We’ve all been hearing about the existential and aesthetical crises besieging the music industry these days. It’s scary out there. Rampant illegal downloading, collapsing CD sales, shuttering retail stores, Lana Del Ray, that mystery substance seen running down Christina Aguilera’s leg at Etta James’s funeral, and now Whitney Houston’s death on the eve of the perhaps the most impotent, I mean important, music event of the year, the Grammys. Oh, the Grammys. Admit it, you watch it. Remember how you cheered when Natalie Cole beat out Nirvana for album of the year in 1992 by duetting with her dead dad? Unforgettable!
Today’s apocalyptic collapse reminds me of a time, not long ago, when the music industry last found itself teetering on the brink. It was the late 1980s. Michael Jackson was busy erecting Neverland. Madonna was making great films. Bono was brainstorming ways to exploit the AIDS crisis in Africa. Phil Collins was opening tanning salons across the U.K. Unsure their leading lights would ever return to the spotlight, label heads, industry insiders and that vampiric U.S. lobbying organization, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), met secretly in a White House bunker brainstorming a plan to save their jobs and restore their six-figure bonuses. Their solutions: Kip Winger and Milli Vanilli. Strokes of genius to be sure, but those short-term fixes would prove to be long-term headaches the beleaguered industry had not anticipated. Milli Vanilli were outed as fakes, and the popularity of Winger’s “She’s Only 17” had the unintended effect of causing an increase in statutory rape cases through middle America.
Meanwhile, Ahmet Ertegun, who had co-founded Atlantic Records and who, along with his brother, Nesuhi, had presided over some of the greatest recordings of all time from John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ray Charles, Buffalo Springfield, Led Zeppelin and John Astley, was quietly nurturing a new act behind the scenes, a young yet wrinkled group of musicians bent on launching a back-to-basics revival of pop music. That act was the California Raisins.
Having successfully reintroduced America to the poop-stimulating wonders of rotten grapes via one of the most unforgettable advertising campaigns in history, the California Raisins, composed of Stretch, Beebop, A.C. and Red, sought to capitalize on their meteoric rise to fame. Now that they were in the spotlight—they weren’t about to wither; they’re raisins after all! They entertained sitcom offers, clothing deals, merchandising agreements, attaching their image to line of best-selling colon-cleansing products, including Super Colon Blow cereal. Alas, none of those things held much appeal. The California Raisins wanted to perform; they wanted to make music; they wanted to be onstage. The desire for rotted grapes, whether boxed in snack-sized portions or harvested in various states of decay from dumpsters, was surpassed only by the demand for a legitimate vinyl release of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” the song heard in all the TV and radio ads.
The interest was not surprising. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was a song that represented so much promise when Marvin Gaye first recorded it 20 years earlier. But his version fell well short of the upper reaches of the pop charts. The problem was that Gaye wasn’t a grape, or a raisin. He lacked the emotional intuition, conviction, not to mention street cred, needed to transform the song into transcendental masterpiece.
Atlantic Records boss Ertegun recognized this and seized the opportunity of packaging the California Raisins into a pop music snack that would not only flush the bowels of a constipated music industry, but also delight and nourish music fans for decades to come. He invited the Raisins to his Los Angeles home studio under the auspices of having them record some low-key demos. He simply instructed them to have fun, play around with their favorite tunes, explore the space, etc. Later, if all went well, he’d sign them and bankroll the production of a proper studio album.
The California Raisins didn’t need to test the waters; their chemistry was undeniable, their musicianship unbelievable, their deliciousness unbeatable. They were ready. Nevertheless, they indulged Ertegun, and went about recording a dozen or so songs, including a stripped-down take on “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” In the small basement studio, the Raisins worked fast, faster than the raisin’s effect on the human digestive system. Within an hour, they delivered an album’s worth of songs with a working titled of Led Zeppelin 1. Ertegun was stunned by what he heard. The Raisins’ recordings of “Green Onions,” “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Cool Jerk” could no longer be claimed by the forgettable artists who originally “popularized” them. No, these songs, especially the searing reworking of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” now belonged to the California Raisins.
Released in 1988, the Raisins’ debut LP, now titled Meet the Raisins, bowed at No. 1 and stayed there for three years. Every song on the album, including the studio outtakes, rehearsals, false starts and abandoned demos, topped the singles’ charts. In fact, for three straight weeks in 1989, all 40 songs in America’s Top 40 belonged to the California Raisins. The Raisins won a record 78 Grammys in three years. And their debut album was so good that it won Best Album three-straight years.
Everywhere they went, the Raisins were mobbed by fans—the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Beatles. But the Raisins soon grew spoiled, figuratively speaking of course. Legend has it that they required that all raisins be removed from the trail mix and raisin bran they ate backstage. While the Raisins weren’t about to eat their own, raisin consumption throughout the world was such that grapes were no longer used for wine, juice, jelly or even grapes. To keep up with demand all harvested grapes were dehydrated and rotted into raisins. Naturally, greenhouse gasses quadrupled, setting off some pretty catastrophic environmental catastrophes across the globe. Oceans, rivers and lakes all turned brown. Cloud formations now consisted mostly of methane. Humans now had to submit to monthly emissions checks. And the smell, oh the smell.
Finally, the backlash came in 1992. We won’t get into all the details, scandals and betrayals here—not today at least. Suffice it to say, the sweet sun-ripened treat turned foul, its shelf life expired. And that was that. The California Raisins were no more—and were never to be seen in public, together or separately, again.
Now, some 20 years later, with the music industry again spiraling down the toilet bowl, who better than the California Raisins to flush out the toxins and bring about a renaissance? Sadly, the Grammys blew a huge opportunity last Sunday. Following Whitney Houston’s death, the Grammy people should have asked the Raisins to perform in her place so that, just as pioneering Natalie Cole did with her deceased Nat King Cole, the California Raisins could have duetted with a jumbo-tron animation of Whitney Houston. They could have sung a medley of Houston favorites, including “I’m Every Raisin,” “I Wanna Dance with Some Raisin” and her signature signature “I Will Always Love Raisins.” It would have been a poignant tribute—as well as an effective passing of the torch. There wouldn’t have been a dry eye (or nose—ah, cocaine) in the audience. And it would have been the most watched, instead of the second-most watched, Grammys ever.
And so the question remains: when can we expect the second coming of the California Raisins? Only Stretch, Beebop, A.C. and Red know for sure.
