Little Roger and the Goosebumps
Little Roger and the Goosebumps | |
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| Genres | Pop music, Comedy music |
| Years active | 1973–1983, 2006 |
| Members | Roger Clark Dick Bright |
Little Roger and the Goosebumps is a pop/rock band from San Francisco active during the 1970s and early 1980s and resurrected in 2006. It has been led throughout its history by Roger Clark and Dick Bright, with various sidemen.
The band is best known for its single "Gilligan's Island (Stairway)"[1][2] a song combining the lyrics to the theme song of the television show Gilligan's Island with the music of "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. The band wrote the song in 1977 as "material to pad the last set of the grueling 5 nights a week/4 sets a night routine," recorded it in March 1978, and released it as a single in May 1978 on their own Splash Records label. Led Zeppelin's management threatened a copyright infringement lawsuit against the label, its attorneys demanding that all copies be destroyed, and the band withdrew the song, seeing their legal resources as inadequate.[3][2] The song was reissued in 2000 on the CD Laguna Tunes with the song title renamed "Stairway to Gilligan's Island."[4]
During a 2004 interview on National Public Radio, Robert Plant referred to the tune as his favorite cover of "Stairway to Heaven."[5][6]
The famous conman "Clark Rockefeller" and his young daughter Snooks used to sing the Stairway/Gilligan's mix.[7]
The band recorded their next single, "Kennedy Girl" (based on Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl"), in 1980,[citation needed] then waited over a quarter-century before producing their debut album They Hate Us Cuz We're Beautiful, featuring new recordings of 14 songs drawn from three decades of original material.[8]
Their single "Fudd on the Hill," essentially a performance of "Fool on the Hill" by Looney Tunes character Elmer Fudd, was included on the novelty compilation album The Rhino Brothers Present the World's Worst Records, Volume 2.
References
[edit]- ^ Stairway to Gilligan's Island from gilligansisle.com, a Gilligan Island fansite. The source for the title of the song comes from this image of the single on that fansite.
- ^ a b Kembrew McLeod; Peter DiCola (14 March 2011). Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. Duke University Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-8223-4875-7.
- ^ Scott Calef (21 August 2013). Led Zeppelin and Philosophy: All Will Be Revealed. Open Court Publishing Company. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-8126-9776-6.
- ^ "Kenny Laguna". Laguna Tunes. Retrieved 2014-07-15.
- ^ "The Tyee – My Protest Against the Zep". Thetyee.ca. 2008-01-10. Retrieved 2014-07-15.
- ^ "Robert Plant on the 'Stairway to Heaven'". NPR. Retrieved 2014-07-15.
- ^ Seal, Mark. The Man in the Rockefeller Suit. Plume, 2012, paperback ed. pp 322.
- ^ "They Hate Us Cuz We're Beautiful by Little Roger and the Goosebumps". Pop Plus One. Retrieved 2014-07-15.
External links
[edit]- Roger Clark interview from The Monthly
| Authority control databases: Artists |
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