Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I was reading the Rickenbacker history book the other day and came across a strange group on page 194 called "The New Establishment". Three Aqua-Velvas are sporting Ricks and huge Rick Amps.(F chords all round, albeit one on bass). If this is a "folk" group, then its odd they have amps more suitable to Blue Cheer. Then there's this broad with a Tambourine and a Gnome or Elf popping up behind her ready to do a paradiddle on her head. The Sport-O's all have scarves and well-sculpted hair-dos. Except for the Ricks, this looks like a Cold War Partridge Family from Prague or merely a formulaic group providing pseudo-folk music to squares. But, again, why the fine Ricks?
Does anyone know where these creatures came from and where they went? I want to study their habits.

Nice post. I have wondered the very same thing. Perhaps John Hall or someone from the factory can provide the answer to this one.

The New Establishment was a Colgems group and somehow connected with the Monkees. They had a single called Sunday's Gonna Come on Tuesday, and maybe an album. I think you could classify it as late 60s folk-rock.

Thanks Dave! With that I found this from the Colgems catalog:

COS-118 ***LP BY THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT (PERMANENTLY WITHDRAWN)***

and as for singles:

5006 (09/69) THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT---"Baby, The Rain Must Fall"/"Sunday's Gonna Come on Tuesday"

5009 (02/70) THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT---"I'll Build A Bridge"/"Seattle"

Odd. I was increasing my musical hipitude with each passing day in 1969-70. I never heard of these people. Well, the search continues....

When Richard Smith's book came out and I saw that photo, I was reminded of a band I saw as a child during the summer of '72 at Disney World. I was 11 years old and remember leaving the band shell feeling profoundly embarrassed. They were the Cowsills gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Apparently, The New Establishment had a steady gig at Disneyland's Tomorrowland Stage in '68. A bit more info can be had at: http://www.etixland.com/dland68/dland684b.htm



I'm thinking they were the same band I saw four years later at Disney World.

By the way, "Seattle" was the theme song to the TV show "Here Come The Brides" starring Bobby Sherman. Yikes.

Thanks for the photo and link. That has to be the same band. Sounds like they really had fallen on hard times (musically speaking) by 1972.

Are you saying their "Seattle" was a cover of the earlier Bobby Sherman song? That also charted for Perry Como in 1969 and I always thought it sounded like it was written by some board promoting Seattle tourism.

Are you saying their "Seattle" was a cover of the earlier Bobby Sherman song?

Hi Dave. Yes, that's what I'm assuming since the publisher is listed as Colgems-EMI Music, Inc. (ASCAP). Speaking of the Colgems connection, I'm beginning to wonder if any member(s) of the "NESTAB" was a "runner-up" during casting for "The Monkees." It's certainly a possibility. "Mickey" could have been a "paradiddling gnome"... well, now that I think about it...

According to that website, they played for the lunch crowd at the air-conditioned Tomorrowland Terrace Restaurant. They were called a "rock band". Yes, in the Disney vision of the future, an outdoor terrace was air-conditioned, and the New Establishment rocked out. It sends shivers down my spine. Shivers, I tell you.

["Mickey" could have been a "paradiddling gnome"... well, now that I think about it...

LOL!

I believe some of the members of some of the Colgems groups were friends of Mike Nesmith. But as always I could be wrong.

Ah, here's what I must have been thinking about: another Colgems group called the Lewis and Clark Expedition http://www.psycho-jello.com/monkees/landc.html . And "Travis Lewis" was actually Michael Martin Murphey, five years before "Geronimo's Cadillac".

BTW, Peter Tork's birthday is February 13th. Don't ask me why I remember that.

Yes, in the Disney vision of the future, an outdoor terrace was air-conditioned, and the New Establishment rocked out. It sends shivers down my spine. Shivers, I tell you.

Indeed! But let's hear it for those boss Rickenbacker Transonic amps (they're visible just beyond the bee-hives). Judging by the relaxed conversation occurring in the foreground, the NESTAB had 'em cranked up to about "2." As Richard Smith said, "The Transonics were for serious rock players." See? Disney is never wrong.

Isn't that the stage that was on an elevator?
I saw the Association there in 72' or 73'.

Isn't that the stage that was on an elevator?

That's it. Follow the previous link for a photo of the retracted stage(hit the back button a couple times at the bottom of the first page).

Got it! Thanks, L.T.

I get it, LT, since the Transonic Amps were for "serioous rockers", having the Transonic Amps made TNE serious rockers. That band makes me cringe in the same way seeing some third-tier band appear on a 60's sitcom did in the 60s. Although I recall seeing the Standells on the Munsters once and they came off reasonably well. Roy Clark and Pat Boone on the Beverly Hillbillies were both wretched and seeing Wayne Newton on Lucy being passed of as a rocker worked on my pre-teen gag reflex. Which winds up at the Monkees and the Colgems scene which is right back with TNE.
I once heard of a "band" called "The Goldwaters" a right-wing folk group. A terrible miscalculation, their creators failed to note that right-wing people already enjoyed melodic pop music and had no use for folk music, liberal, conservative, or otherwise. No offense to any political persuasion, but those guys just looked obnoxious and reeked of phony, plastic hipness, with a "we-know-more-than-you-do" arrogance. I had placed TNE in the same vein, but it appears that TNE had a rockin' edge - courtesy of Rickenbacker.