This being Way Out Wednesday, you knew I’d eventually have to wander into teenybopper territory, but I promise I won’t go for the usual suspects.
Friends is a TV tie-in album by Johnny Whitaker, best known for playing Jody on the sitcom Family Affair (1966-’71). After doing guest shots on other shows and a couple of Disney movies, including 1972’s Napoleon and Samantha with Jodie Foster, he landed the role of Johnny (how convenient!) on Sid and Marty Krofft’s Saturday-morning children’s show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-’75). I guess he became a preteen heartthrob, because here he is posing on the Friends album cover almost topless! Anyway, on to the songs …
The first track is one of the themes to Sigmund. If you have any recollection of the show, you can — and will — sing along to this one.
Friends (Sigmund and the Sea Monsters)
Next we have “Alley Oop.” No, wait, I’m sorry — we just have a song that starts off sounding an awful lot like it. “Monster Rock” is a pretty silly song, made even sillier by having Sigmund sound like Boris Karloff with a touch of helium in his voice.
Of course for any album of this type, you’ve got to have tender love ballads. I picked the following one because I kind of like it, even though the background singers seem to be doing most of the work here.
