I end Halloweenie week with The
Detergents, one of those odd weird footnotes in pop history. Most people
know Ron
Dante as the voice behind a parade of fictional hitmakers like The
Archies and The Cuff Links, and later as one of the
people helping steer Barry Manilow toward superstardom. Yet here he is lurking
in a parody group whose shelf life somehow stretched for two years, several TV
appearances, and one delightfully unexpected B-side. While Ron Dante is
known as the voice in those other fictional groups, the voice on this
particular slab of vinyl wasn't Ron at all, but Danny Jordan, who sadly left us
in 2024. Danny's name rang a bell because he was also a member of The
Court Jesters, whose two excellent 45s on Roulette I posted years ago.
Naturally, that realization triggered the familiar collector's curse: "I
should really re-upload those MP3s, take better photos, and repost them."
Just what I needed... another project. My growing pile of projects now has
projects of its own.
Igor's Cellar was the B-side of the second-to-last
Detergents 45 and, it’s part novelty record and part garage-rock basement
experiment. It rattles around like something that escaped from a mad
scientist's basement laboratory, complete with breaking beakers, flickering
Tesla coils, and poor Igor dutifully sweeping up after another monster mishap.
The song has enough raw garage energy to stand on its own, even if it arrives
wrapped in the group's trademark sense of absurdity.
As
for Igors’ Cellar,
it's a reminder that sometimes the best surprises are hiding on the flip side
of a novelty record, waiting in the shadows while Igor throws the switch and
hopes this experiment works out better than the last one.
