survived. Thank you Folksmen, I think!
Yours Truly - Jon Fettermann.
That's such a beautiful story. No doubt this sing means a lot to you.
@@roseharvey2664 Yes - This sing means a lot to me.
I'm cut in half, Dewey. I'm cut in half real bad.
These guys are great because they demonstrate that the clichés of any (pop) musical era can be tapped to created brand new, 'old' hits!
Gee, well done. You're a genius
Why wouldn't they be able to be tapped (strange wording)? has physics changed, or humans evolved beyond that capability to prevent it somehow? Now tapping into a future hit, would be something!
Sadly, pop music "eras" hit the buffers thirty years ago. Has been the same sub-mediocre drivel since then.
@@jonathanj.7344 That is true. We have talented artists writing and performing engaging and catchy songs still, but they are often graduates of stage schools and performing arts colleges. Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Adele and Lady Gaga are more akin to Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Ivor Novello really, even if they work in very different genres. They are old fashioned performers and artistes.1950-1990 was something very different, though. From Doo-Wop through everything else that followed we had four decades of mad creativity when (briefly) anything seemed possible. Depressing really.
My mom used to play this song for me when I was in utero. It changed my life.
Me two😂
@@denisrichardson3260I was in utero when I heard this song and my mom aborted me shortly thereafter. Thanks Folksmen!
There’s a legendary story about Alan Barrows of the F-Men where he wonders into a guitar store to buy an amp and ends up buying one because this particular amp, while most go from 1 to 10, had a 1/2 setting.
I modified the knobs and control panel on a couple of my amps with White Out , and Dymo Labels , and IT WORKED !!!
This is a spot on. This would have slid into an AM radio station in the late Sixties unnoticed.
Doubtful. The lack of a hole in the center of the record would have caused it to teter crazily on the spindle thus reducing any chances of air play.
These guys are just so insanely talented! Everything I have watched has been mindblowingly clever.
The song is pretty close to that 60s vibe but what really nails it is using every screen transition available.
The sawtooth wipe... the radial wipe... brilliance.
"...children of the sun...suh-uuun." 🎵 Hilarious staging and the music is spot on.
It's really amazing that they stuck with the Kingston Trio parody right down to this song. The Trio's last two albums, Somethin' Else and Children Of The Morning (hmm...), saw them using a backing band for most of the songs and they all have a very similar sound to this song. That's amazing attention to detail.
Sublime musicianship , stellar composition and lyrics . I miss real bands like this
I actually saw them live in Houston at the House of Blues. Probably in about '8 or '9. It was "Spinal Tap Unplugged." They were awesome!
Best Concert I ever saw the Folksman opening for Spinal Tap at the Electric Banana in NYC.
....Don't look for it, it's not there anymore
What’s not there anymore , the Electric Banana or NYC? 🤔
Three amazing comedic artists! As actors, AND, musicians, they can parody folk just as hilariously as they did rock.
That's what makes this and "Spinal Tap" so great.
When I was a kid my girlfriend's sister had their record. I knew it was great just by looking at the cover. After I promised that nothing would happen to it, I was allowed to borrow the record. I ran home to my brother and we listened to it the rest of the day. The look on his face when the music hit us is something I will never forget. Kids these days don't understand how magic music was in the 60's.
But that was SayING SomethiNG. They broke their covenant when they made their album two words and added the G.
Who poked the hole in the record?
@@softshoesYour sister had a hole poked
Very moving, I was too young to get heavily involved with the super-flower vibe of The Folksmen & early Tap. May Krishna have mercy on the lost souls who missed out on such supreme enlightenment.
I remember well in summer, 1973 when they played the Caspar Inn north of Mendocino.
This is just pitch perfect, nice outtake from an another incredible movie from Guest.
This makes me appreciate Spinal Tap and the geniuses behind it all even more. Too funny.
This is freaking awesome, as good as Listen to the Flower People! You can tell they know their stuff when it comes to 60s psych rock/folk rock. Too bad it wasn’t in the movie.
YES IT WAS!
I saw them at the Whiskey A Go Go, late 1967 I believe it was , they opened for the Doors. Ahh the memories of the melodies that were mesmerizing and meaningful in the moment.✌
Oh those were heady days for sure. It *was* late ‘67 … I remember hanging around outside the Whiskey, listening to the Doors’ sound checks reverberating through the walls. Sadly, the Folksmen’s amps were turned down too low to hear much of their check. No great loss though … they were too mellow for me.
I believe you are mistaken. They didn’t play there that year. In 67 they were bumped to the next bar down the street, the Vodka A Go Go. I caught both the 6:30 and 10:00 shows.
When they did play the Whiskey in 68, the doorman said I looked too shifty and wouldn’t let me in!
My lawsuit is still pending!
That is goddam funny.
@@chasbodaniels1744Nigel Tufnel addressed the amp problem as we all know. 11!
Jerry Palter's (McKeon) benevolent pomposity is the best thing about this character.
🤣🤣
Theres even a little Johnny Cash in there and similarities to St. Hubbins Flower People, lectureous condescension
This was the song that proved they could "relate" to the "kids."
I had an original vinyl pressing of "Children of The Sun". The record had no hole and it teetered crazily when I tried to play it on my turntable. To say The Folksman going electric didn't influence Bob Dylan, and Terry Bohner would be a travesty.
Billy Thorpe said he was influenced.
If you put a hole in the middle, you'll have a real good time.
Those stage props are spectacular.
Yep.
In a goofy sort of way.
And they’re real
Spinal Tap, circa "flower people", ripped these guys off.
Tap stole from a lotta people ; Shubb was a Huge Influence on Smalls !
@@elvisparker4691 Like, cucumber in tinfoil huge?
Back then my grandma took one look at this and went back to her black and white television cause she was afraid the colors would give her "the apoplexy"
😂
This is a perfect take off on how older musicians in the '60's tried to jump on the flower power bandwagon. Note that the band's not supposed to be young here. Case in point....The Kingston Trio had a song called "Children Of The Morning."
It’s fun now that I have more familiarity with the music that this movie is parodying to figure out what acts and album covers are references to real bands.
Also the cut of their trousers, young musicians of that era wouldn't be wearing no saggy baggy pants like that.
Chuck has a magnificent voice.
Harry Shearer cracks me TF UP man !
This would have been a hit in 1967
Totally sounds like a cross between the Doors and the Youngbloods. This is great!
62
Not in the US - Listen to the Flower People would have been a hit - but I think this guy's voice wouldn't have worked
It was, we just smoked soo much weed, we forgot ... umm, what was I saying?
Its a hit now!! Love this
It was all fun and games until that one Saturday night after a gig at The Bitter End when there was a drunken brawl involving The Folkmen, Cass Elliot, Peter Tork and the Mugwumps on the street outside of Chumleys. Legendary. 🍻
The Folksmen really developed their sound while sticking true to their style. Love this period.
“You can’t fly to heaven on the wings of a gun!”
Mind.
Blown.
Absolute and utter genius as always. And now they've done it twice as two different bands. When this popped up on my video feed I was extraordinary excited to see it. I may have to watch A Mighty Wind again
Baldrick is really coming along on the giant violin!
🤣🤣
This movie and the original music are absolutely genius.
This song takes me back to Nam somehow. i was born in '74.
I was born in Poon Tang province. Still live there, actually and this song takes me back there.
This is State of the Art late 60s videography!
They touched my soul so deeply that I have their fingerprints all over my ectoplasm.
you can't fly to heaven on the wings of gun
You can if it's an A-10.
The angels couldn't take him up to heaven as they'd planned
Cuz they couldn't pry that gun from his cold, dead hand....
Which begs the question, "Can a gun have wings?"
"It's old but it's new"..I felt that.
I actually love this song. It really takes you back to that time. Amazing!!!
I love how the guitars are blatantly unplugged.
Lip syncing in the 60s. You do what you have to to get on tv.
Also one of the guitars is so obviously a double bass.
@@weebrianful I thought it was a 12-string.
@@weebrianfulIt was a double sitar
Funny how a mock band is actually better than many "real" bands today.
Try The Ruttles too.
Talent at its finest
"many 'real' bands today"... Wtf are you talking about. Just because you don't know any of the many amazing groups (including rock groups) that exist today that's just cause you have a boomer brain.
Mock band? What are you talking about? That’s a real video.
I saw this band on the Lloyd Thaxton Show in ‘67, I was 11 years old & was inspired to never pickup the guitar again…. Ever…..
The Folksmen went to 12.
Well, that's only on the Acoustic sets
🤣🤣
i rememebr that back in 66 as guitarist with dandy brathwaites lactating steam railway i was in a guitar shop in LA when the folksmen came in and bought their rickenbackers i had just picked up my own 360/12 and they really sounded good though the bass player seemed to still be wearing eye liner and lipstick from the TV appearance they had made ........................three weeks before ????
I remember when the Folksmen and the Mommas and the Papas smoked a bong of banana peels. It was awesome!!
I've haven't seen this since it first aired on the Carruthers Brothers' Calamity Hour back in 1968. They also performed their other classic, "Time's a'Wastin'" on the same broadcast.
What a fabulous song!
I'm definitely transported to Laurel Canyon Blvd in autumn 1967. Must have been some good times.
God, it took me a minute, then I recognized Michael McKean 🤣
That's what I thought. I kept looking at him thinking , man that sounds and looks like Lenny. Lol. He's so freaking funny. I don't know how he keeps a straight face through the whole song.
I thought that was the guy on Laverne and Shirley!
@@stevenbender66 I think there's a cohort of fans who think of him as David St. Hubbins from Spinal Tap, and maybe even another group who know him as Chuck McGill from Better Call Saul. But he's always been Lenny to me.
@@mel_bee Absolutely. When I was a kid, Lenny and Squiggy were household names.
I was 14 and in the 3rd grade when I first heard this song. It truly touched my soul and inspired me to finally graduate elementary school. I’m a retired pencil sharpener now.
Yes, I see your point.
@@captainpoppleton your pencil pun is where I draw the line.
This should have made the final cut of A Mighty Wind.
It's in the "extras" part of the DVD
@@whatsthebigfndeal Yes, it is. I just think it should have been in the released version of the film.
I never heard this before! I love this movie.
I would say Dylan the Byrds and The Folksmen really defined what the '60's were and where we were at as a country...
I couldn't abide by them when they went electric. When the showed up on the Sullivan show in '66 with electric guitars a little part of me died.
Who here remembers the mid-1960s pop trio the Cyrkle? I believe the Folksmen aspired to sound like the Cyrkle ... or was it the other way around!?
The Circle had great songs. But I thought The Folksmen sounded very Buffalo Springfield in this appearance.
I was half way through my tour in the Nam when this song came on the radio,I was sat in my cot back at base in Da Nang, as soon as the song finished I stopped cleaning my M16 stripped off my fatigues and ran naked out into the rain howling at the sky about the beauty of flowers and the futility of war.
Who are these young ones so wild and so free?
Are they your sons and daughters?Could they ever be?
They show you a moonbeam.
You call it a star.
They say “come and join us”.
You stay where you are.
The past is behind you.
The future’s begun.
Say the children of the sun.
Of the sun.
And how did you lose them?
Where was your mind?
Weren’t you listening?
Or are you just blind?
They have a story.
It’s old but it’s new.
They have a secret,
but will share it with you.
You can’t fly to heaven
on the wings of a gun.
Sing the children of the sun.
Of the sun.
Our number is many.
Our voices as one.
Quote the children of the sun.
Of the sun.
The children of the sun.
Of the sun.
The children of the sun.
The children of the sun.
Now THAT'S how you write a lyric, children!
If Harry Shearer was going for over-the-top ridiculous parody of that 60's look, NAILED IT!
Man, I just love that fab scene decor! Music and showmanship was better in those days.
i think the giant lavas are threatening to upstage this whole clip
Billy Thorpe's cover of this song in the 70s sounds so different. LOL.
I suspect Thorpey was influenced by Hawkwind's version.
I was just thinking the same thing.
I know right!?
Their message (if they have one) is just as meaningful today. Visionaries.
And what a message it is,
Have a good time, all the time!
Mark Shubb's Bass playing here is Incredible. You can really hear it good on this mix over the Electric Guitars. You look at All the Top Bass Players ; Geddy Lee, Jack Bruce, Jack Cassady, Geezer Butler, Gene Simmons, Chris Squire, Paul McCartney, Greg Lake, Jon Entwhistle, Joh Paul Jones, Billy Sheehan, Dusty Hill....
They ALL cite Mark Shubb as a Major Influence 🎸👍
Check out his solo album in '68 of All Instrumental Acoustic Bass,
Rub a Dub Shubb. I'd say it's the best All Acoustic Bass Only Instrumental Album of the late '60's.
Except Tina Weymouth, she cites Marta Shubb.
And that drummer!
Three amazing gentlemen.
I'm probably not supposed to but I actually quite like this.
The Folksmen were true pioneers of using every video wipe effect available.
I had to write my feelings in a comment, because I am completely speechless. Once again, they have outdone themselves. ...impressive... no words...really, no words.
That's 26, but who's counting?
@@andrewfrankovic6821 words not spoken means no speech. As in speechless. But, who's paying attention...really...who's paying attention?
@@andrewfrankovic6821 A little irony. Obviously, very little ;)
@@insearchoftruth7979 I think we're sort of on the bubble here, where I could have kept my words to myself, and yeah, you can still write that you're speechless, but then you wrote you had no words. Can we get an independent ruling? Let's call an umpire over.
Three of the greatest gag comedy actors that ever graced the silver screen, haha.
Hey man! Pretty sure I saw these guys at Woodstock!!! Right On👍 🐼🌸🌷🌻🌈🍭 outta site man
Nah mannn, that's was Santa Claus mannn
Paul McCartney has said in several interviews...The Folksmen, and especially "Children of the Sun" was his main influence when writing for Rubber Soul and Revolver...
The drummer is excellent!
In the years before guitar tabulation, I remember slowing down this 45 by switching my phonograph to 33 1/3 so I could pick out the guitar parts by ear and play them note for note.
This is one of my fav song on the DVD. It's well hidden.
I saw these guys open for Spinal Tap at the Beacon Theatre in NYC
I love how every line is a cheesier cliche' than the previous one...then the chorus..
Thumbs up! There is a major "Moody Blues" vibe to this.
This could have been a major hit in 1967!
This reminds me of Listen to the Flower Children by Spinal Tap. The 60s was quite an era.