Song:. Lost in the Ozone Again.

When Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen Were 'Lost in the Ozone' (Over again)

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When Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen arrived on the music scene in 1971, there really wasn't anything else quite like them. Hither was an eight-piece band—whose members came from such far-flung locales as Alabama, California, Connecticut, Michigan, Westward Virginia, Idaho and New York—to whom genre was fiddling more than than fabricated-in-America component parts meant to be composite seamlessly into something new.

The recipe went something similar this: Take a dollop of Western swing and some classic honky-tonk country, add some 1950s rockabilly, a scrap of blues and fifty-fifty some gospel, and filter it all through good ol' boogie-woogie, central stone 'due north' roll and—every bit one of their vocal titles put it—"Too Much Fun." Then cascade it into the hands of a agglomeration of long-haired virtuosos, send it out there to stages all over the The statesA. and watch what happens.

To some rock fans, the Commander Cody story begins and ends with the band'due south sole striking single, "Hot Rod Lincoln," a cover of a speedy rockabilly-esque saga written and outset recorded by state creative person Charlie Ryan in 1955. The Cody version reached #9 in 1972, but by that time the group had already built up a potent fan post-obit based on their sweaty, practiced-fourth dimension live shows and meaning radio play on higher and AOR radio stations in key markets.

Listen to the hitting single, "Hot Rod Lincoln"

They'd already been together for five years by then, having formed in Ann Arbor Mich., in 1967 around the gravel-voiced George Frayne, who took his nickname from a 1950s sci-fi character actually called Commando Cody. In addition to Frayne, a skilled pianist with a mischievous and somewhat lascivious streak and a penchant for boogie-woogie rhythms, the classic lineup included Alabama-born singer Baton C. Farlow, guitarists Nib Kirchen (atomic number 82) and John Tichy (rhythm), bassist "Buffalo" Bruce Barlow, fiddler and saxophonist Andy Stein, drummer Lance Dickerson and pedal steel guitarist Steve Davis, who went by the phase proper name The Westward Virginia Creeper (he was replaced by Bobby Black early on).

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, circa 1971 (sitting, l. to r.): Andy Stein, Billy C. Farlow; (standing, l. to r.): Bill Kirchen, Lance Dickerson, Bruce Barlow, John Tichy, Bobby Blackness, George "Commander Cody" Frayne

The ring relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area subsequently a few years, where they chop-chop built a reputation as a hot live human activity in the region's sardine-can-packed clubs. Embraced by fans of bands such every bit the Grateful Dead and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen soon caught on in other areas outside of Northern California, peculiarly in the Northeast—they were headlining gigs in the New York City area by the time their debut album, Lost in the Ozone, was released by Paramount Records in Nov 1971.

Related: Our obituary for Frayne who died in 2021

Listen to the title track from Lost in the Ozone

That album—with cover art past graphic artist Frayne—represented accurately what one might hear at a Cody gig at that fourth dimension, a combination of original tunes, most written past Frayne and Farlow, and covers, amidst them "Midnight Shift," lifted from Buddy Holly's 1958 That'll Be the 24-hour interval anthology; a gospel ballad, "Family Bible," written by a immature Willie Nelson just attributed to others due to a convoluted fiscal deal; "Home in My Hand," originally by rockabilly creative person Ronnie Cocky; Eddie Cochran'southward "Twenty Flight Stone"; and "Crush Me Daddy Eight to the Bar," a showcase for Frayne'south boogie-woogie pianoforte dating dorsum to 1940.

This ad for the album appeared on the back cover of the November. 20, 1971 issue of Record World

While every track on the LPA's debut was sung and played flawlessly, a few tended to observe more favor than others amid radio programmers. In addition to "Hot Rod Lincoln," which, in operation, always featured an improvised variation by Frayne on the basic car-race tale, the most popular tunes on the album turned out to exist its Frayne-Farlow-penned championship track, "Lost in the Ozone," a sprightly country-rocking paean to the power of gin and vino in instances of failed love, and the stoner ballad "Seeds and "Stems (Once again)," a tale of woe that leaves narrator Kirchen with no option other than to face his suffering with a bowl of some of the saddest-looking weed around.

Seriously, information technology but doesn't get any more pathetic than this spoken-word verse:

"Well, my canis familiaris died just yesterday and left me all alone
The finance company dropped by today and repossessed my domicile
That's simply a drop in the saucepan compared to losing you
And I'm down to seeds and stems again, too"

Intoxicants surface in one case again in the weepy midtempo ballad "Vino Do Yer Stuff," yet another tale of love on the rocks:

"Now the color of this warm red wine is the colour of her hair
As I stare into my drinking glass I see her face in in that location
One more bottle if you lot please, the goin'due south getting' rough
Come up on wine, wine, vino, do yer stuff"

Related: The year 1971 in classic rock albums

It's not all well-nigh drowning one's sorrows after the fact though. The album's opening track, the rollicking "Back to Tennessee," finds the Cody coiffure being proactive. This time our protagonist is not waiting around to go dumped. He's out of there right now:

"I was livin' up in Detroit, only me and my trivial married woman
I did everything that I could do, but I got no ambition in life
I'g tired of sniffin' glue, I wanna breathe that southern cakewalk
I'm gonna hijack one of those big jet planes
I'k goin' back to Tennessee"

Another couple of originals, "Daddy'south Gonna Treat Y'all Right," with its ensemble vocal, and "What'due south the Matter Now?," a shuffling state melody recorded live, residuum out the rockabilly and boogie numbers and confirm that this is i resourceful and versatile grouping of musicians. With iv lead vocalists—Frayne, Kirchen, Farlow and Tichy—trading off, each offer distinctive approaches, there was never a adventure of stagnation from one Cody song to the next.

Heed to "What's the Matter Now?"

Lost in the Ozone only reached #82 in Billboard, but like many bands based in San Francisco the LPA'south strength was the concert stage, not so much the record player. Live, they truly whipped upwardly a oversupply, and although they but stuck effectually until the middle of the decade before the usual calamities that befall a band took them down, many today even so recall fondly the early on days of one of the most unique American bands of its day, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

Mind to "Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar," recorded live

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Best Archetype Bands Editor Jeff Tamarkin has been a prolific music journalist for more than iv decades. He is formerly the editor of Goldmine, CMJ and Relix magazines, has written for dozens of other publications and has authored liner notes for more than eighty CDs. Jeff has likewise served on the Nominating Commission of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and equally a consultant to the Grammys. His kickoff book was 'Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Aeroplane.' He is also the co-writer of 'Trounce Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc.,' with Howard Kaylan.

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Source: https://bestclassicbands.com/commander-cody-lost-ozone-3-3-20/

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