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A new CD released last fall by a Columbia musician is being touted as a return to 1967 and the "Summer of Love," when music dared to be optimistic and upbeat.
Reviewers say, while Eddie Starr's latest CD, "Beautiful Beige," sounds kind of like the Beatles and even the Monkees, it also has a more modern feel that classifies it as "new millennium psychedelia."
Starr calls the tracks on his CD, which he recorded under the pseudonym Telegraph Roadsign, "float and smile music" and said they represent the essence of his life's philosophy, which focuses on tolerance and optimism.
The Creed
A native of Cahokia, who now lives in Columbia, Starr may be familiar to many in this area.
"In the early 1970s, I was in a good band, The Creed," he said. "We were popular among teens. We played all the school dances and a few local night clubs."
The band's agent even booked gigs in Memphis, Tenn., where a record producer heard the group and thought it might have a future. He took some of their recording to Los Angeles in search of a record deal. But all the companies he approached said the group sounded too much like the Beatles.
"Our fans liked us because we sounded like the Beatles," Starr said. "That was pretty cool and I was proud of that."
But it was 1972, the beginning of the disco age, and the sounds of the 1960s were fading, so the band broke up and with his sister Diana, Starr started his own disco band - Starr Company.
"We became popular and got a lot of work because we were one of the few bands playing disco," he said, noting their popularity continued until the movie Saturday Night Fever came out.
"They never showed a live band in that movie. It was always a D.J. spinning records," he explained. "After that, most of the night clubs began copying the movie and replaced their live bands with D.J.s and we started losing our work.
"Our agent told us the only way we could get work was to go on a road tour. But I couldn't do that. I was married with two kids."
Labor singer
Starr gave up on the dream of becoming a rock star and got a job in a factory. But he continued with his music and his new songs reflected the anger and oppression he felt working in a factory.
"It felt like slavery to me," he said. "I was making less pay doing something I hated than I was making while playing music, which I loved."
His first factory job was at Cerro Copper in Sauget. Then he moved on to Granite City Steel, where he still works today.
"I always carried a harmonica with me at the factory and during breaks I sat around making up funny songs about the work and the bosses just to make the other guys laugh," he said, pointing out that without realizing it, he had transformed himself into a labor singer.
"I didn't even know what that was until one of the local union reps heard me," he explained. "He wanted me to meet the union president, who informed me there was an organization affiliated with the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., called the Labor Heritage Foundation that was looking for people like me."
The foundation, which uses art and music to promote organized labor, plucked him out of the factory and got him a record deal with an independent label for which he recorded several CDs.
"Some of the songs were funny but a lot of them were angry," Starr said. "They were sold through a catalog the record company distributed to people in organized labor."
The foundation also sent him on gigs around the country to provide entertainment at union conventions and even to perform at strike rallies.
"When I was making the music, which I call political music, I was expressing my feelings," Starr said. "And I was proud to be able to use my music to do that. But eventually I got burned out.
"I got tired of being labeled a labor singer. All they wanted me to sing about was the union and labor. I wanted to do other things too. So I dropped out and decided I would be happy working in the factory and playing a little music on weekends."
Float and smile
When he finished the political scene, Starr was disillusioned and a little depressed. He decided to use music as therapy to get out of the doldrums and turned back to the music of his youth.
"I am a significant fan of the 1960s, especially the 'Summer of Love' in 1967," he said. "I like the sound the music made then. It had a very light, free sound. It is the music I grew up with. It is music that makes you smile."
He setout to find music like that and one of the groups he rediscovered was the Cowsills. Watching a VH1 biography on the group inspired him to buy a CD featuring the best of their music.
It also led him to the Cowsills fan web site where he communicated with a woman from Seattle who wondered if anyone knew how to take a scratchy old album and digitally clean it up so it could be turned into a CD.
Since Starr had the equipment to do the job, he suggested she send him the album. That is how he discovered the song "Beautiful Beige," a little know filler track on the album.
"The song accidentally came to me because I was trying to help a woman and it touched my soul," he said. "I loved what it said because it is about tolerance and humanity. This is what I believe in.
"The song turned me on so much I went out looking for it. But all the record stores said it did not exist anymore, so I knew I had to record it.
"I recorded it for myself but it turned out so good an executive at the company where the disc was pressed suggested it may have some interest for Cowsills fans. So I decided to share it with them on my web site," he said.
As a result he was contacted by John Cowsill, one of the original members of the band, via e-mail and the two struck up a friendship. Then Bob Cowsill, John's brother and another of the original band, contacted Starr and invited him to appear with them in concert.
The new release
That experience inspired him to create his current CD around "Beautiful Beige." He said the seven other tracks on the CD form a "neat little synopsis of all the songs" he has ever written, including compositions from each decade of his life.
One New York City reviewer said, "If you put the Beatles and the Monkees in a blender out would come 'Beautiful Beige.' " Another from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said, "This album should be called 'Magical Mystery Tour II.' "
Starr is pleased with the assessments since the influences on his music are still rooted in the 1960s.
The CD was released nationally in September 2000 at a record store in Newport, R.I., the Cowsill's hometown, where Starr was attending a reunion concert of the band.
When asked why he chose to name the CD for a group, Telegraph Roadsign, rather than himself, Starr explained, "I have never been famous. I never had a hit record. If it was going to be released nationally, I felt it would stand a better chance if it had a cool band name. I chose Telegraph Roadsign.
"No whenever I bring musicians together to record, that becomes Telegraph Roadsign," he added.
The musicians on the CD are either family - brother Rick played drums, sister Diana, helped with vocals, and Jim Bovinette, his wife's cousin who is a musician with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, played trumpet, or friends - Jill Bently Ross, a folk singer from Granite City, provided backup vocals and George Smith, a guitarist, played bass. Starr over dubbed the remaining instruments: keyboard, sax, clarinet, recorder and some guitar.
Starr, 45, took his CD to several distributors and, today, it can be ordered in record stores worldwide. It recently started appearing on shelves in record stores locally, too.
The CD also is posted on Amazon.com, CDNow and other web sites. It also is available through Starr's web site, telegraphroadsign.com.
"My target audience is people my age who want to hear new music that has the old familiar 'Summer of Love' sound. So also I have been contacting web sites oriented to baby boomers," said Starr, who created his own record company, Tripp Records, and music publishing company, Maychild Music ASCAP, to retain the rights to his works.
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