Strawberry Alarm Clock – "Incense and Peppermints" (1967)

Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns

Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around

The Strawberry Alarm Clock performed in Joplin, Missouri – my hometown – on March 7, 1969, when I was a junior in high school.  To my everlasting regret, I didn’t go to the show. 

The band was on its last legs by then.  Today’s featured song, “Incense and Peppermints,” had hit #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in November of 1967, and the group’s debut album – also titled Incense and Peppermints – sold well on the strength of its title track.  

But it was all downhill for the Strawberry Alarm Clock after that.  Their follow-up single – which was titled “Tomorrow” – didn’t do badly, but none of the singles they released after that made it into the top forty.  Their subsequent albums were flops as well.

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What brought the Strawberry Alarm Clock to Joplin?  They were last-minute replacements for the Buckinghams – whose “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” is also a new inductee into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME. 

In the words of Chappell Roan, the Buckinghams were hot to go in 1967, when they had singles that reached #1, #6, #5, #12, and #11 (respectively) on the Billboard singles charts.  But nothing they released after that year sold worth a damn – which may explain why they initially accepted a Joplin gig.

Back in the day, I heard that the Buckinghams had to cancel because their guitarist had broken an arm in a car accident.  I have no idea if that was true – at the time, I assumed it was bullsh*t.

(You got that right!)

But while my hometown wasn’t good enough for the Buckinghams, it was more than good enough for the Strawberry Alarm Clock, who drew a crowd of about 1800 to Joplin’s Memorial Hall (where I had seen Paul Revere and the Raiders perform live two years earlier).

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From an article about the Strawberry Alarm Clock concert that appeared in the Parkwood High School student newspaper, the Spectator:

The group’s appearance was made possible through Mr. Ed Varner of Mar-Scott Associates.  The goal of Mr. Varner and his company is to provide the young adults of Joplin with a well-known singing group or band every eight weeks.  With the proper support from the young people of Joplin, this worthwhile goal can be accomplished.

I guess Ed Varner didn’t get the “proper support from the young people of Joplin” he wanted because we sure as hell didn’t have a well-known band popping up in Joplin every two months.

More from the Spectator article:

The Spectator staff was on the scene to meet the Strawberry Alarm Clock at the [Joplin] airport.  Although they were tired, the group consented to answering our questions.  One member of the group noted, “We haven’t had any sleep since 10 o’clock yesterday morning.  We never went to bed. . . . [Mr. Varner] called at 8 o’clock and we packed and then left.”  When asked what they had planned for the day, they replied, “We were going to sleep.”

But sleep never came.  After a busy morning of unpacking, the Strawberry Alarm Clock had an autographing session from 4 to 5 at May’s [Drug Store].  From there a brief rest, and on to Memorial Hall.

That account raises more questions than it answers, doesn’t it?  (With all due respect, the Spectator was not exactly the New York Times when it came to the quality of its reportage.  It wasn’t even the Joplin Globe and News-Herald.)

It sounds like the group woke up at 10:00 AM on March 6 and never went to bed that night.  Varner called them the next morning at 8:00 AM – when the band members were certainly sleep-deprived and probably intoxicated to a greater or lesser degree.  

Somehow they pulled themselves together and got to the airport in time to make it to Joplin in time for a 4:00 PM meet-and-greet at a local store.   That would have been almost impossible if they had been in Los Angeles – which is where the band was from.  (There were no nonstop commercial flights from LAX to JLN in 1969 – or in any other year, for that matter – and I doubt that Mr. Varner sprang for a private jet to bring our heroes to Joplin.  So maybe they were on tour and got the call in a city not too far away from Joplin?)

The group must have been exhausted by the time they took the stage – I’m surprised they could keep their eyes open long enough to finish the show.

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Click here to listen to “Incense and Peppermints.”

Click here to buy that record from Amazon.