|
Ed Note: There are several mistakes in this article along with some odd/mistaken wording. I typed as written.
Paul Cowsill considers the music he plays as some sort of a time machine.
"Our friends, The Association, are coming," he said in an interview from Portland Ore. "They have a ton of a million hits. And then you have us coming. It'll be my brother Bob, my sister, Susan, and myself. We have a trio, and we just go out there and just sing our little hearts out."
Cowsill plans to perform the hits of The Cowsills, a family act formed in early 1965 and famous for hits like "Party Gir',"The Rain, the Park & Other Things" and "Indian Lake." In 1969, the group had a No. 1 hit with the title song from the musical, "Hair."
"We'll do all our hits and a ton of hits by other people," Cowsill said, "Everybody's going to know every word to every song in our set, as well as the songs in The Association's set. It's like getting on board a time machine."
He talked about how teenagers found out about music in "the old days."
"We'd hear a new song and go, Oh, my God, let's listen to it on the radio, buy the record and then go find where they're playing," Cowsill said. "All that work, just to go see a band. And our demographic, the baby boomers, are still going out to hear live music. During the summer we do 60 shows all across the United States and people are still loving the music."
. . .
For Cowsill, he understands why the music he created with his sister, brothers and mother still resonates today.
"People in the audience will be brought back to high school, junior high or even earlier than that, if they are Susan's age," he said.
His sister was 8 years old when she joined the band on tambourine in 1967. The producers of the 1970s sitcom, "The Partridge Family," based that show on the lives of the Cowsills.
"It was a phenomenal time of music," Cowsill said. "We all know the words to the songs of The Beatles and all the hits that were out there. On Friday, that's what the audience is going to get; they are going to get hit after hit. It's going to be an incredible evening."
When fans come up to him and ask if he gets tired of singing the songs over and over, Cowsill ask if they get tired of hearing the music over and over.
"They don't get tired of it," he said. "They love it. They say, 'Oh, yeah, I get it.' The audience and us, we're like a family. Without 'them,' there is no 'us.' And they continue to come to shows. It's uplifting."
For Cowsill, he first realized the family could have a career in music in 1964.
"The guys had recorded a record called 'Most of All,' written by my brothers Bill and Bob," he said. "In our house , there were seven kids. Everything was crazy in our house. We all knew that Bill and Bob were doing something, but we didn't know exactly what. All of the sudden there was this thing called 'Battle of the Bands,' on radio station WPRO in Newport, R.I., and they had our song against a very new song by a brand-new band. The new band won."
The new band? Simon and Garfunkel playing "The Sounds of Silence."
"We were up against those guys right away," Cowsill said. "But it was in our house, and we were hearing it on the radio and right then and there, you go, check this out. We knew that not everybody was on the radio."
Their mother, Barbara Cowsill, always sang in the house. She taught her children how to sing harmonies.
"And during that time there were hootenannies and folk concerts," Cowsill said. "The Newport Folk Festival was just down the road because we lived in Newport, R.I. It was all about folk music. We were good to go with that."
Even though members of the family had been singing for years, when the first big hit of The Cowsills came out, it surprised a lot of people.
"All of the sudden we were like No. 1 in the country," Cowsill said. "We are just a bunch of little kids, down to Susan who was 8 or 9 at the time. All these other bands were kinda mad, thinking we weren't what we were professing to be, a pop rock band."
Considering how different the music industry is half a century later, Cowsill sees a one important parallel.
"Whoever is making music, they are doing it because they love music," he said. "As far as paralleling what a career looks like from the 60s and how things get going and what has to happen, it's so differnt than what has to happen nowadays. We just put out an album called 'Rhythm of the World.' There's no radio stations you go to and ask them to play it. It's all online and it's all completely different. And God bless the young people because they have a handle on how to promote their music."
|
