BOC: Marsha's Plan

[Albert T Bouchard]

Awhile back there was some discussion about why tMP was included on the
WOTT compilation. Now I don't mean to fan the fire scortching "Here's
Johnny" but I had some thoughts about it today so I thought I that at least
one or two people might be interested.

I'd say that like most of the biggest failures BOC had this song was also
my fault. If I'd known Steve Swann then it might not have been but :-) I
got this idea that because there seemed to be so much squabbling about the
royalties we should try to write a song all together. Make a completely
democratic tune, improve morale, share the wealth, ya know, bond
artisticly. Well after we finally got the song together we thought it was a
success. Everybody had pretty much an equal share in the writing process.
Allen and Donald did mostly lyrics. Joe and I did mostly music and Eric did
a little bit of everything. He even got Don Kirshner to make a cameo
appearance as the announcer in the middle (of course we didn't know that
outside of our area he was unknown).

We all knew that there wasn't anything commercial on the album, that's the
way we planned it. So Columbia decided to make a video out of this song so
it would be played on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert (remember kids, this was
before MTV). It was fun making a video although I was disappointed with how
it came out a bit but at the time I'd have had no idea how to make it
better. It was a silly song that was a tongue in cheek as anything we ever
did.

Then the next year I heard "Jukebox Hero" and six months after that "Summer
of 69" and I thought wow, this idea might have been good if we'd have been
sincere about it. Oh well

But that wasn't what I thought about today. Today I was thinking about if I
had written the words to that song they wouldn't have been anything like
that. I like open-ended songs. I usually don't feel the need for closure on
a song. As long as the music delivers the story is better left up in the
air to me. Donald always felt the need for closure on his songs. Most of
them have a definite ending, like a short story. Starting with Last Days
most of the songs except for maybe a few on Flat Out are in that mode. Oh
and also excepting the songs he wrote with Meltzer. Those are all
open-ended. Anyway, it was just a thought