Text by Bruce  Gallanter  (Downtown Music Gallery, August 22, 2024)

“The Hook” by Free Design . From their reunion album, Cosmic Peekaboo (released in 2001)

All the pretty young singers with their popular songs
Kind of short on meaning but the beat goes on
You really have to love them – but not for very long
They’d like to thank their managers
And fans, and friends and yawn…

We all fall asleep unless the chorus is the hook
Chorus is the hook, chorus is the hook
And the verse is terse and moody
But the drum machine can cook
Drum machine can cook, the drum machine can cook
He who wants to sell a million better have a mill’ to spend –
Greenbacks, Euros, Swiss Francs or Yen

You could be a genius but you won’t get far
If your face is better by the doorway in a jar
You really need an earring in your navel or your lip
Music, like photography, is art that you can
Clip, clip, cut in the digital domain
The essence of the thing remains the same

We all fall asleep unless the chorus is the hook
Chorus is the hook, chorus is the hook
And the verse is terse and moody
But the drum machine can cook
Drum machine can cook, the drum machine can cook
He who wants to sell a million better have a mill’ to spend –
Greenbacks, Euros, Swiss Francs or Yen.

Money makes money in this made-for-T.V. world
Creation by committee stunts the growth of boys and girls
I miss the live musicians like Ringo Starr and Gadd:
Part of a dying race, but their samples can be had
We all fall asleep unless the chorus is the hook

The “Hook” is that short bit of ear candy that you hear once or twice in a pop song and stays with you seemingly forever. It comes back to you in a dream and/or when you least expect it, you find yourself whistling it. This is the hook that the song discusses in the lyrics above.

Free Design was a baroque/sunshine pop band from upstate New York that recorded seven albums between 1967 and 1972, mostly for the Project Three label, which specialized in well-produced light pop music. I recall hearing about The Free Design in the late sixties before I had heard the term sunshine pop, which I thought was similar to bubble gum music, most of which I didn’t like or give a chance to listen to.

We got a reunion CD by Free Design called Cosmic Peekaboo in a collection which I found at the store so I gave it a listen and realized that I really dug this band. Free Design were all members of the Dedrick family, brothers and sisters from Delvin, New York, who moved to the Village in NYC and evolved into a band. Their music sounds lightweight on the first listen as if it was meant for children. Now that I’ve heard all of their albums numerous times, I hear how much hard work and sophisticated playing and arranging went into their unique sound.

The band was never very popular, at least not until many years after they broke up and became a cult band of sorts. I still think that their reunion record is their best offering and it is rare for a reunion record to be better than anything else they’ve done. I love the words to “The Hook” since it pokes fun at the way music became too commercial and relied on formulas rather than creativity.

After I bought and listened to all of their albums over & over, I discovered that their main songwriter and arranger, Chris Dedrick, made a solo effort called ‘Be Free’ or ‘Wishes’, which was released in 2000. He tried to get numerous labels to fund it and release it but none came to the rescue. So he funded it himself and released it on his label.

It took me several years to find a copy which I now cherish as an unrecognized masterpiece. It sounds like Chris Dedrick was moving towards progressive rock so who knows where he might’ve gone from there. Sadly, Chris Dedrick died of cancer in August of 2010, in Toronto, Canada where he lived for many years after The Free Design split up.

I just found out the Dedrick clan ended up in a band called The Star-Scape Singers, an acapella ensemble which included Chris Dedrick, who also wrote for them. Time to find their records. The search goes on & on…