12 Step Program, part two, chapter thirty-three
Whatever happened toWhat Is Love
Obeying their dad’s wish, Abe Stern Jr. and Bob Stern did next to nothing.
They were good at it.
As long as Barb recycled its catalogue, it was alive and ran itself. All the brothers had to do was say yay or nay and the major label that now owned Barb acted accordingly. It might have made the decisions ultimately but Abe Jr. and Bob had veto power seldom used.
The label’s suggestions made sense: convert to CD, make the records available for streaming.
Compile a series of Best Ofs.
Sell songs to advertisers, put them on to soundtracks. Arguably, Barb was more profitable now than when Abe was running it as an active independent label. No expenditures such as signing advances or career development or promotion. Everything had been paid. Apart from manufacturing an occasional Best Of, it was all gravy.
The new label took over the national distribution of Barb and severed the ties with Re-Action. Barb records won’t sell as many as it had when Barb was active, the brothers were told, but at least they’d be in all the stores.
They said, OK.
The Joss contract was up and the band came to Abe Jr. and Bob wanting an advance to make another record and to tour.
This was shortly after Abe had died and the sons were especially sensitive.
The Joss, as in joss sticks, had developed from blue-eyed soul into funk with jazz overtones. They’d skirted jazz-fusion but had flirted with disco. They’d adapted a slick kind of west coast pop and was respected. The band hadn’t sold a lot of records, though, and now wanted a new deal in which it’d produce itself.
“You do know you still owe us money,” Abe told the band. “We’ve shut down the promotion department, and been told not to invest any further in any band including yours.”
“Sorry,” said Bob apologetically.
“Then let us go,” said an exasperated, disappointed Joss.
They said, go. Simple as that.
There were two things they didn’t foresee.
The first was Nora Washington. Because of her, Barb’s gospel subsidiary, Wire, was thriving. She wrote and produced most of her own hits and produced Chula Vistas’s Jesus Christ and its follow up, Give Me Strength. She took advantage of Barb’s distribution through Re-Action to get her records not only in the Christian stores but secular record departments and, though Barb didn’t have a promotions department, Washington assembled a few friends around a photocopier to send out promo copies from the list provided by Barb. When the new owner took over as national distributor, Nora was quick to reap the benefits of proper distribution and to go through the label’s promo department. Thus, her version of Prince’s When Doves Cry crossed over from gospel.
The second was What Is Love.
This was one of the four songs The Steppers left off the third album.
Not only had producer Marty Leven forgotten about these but so had Bob Jansen.
When the gorillas from Majestic Wax came looking for Steppers recordings Leven didn’t see the tape and gave them the “live” recording instead. Leven had buried the four songs deep in the A-Side vault and didn’t see it.
The new owner had, although by accident.
The Astral Freaks had been asked to contribute a track to a compilation of new bands doing old songs. The band made the rounds of small indie labels, of which Barb was one. The major and the band found nothing, but somebody from the label remembered A-Side. Marty was contacted, found the reel, played it for the label and a delighted Astral Freaks and sent it to Barb.
Astral Freaks wasn’t trying to be obscure. It had heard of The Steppers but didn’t know much about it. It liked this song, though, though unaware that it never had been released. Astral Freaks softened it and added on thick harmony.
It was a highlight of an album called That Was Then, This Is Now, perhaps because of Astral Freaks’s treatment and maybe because What Is Love might as well have been a new song. . The others on the album – Pushing Too Hard, She’s About A Mover, Eighteen, Gimme Some Lovin’, Backdoor Man – were a late sixties, early 70s smorgasbord that otherwise offered no surprises.
What Is Love even got a little radio play and closed a TV show about a courtroom battle.
Although it raised Jansen’s profile a tiny bit, he’d been MIA eight years. He was dead.
The major scoured the A-Side vault, looking for more, but all there was was What Is Love and three covers.
We’ll release a 12 inch EP and a CD single, It was paid for long ago. The big label felt justified. This was why it wanted Barb’s publishing company.
All Abe Jr. and Bob had to do was say OK, which they did.
The EP couldn’t be called a period piece because even by the time The Steppers recorded the covers they were antiques.
Richard And The Young Lions’s Open Your Door was a hit, here and there that started out with promise and then went off the charts quickly. Those who remember it or those who think of it fondly, would call it garage-rock. It’s simple and snotty.
Bobby Fuller Four’s Let Her Dance is melodic pop-rock that added depth to Fuller’s reputation for writing and performing that grew following the massive I Fought The Law. Cut short by Fuller’s puzzlong murder.
Don’t Talk To Strangers should have anointed Ron Elliot’s status as a writer and his Beau Brummels as an automatic hitmaker, but the band experienced diminishing returns with decreasing radio play and success. It mirrored the experience of Jansen and The Steppers. The Brummels’ label at the time, Autumn, was on shaky financial ground with interest in the band waning. Stern always supported The Steppers but Barb was struggling to put money in the bank and achieve credibility.
Jansen deliberately chose those songs as examples of influences on him and The Steppers: garage-rock, pop-rock, folk-rock.
That’s not why Astral Freaks chose What Is Love.
Here was a love song that wasn’t really about love. It was about trying to define love and ultimately failing.
As a band often accused of being cold and distant, Astral Freaks deemed What Is Love a good compromise. It could add its own sound to the arrangement, make it fresh.
When it was released as part of That Was Then, Astral Freaks was surprised by the cut’s impact.
It didn’t help Bob Jansen, but it did add to the mystery of what happened to him.
