What's the Connection? The Lovin' Spoonful, 10 CC and Pearl Jam

Lovin' Spoonful': Steve Boone, John Sebastian, Joe Butler, Zal Yanovsky

What do the bands The Lovin' Spoonful, 10 CC, and Pearl Jam have in common? Not that much. Certainly not their styles of music. But keep reading.

The Lovin' Spoonful was an American pop-rock band of the 1960s. They were named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.  Their biggest hits included "Do You Believe In Magic", "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice", "Daydream", "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind." and "Younger Girl" 

Their only song to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was "Summer in the City" released in the summer of 1966.

their music

The band's name was inspired by some lines in a song by Mississippi John Hurt called "Coffee Blues." The Hurt song was generally considered to be either a drug reference to the spoon used to heat and melt heroin, or a reference to the amount of sperm ejaculated by the average male (about a spoonful). The band's leader, John Sebastian says it was the former, but the rumor of the latter persists.

10 cc Lol Creme, Kevin Godley, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman

Which brings us to 10cc. They were an English art rock band that achieved their greatest commercial success in the early 1970s. Jonathan King, a flamboyant entrepreneur, producer, and recording artist, signed the band to his UK Records label in July 1972 and dubbed them 10cc. 

their music

King says that the name came from a dream in which he was standing in front of the Hammersmith Odeon in London where the marquee read "10cc The Best Band in the World." But the more popular origin story (confirmed in a 1988 interview and on a web page from original member Graham Gouldman) is that the band's name represented the volume of semen that was more than the average amount ejaculated by men, thereby making the band "more potent." The story is urban legend and the band origin even made it onto snopes.com which is where many search for the truth behind lies. 

Matt Cameron, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam, Jeff Ament

Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). 

The band had called themselves "Mookie Blaylock" - a reference to the then-active All-Star basketball player - when they played their first official show in late 1990 and signed to Epic Records. Concerns about trademark issues meant a name change. They went with Pearl Jam.

In an early interview, Vedder said that the name "Pearl Jam" was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam. But in a 2006 Rolling Stone story, Vedder admitted that although he did have a great-grandma named Pearl, the story was a fiction. The band came up with "pearl" and then after attending a concert by Neil Young, they added jam because of Young's extended jam versions of his songs. In the PJ20 movie, it is said that band members came up with "Pearl" to signify something beautiful coming from something ugly.

Despite both of those origin tales (and a rumor that Mookie's nickname was Pearl Jam), the most popular band origin story is that "pearl jam" is another name for sperm. (see the Urban Dictionary)

their music

The success of their album Ten (as in 10cc?), led Pearl Jam to become a key part of the Seattle grunge scene along with Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Soundgarden.

Procol Harum

In April 1967, Gary Brooker formed one of my favorite bands of all time, Procol Harum, with poet/lyricist Keith Reid, Hammond organist Matthew Fisher, guitarist Ray Royer (temporary) and bassist David Knights. The British rock band, from Southend, England, first performed as The Paramounts.

Robin Trower formed the Paramounts and would later include his Westcliff High School friend Gary Brooker. The Paramounts disbanded in 1966 to pursue individual projects and Trower formed a three-piece band called the Jam (not to be confused with the later group with Paul Weller). That was short-lived and Trower then joined Brooker's new band Procol Harum following the success of their debut single "A Whiter Shade of Pale" in 1967 and remained with them until 1971. He appears on the group's first five albums.

The band has been recording and touring in various incarnations since 1967. They recorded "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and it was released May 1967. That classic, which they are still identified with, has a structure reminiscent of Baroque music with its countermelody based on J.S. Bach's cantata no.140 played by Fisher on his Hammond organ. Brooker's vocals were often mistaken for being those of a black "soul" singer. Keith Reid's mysterious lyrics opened up all kinds of interpretations.

"A Whiter Shade of Pale" reached #1 on the UK Singles Chart and made it to #5 in the United States. The song sent them out on the road and their live debut was opening for Jimi Hendrix in 1967.

Their follow-up single was "Homburg" which was #1 in the UK but not a hit in the U.S. That recording after included former Paramounts B.J. Wilson on drums and Robin Trower on guitar. That lineup is what most Harum fans consider to be the "classic" lineup.

Their first album, the eponymous Procol Harum, was recorded soon between the two hit singles, but wasn't released until early 1968.

The second album was Shine on Brightly (1968) and the third was A Salty Dog (1969). It was their first album to sell well in the UK and the title track was an FM radio hit in the U.S. Procol Harum became known as an art-rock band with some classical roots.

Some of those classical roots were ripped up when Matthew Fisher quit Procol Harum in 1969 after the release of A Salty Dog, which he also produced. He rejoined the band in 1991 for the album The Prodigal Stranger and released two more albums with them, One More Time - Live in Utrecht 1992 and The Well's on Fire.

Drummer BJ Wilson died in 1990.

A sad update: Founding member, piano and lead singer, Gary Brooker, the only constant member of the band and the main songwriter, died on 19 February 2022.

Another former Paramount, Chris Copping, joined on organ and bass in 1970, and from late 1972 until 1977, the group's guitarist was Mick Grabham. Grabham replaced Robin Trower who went on to record a number of hard rock albums, several of which were produced by Fisher.

The band fronted by Gary Brooker continues to tour and often performs with orchestras. 

There have been a number of explanations for the unusual name. I have been a fan of the band since the beginning. (Ask me one day about my weekend as a roadie for Procol Harum and Mott the Hoople.) I have collected the origin stories and here's the etymology.

Guy Stevens, their original manager, suggested the name based on a friend's Burmese cat. They thought it was Arabic but found that it was Latin. Then they were told that they had misspelled it and that it should be procul harum. 

What does it mean? One translation was "far from these things."  But I have also seen students of Latin say that the phrase is "dubious, since procul is followed by the ablative case not the genitive."

Translating it as "beyond these things" sounds good for a 1960s band, but then I read that "beyond these things" would translate as procul his.

Another translation I have seen is that it means "of these far-off things" (harum is in the feminine, genitive, plural) but procul would not be followed by a genitive in Latin.

The definitive source of Procol Harum knowledge (including current members and tour dates) is ProcolHarum.com. That site has an interview with founder Gary Brooker that includes this answer about the name:

We didn't invent it, our manager at the time 'phoned up and said he'd found a name. We said, 'What is it?' 'Procol Harum.' 'Oh, great.' And it sounds like us, in fact, sounds like what we sound like, so that was that. He didn't just pluck it out of the air, it was the pedigree name of a cat of a friend of his. And ... er ... of course everyone went, 'What does it mean? What does it mean?' We didn't know it, so we had to find out. We did find out that we actually had got the name wrong over the telephone, we spelt it wrong. But in Latin, the cat's name was 'Procul' with a 'u' and 'Harun' with an 'n' on the end, 'Beyond these things' in Latin. We got round to saying that Procol Harum in fact meant 'Beyond these things', which was a nice coincidence: at least it didn't mean, 'I'm going to town to buy a cow' or something.

MORE

• Robin Trower  http://www.trowerpower.com
• Matthew Fisher  http://www.matthewfisher.com
• Shine on Brightly
• Exotic Birds & Fruit
• In Concert With The Danish National Concert Orchestra and Choir
• Best of Procol Harum
• 30th Anniversary Anthology
• Greatest Hits: Procol Harum
• Secrets of the Hive: The Best of Procol Harum
• Procol Harum: In Concert with the Danish National Concert Orchestra & Choir
• Procol Harum:Live at the Union Chapel
• All This & More
• In Concert With Danish National Concert Orchestra
• Procol Harum: Live(DVD)

The Pogues

The Pogues are a Celtic punk band from London fronted by Shane MacGowan. Their politically tinged music was informed by MacGowan and Spider Stacy's punk backgrounds, but they also used traditional Irish instruments such as the tin whistle, cittern, mandolin and accordion.

The band reached peaked in popularity in the late 80s and early 1990s. MacGowan left the band in 1991 due to drinking problems but the band continued first with Joe Strummer and then with Spider Stacy on vocals before breaking up in 1996.




The Pogues were founded in Kings Cross, a district of North London, in 1982 as Pogue Mahone. Pogue mahone is the Anglicisation of the Irish póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse (ass)".

The band reformed in 2001, and has been playing fairly regularly since, particularly U.S. East Coast around St Patrick's Day, and across the UK and Ireland every December, though they have not released any other records.




Pogue Mahone is also the name of the seventh and last studio album by the band which was released in 1996.

Despite their limited output, Amazon.com lists 69 albums under The Pogues

Posh

The job of etymologists (not those buggy entomologists) in studying the history of words and their origins and how they have changed over time is not an easy one. Sometimes it seems almost impossible to nail down the definitive origin - as I have discovered in doing this blog.

One word origin I have seen multiple times is for the word, posh.

The story most often given for its origin comes from ship travel. When people went from Britain to India on ships in the early 1900s, it supposedly was an acronym of “Port Out, Starboard Home.” Someone who had a cabin on the port side on the outward trip, and the starboard side on the return trip, would have the sea breeze and be sheltered from the sun on the hottest part of the journey (Suez Canal and the Red Sea).

The posh people were obviously the wealthiest passengers who had POSH stamped on their ticket.

Researchers also point to an earlier reference in an 1892 novel, The Diary of a Nobody which includes a Posh character: “Frank called, but said he could not stop, as he had a friend waiting outside for him, named Murray Posh, adding he was quite a swell.

There's also the phrase from way back in the 16th century - pish posh. The Word Detective says it's just one form of a gentle dismissal. "Pish posh, who cares about word origins. Post something about bands!"