Dream A Little Dream
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Denny On Stage Yes, the British invasion was on and Cass was in love with the music and John Lennon, so we went electric. Cass started introducing Zal to everybody as Ringo. She added a black drummer named Art Stokes, her old buddy, John Sebastian on harmonica and we changed our name to The Mugwumps. I got the idea from my Newfoundland Granny. A Mugwump is a critter who sits on a fence and can't make up it's mind: "Mug on one side, wump on the other". That was us. Neither folk, nor rock and a year too early for folk rock to even exist... But we did manage to record. Here's a Mugwumps song Cass and Jim wrote.
Everybody's Been Talkin'
Mugwumps We couldn't get arrested. The record got shelved. We were laughed out of our big Copa audition but we did get a gig at The Peppermint Lounge! The night it closed. You could hear The Lovin' Spoonful & The Mamas & Papas in our music, but - slippery stone - The Mugwumps were history a whole year before Dylan plugged in and we were all back at The Albert Hotel again, broke.
The New Journeymen Cass got a job singing with a jazz trio, and me ? Well, The Journeymen had broken up and John & Michelle were now "The New Journeymen" and looking for a tenor to play a tour ... so, I get the phone call. Flat rock. I take the gig to pay the bills, gobble fistfuls of prescription amphetamines, from John's medicine bag, rehearse for seventy-two hours straight and am back in Washington singing.
The Lovin' Spoonful Meanwhile, Zal and Sebastian are rehearsing this good-time, electric jug band music deep in the bowels of the Albert Hotel - calling themselves The Lovin Spoonful and playing so loud the ceiling is falling in on them. They sounded great and I tried to tell Phillips about it, but he didn't want anything to do with rock and roll and thought I was a nut about it.

Something must be done, so, one night . . .

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