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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'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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