The Explodo Boys…

… were a musical group that the Professor worked with (and recorded) nearly a half-century ago. Here are some music videos, CDs, LPs and stories of this great Minneapolis band:

Explodo Boys “Videos”:

Cha-Dooky-Doo
I'm So Tired of Being Alone
Twine Time
Get Your Hat
I Want to Take You Home
Bluff City Cookin'
Pass the Peas
Midnight Mover/a>
Hidden Charms
Darling, Darling, Darling
She’s So Good
Crazy Mama
Sure Feels Good
The Monkey Time
Can I Change My Mind?
You Got All The Aces
I'm Ready
Tramp on the Street
Ain’t Nothing You Can Do
Happy Song

Oh So Soul “Videos”:

Summer Love
Waiting at the Station
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Babywalk

Commercially Released CDs:

The Early Years 1975-1976 (remastered from vinyl LP)
The Later Years 1977 - 1980 (remastered from vinyl LP)

History of The Explodo Boys CD series:

I      Country: Country and folk songs 1974- 1975
II     Covers: Rock and blues tunes 1975-1976
IIb   Harold’s Blues: Recorded rehearsal 1977
III   The Explosion Brothers: Highlights 1977-1978
IV   Doobah: Highlights 1978-1979
V    No Turkeys: Highlights 1979-1980
VII  John Beach with The Explodo Boys: 1979-1980
VI   Oh So Soul: Jimmy’s farewell, 1980
VIII Lost and Found: Rarities 1978-1979
IX   Improvisations: Instrumentals 1978-1979
X   Odds and Ends: 1978-1979

Gig tapes:

Tracy’s Inn - 1975: Raucous roadhouse gig (2 CDs)
Tempo Bar - 1976: Excerpts from a typical gig
Bootlegger Sam’s - 1977: w/ Max and Audie
Reunion - 1982 (2 CDs): Danny’s return from Alaska

Jimmy Derbis:

Solo 1971
Demos 1987

For specific information on The Explodo Boys or obtaining CDs, SD cards, or Thumb Drives, email: stephencowdery@gmail.com

True stories (mostly):

Memorial Day
The Listening Room
B.P.
Half-True Story
The Explodo Girls
Adventures With the Green Van

The Tempo Bar Tapes -#6

The Tramp On the Street

Vocals by Jimmy Derbis and Paul Peterson, with Rich Lewis on the chorus. A cover of the 1939 Grady and Hazel Cole tune with lyrics taken from the 1877 poem by Dr. Addison Crabtree.

Recorded May 16, 1979 at the now-demolished Tempo Bar, no edits.

More Explodo Boys videos, CDs and stories. This the sixth of a series of videos featuring The Explodo Boys, a Rock/Country/R&B band from Minneapolis, active from the mid 70s to the early 80s.

B.P.

Jay's Longhorn Bar was one of the primary focal points of the Minneapolis Punk-Rock scene in the late 70s. It was a place where The Replacements and Husker Dü emerged as musical forces. How the band I was working with, The Explodo Boys, managed to land a gig there was always completely beyond my understanding. We were playing 60s style blue-eyed soul, with a little older rock, some New Orleans tunes and a few jazzy instrumentals thrown in. Nevertheless, we had a mid-week gig, starting on a Wednesday.

It was also the only place we ever got heckled.

The bouncer, a black man named Jerome, dug us however. One of our more ambitious numbers was a James Brown medley: three of the Godfather of Soul's best dance tunes, ending with Papa's Got a Brand New Bag. We had a singer who did it justice. Jerome asked him if he would play it again Thursday as he had some friends whom he thought would like to hear it.

The next night, at the start of the third set, I sensed a group of people standing right behind my position at the sound board. Jerome’s friends were there. I was about to turn around and say hello when the band started with the JB tunes. Our singer was beside himself that night, the band never sounded better. We didn’t get heckled. After the song was over Jerome’s friends left.

Later on, we found out they were from bands called Flyte Tyme and Grand Central, two black groups that were later to merge into one called The Time. There was a shorter, younger guy there as well. The next time I saw them was at the movies. The film was Purple Rain.

The Explodo Boys lasted another year, fizzling out due to the usual reasons. We managed to win The Minnesota Music Awards “Critics Choice” as the best band of 1979; the week after we broke up! Jerome Benton’s friends- Terry Lewis, Jimmy Jam, Morris Day, Jesse Johnson and others put out gold and platinum records, Lewis and Jimmy Jam would go on to produce platinum records for Janet Jackson and many others. The next year Prince debuted, and he won most of the Minnesota music awards for several years after that.


The history of the Minnesota music scene was divided here:

B.P.= Before Prince

A.P.= After Prince

The Tempo Bar Tapes - #7

Crazy Mama




Jimmy Derbis and The Explodo Boys cover J.J. Cale
Live at the Tempo Bar - Minneapolis, 1976

More Explodo Boys videos, CDs and stories.

Two-fer from the Explodo Boys

The further live adventures of The Explodo Boys, a seminal Minneapolis R&B band of the 70s

Music Monday - #15

Cha-Cha-Henry



Obscure little Anthony and the Imperials tune, covered by The Explodo Boys, circa 1979.

Click here for more Explodo Boys "videos."

The Tempo Bar Tapes -#4

Happy Song



This the fourth of a series of videos featuring The Explodo Boys, a Rock/Country/R&B band from Minneapolis, active from the mid 70s to the early 80s.

Vocal by Jimmy Derbis, a cover of the Otis Redding tune.

Recorded May 16, 1979 at the now-demolished Tempo Bar, live, no edits.

More Explodo Boys videos, CDs and stories.

The Union Bar Tapes -#1

She’s So Good

Another audio archive from 1976 of The Explodo Boys:



Jimmy Derbis, vocal on this raucous cover of the 1966 Wilson Pickett song.

Here are more Explodo Boys videos, CDs and stories.

The Tempo Bar Tapes -#2

Can I Change My Mind?



This is the second of a series of videos featuring The Explodo Boys, a Rock/Country/R&B band from Minneapolis, active from the mid 70s to the early 80s.

Recorded May 16, 1979 at the now-demolished Tempo Bar, live, no edits.

The lead vocal and lead guitar are by Rich Lewis. It was one of Rich’s signature tunes, inspired by Roy Buchanan’s treatment of the Tyrone Davis song.

Rich is still active musically, his group has been featured at the Minnesota State Fair, Minneapolis and Saint Paul concerts in the parks, as well as at his legendary Holiday revue at Whitey’s in NE Minneapolis.

Much more Explodo Boys videos, CDs and stories.

The Tempo Bar Tapes - #5

Ain’t Nothing You Can Do


This the fifth of a series of videos featuring The Explodo Boys, a Rock/Country/R&B band from Minneapolis, active from the mid 70s to the early 80s.

Dan Rowles gives his take on the Bobby “Blue” Bland hit.

Recorded live May 16, 1976, at the now-demolished Tempo Bar.

More Explodo Boys videos, CDs and stories.

The Tempo Bar Tapes - #1

You Got All the Aces



This is the first of a series of videos featuring The Explodo Boys, a Rock/Country/R&B band from Minneapolis, active from the mid 70s to the early 80s.

Recorded May 16, 1979 at the now-demolished Tempo Bar. All tracks are live with no edits.

Lead vocal by Jimmy Derbis. An Aretha Franklin cover, sung in the original key!

Much more Explodo Boys videos, CDs and stories.

Memorial Day

The Explodo Boys - 1976

At least once a night the bickering would stop, the arrangements would coalesce, and Jimmy would take over the room, his '61 Les Paul pushing a Twin Reverb, growling and moaning; you were powerless to resist. Beethoven rolled over as you dug those Rhythm and Blues and everybody got hot and sweaty. Then the party left the bar and went elsewhere, all night long, and in the morning the sun began to shine…

The Explodo Girls

She says, “You can’t repeat the past.”
I say, “You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t?
Of course you can.”

~Bob Dylan,  Summer Days

A reunion gig for a band I used to work with brought out some familiar faces, and also a few who brought back many good memories. The band was called The Explodo Boys and for a few years in the late seventies they played at a nightclub near the University of Minnesota campus. It was a good gig, the group developed a group of followers who would come to dance and hear them play almost every week-end. They really weren't “groupies” in the usual sense, and although a few relationships might have developed, for the most part it was just fun; we really appreciated them and their support.



We called them "The Explodo Girls", I hadn’t seen them for thirty years.
They were still the same—giddy—with perhaps a few facial lines drawn by the trials of life, but overall they had aged a lot better than I had. When the band played the “Girls” danced and, for two short hours on a September afternoon, it was as good as it ever was.

Music Monday #9

Going deep into the James Brown songbook for this cover by The Explodo Boys, circa 1979

Dance of the Coochies

AI madness but with a recording of the 70s Minneapolis band The Explodo Boys. The group's basement rehearsal space was infested by ‘coochies’—an unknown species of flying insects—that enjoyed the music, occassionally landing on the microphone while someone was singing.

Midnight Mover

More from The Explodo Boys, circa 1975

Prom Nights

The largest dance venue in The Twin Cities was the Prom Ballroom in Saint Paul.

The Prom Ballroom was a landmark in St. Paul Minnesota for almost 50 years. It was where the BIG BANDS used to play; Ellington, Basie, Dorsey, and all the rest. In the fifties Buddy Holly and other rockers brought a younger crowd that filled its vast floor. In its later years, the bands got smaller but louder, although the occasional “ghost” big band would still come around. When the group* I was working with got a chance to play there it was for private Christmas parties and the crowd was mostly in their late teens and early twenties. We were pumping out R&B and Soul, not Jazz and Swing.

But those old ghosts still haunted the room, however, and we could sense them and rose to the occasion. By the time we hit our peak the crowd was simpatico and the band was on fire.  Love and Happiness stopped the show, with people stomping their feet and refusing to stop cheering and applauding. It was arguably the high point of my career. Later gigs I did at The Prom were OK, but difficult. There is some primitive aspect to the experience of a big dance floor full of writhing, ecstatic people, all of them deeply immersed in the music; abandoning their masks and poses and coming together to a  climax, then hovering in the afterglow and, finally, escaping into the night to attend private parties for two.

The Prom had been built in the late 1930s and was a landmark until its destruction in 1987. Its rated capacity was 6000 but by the late 1970s it was out of fashion and the acts who performed there would seldom draw more than a tenth of that. The arched ceiling made for uninterrupted sight-lines and a big dance floor but had lousy acoustics. The last gig I did there was for a cable-tv video shoot, the act was a smallish big band. They were competent, but had been thrown together with gigging musicians and there were no real “ringers” to steal the show. The building was torn down a few weeks later after this “last dance” and now only memories and a few photographs exist of its past glories:



Except in the fading memories of past revelers, the Prom is gone. But, with the Covid restrictions will there still be dances in ballrooms with live music being played? Can these moments of collective passion and release still exist? This is a primal ritual and is not to be denied.

A partial list of acts that performed there:

Count Basie/ Cab Calloway/ Artie Shaw/ Jimmy Dorsey
Frank Sinatra/ Glenn Miller/ Spike Jones/ Les Elgart
Duke Ellington/ Ray Anthony/ Guy Lombardo/ Harry James
Sammy Kaye/ Stan Kenton/ Gene Krupa/ Les Brown
Rosemary Clooney/ Woody Herman/ Neal Hefti/ Buddy Rich
Bill Haley/ Webb Pierce/ Mickey and Sylvia/ Maynard Ferguson
The Diamonds/ Eddy Cochran/ Gene Vincent/ The Crickets
Buddy Holly/ Ritchie Valens/ Big Bopper/ Dion/ Gary US Bonds
Bobby Darin/ Everly Brothers/ Link Wray/ Jan and Dean
Wanda Jackson/ Johnny Cash/ Jimmy Dean/ The Four Seasons
Bobby Vinton/ Gene Pitney/ Joey Dee/ The Trashmen/ Chubby Checker
Lou Christie/ Dick and DeeDee/ The Beachboys/ Lonnie Mack
The Kingsmen/ Roger Miller/ Del Shannon/ Chad and Jeremy
The Hollies/ The Ventures/ Bobby Goldsboro/ Sir Douglas Quintet
Jules Herman/ The Turtles/ Tommy James/ The Byrds

The acts I worked with:

Don Cavitt/ Rio Nido/ The Bees Knees/ The Explodo Boys*

Music Monday - #17

Lost and Found



Music in a melancholy mood from The Explodo Boys, this time a work-in-progress by Jimmy Derbis.

First run-through at rehearsal.

Downtown Destinations

The establishment pictured below is the only remaining business in what once was the Dayton's block (12 floors!) in downtown Minneapolis. I spent a couple of years toiling in the sub-basement of that complex and I will admit to buying some caramel corn from Candyland. The Yardbirds (with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page) played their first U.S. concert 8 floors above this shop:

This downtown Masonic Temple had been converted to an arts center in the late 1970s: The Hennepin Center for the Arts. I did sound for a gig with Willie and the Bees and The Wallets in its 8th floor auditorium in 1981:

This nondescript commercial building housed the basement studio of The Explodo Boys in the late 1970s. I spent many an hour there, rehearsing and recording. Now surrounded by new condos, its present use is unknown. There was a now defunct Pontiac dealership next to it, as is the car brand:

Music Monday, #11

Get your week started on a high note with this groovy blues instrumental from The Explodo Boys.