Dr. West’s Medicine Show & Junk Band

Odder compared to the Jim Kweskin Jug Music group and even more aligned using the right folk/jug band custom compared to the Holy Modal Rounders were, Dr. West’s Medication Show & Rubbish Music group were among the greater notable 1960s organizations that up to date the old-timey/jug music group spirit with today’s attitude and rock and roll influences. Most referred to as the starting place for innovator and main songwriter Norman Greenbaum (there is no “Dr. Western”), who have an enormous rock strike in 1970 with “Soul in the Sky,” they didn’t accomplish even the moderate profile of Kweskin or the Holy Modal Rounders. Greenbaum once explained himself as “a mix between Captain Beefheart and Spike Jones,” even though Dr. Western sounded a lot more like Jones than Beefheart, Greenbaum and his cohorts certainly experienced a knack for witty, frequently absurd modern-day jug band-style music. On-stage, Dr. Western would proceed through medication display routines between tunes, a shtick which actually drew the compliment of Frank Zappa. Dr. West’s only recording, The Eggplant That Ate Chicago, was chock-full of music inlayed with blasé weirdness, just like the name monitor, which will be tailor-made for airplay on Dr. Demento’s display a couple of years later. Several post-album singles noticed Dr. West filling in their sound with an increase of rock-flavored plans that dovetailed with folk-rock and slight psychedelia, even though lyrical focus continued to be from the beaten monitor, with songs in regards to a NY Hooker (“Bullet La Verne”) and “Gondoliers, Shakespeares, Overseers, Playboys, and Bums.”