So this was Valentine’s Day at our house …
My lovely wife likes those cards with music chips, and I was fortunate enough to find a good one. You can’t go wrong with “Happy Together” by the Turtles. She got her flowers a couple of days ago, so she could enjoy them before Valentine’s Day … when she and her friend took off for Vegas. The moms are taking a little vacation.
Our 15-year-old son is with his girlfriend at the movie theater. He’d hoped for a day on which he’d sweep her off her feet (meaning, be driven over so he could pick her up), then have lunch and take in a movie. It was bargained down to him meeting her at the theater and them going to a movie with a bunch of their friends.
He’s a little hacked off at his girlfriend’s protective parents.
And, no, I didn’t get to go to Vegas today, but it’s cool. There was, after all, a record-digging session after we dropped the moms at the airport.
A year ago at this time, my friend Larry over at Funky 16 Corners turned me on to a cool record I’ve been seeking ever since. But I’m starting to think “Two For the Price of One” by Larry Williams and Johnny “Guitar” Watson never got shipped to our corner of Wisconsin. To Milwaukee, maybe, but not here.
Larry describes that tune, from the 1967 album of the same name, as:
“A veritable stick of dynamite with Williams and Watson batting the lead vocal back and forth like a hot potato, dropping all kinds of jive. The arrangement is fast and furious, but the vocals are the highlight.”
It was not to be had today, either, but there was a nice consolation prize. There, tucked neatly into a batch of sunny pop goodness from 1968, was “Two For the Price of One.”
But not the original. A cover. If you’ve heard the original, you may find it a little hard to believe who the “gangster of love” and “son of a gun” are on this one. Check it out.
“Two For the Price of One,” Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, from “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonite,” 1968.
Boyce and Hart, great songwriters in their own right, chose this as the only cover on that 1968 album. They chose wisely, even if their version doesn’t quite measure up to the original.
AM, Then FM 
Thanks! I’m always up for hearing new Boyce & Hart, and this is certainly a different side of them than I’m used to.
Thanks for the Boyce and Hart… but I’ve got a real toughie for you – who did the groovy tunes on Scooby Doo Where Are You? and where can I get their music?
what happens in vegas stays in vegas
I hope this was supposed to be ironic or funny or something – the Larry Williams Johnny Guitar Watson original never fails to make me laugh – this version makes me squirm. Still, thanks for posting it.
loved heard “Two for the Price of One”