{"id":31527,"date":"2019-07-05T07:51:31","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T11:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=31527"},"modified":"2019-07-05T07:53:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T11:53:37","slug":"the-bootleg-files-peter-lemongello-love-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/05\/the-bootleg-files-peter-lemongello-love-76\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Peter Lemongello \u2013 Love 76"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 691:<\/strong> \u201cPeter Lemongello \u2013 Love 76\u201d (1976 TV commercial for a double-album release).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN: <\/strong>It is on YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> There is no reissue channel for old TV advertisements.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Unlikely.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1970s, the only way aspiring singers could achieve stardom was to go through major record labels that produced music that received constant playing on popular radio stations. But one unlikely singer made a bold attempt to buck the system and circumvent his way to stardom. His efforts ultimately failed to work, but it laid the groundwork for a bold new approach to popular music marketing.
\n<\/p>\n

By 1976, New Jersey-born Peter Lemongello was hitting a career dead end. A one-time barber who was drafted into the Vietnam-era Army, he avoided being sent into battle by falsely claiming he was a singer \u2013 he did play drums as a teenager, but his first singing gigs involved appearances in USO shows with Martha Raye. Once he was discharged, he managed to land a few singing gigs in Brooklyn and Long Island, but mostly supported himself working in construction and odd jobs. By 1971, he snagged his first major gig on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d \u2013 albeit on a night when Joey Bishop was guest hosting and in the last time slot before the program\u2019s 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time sign-off.<\/p>\n

His television debut did nothing to move his career further, but Lemongello persevered. He released two singles on the Rare Bird label 1971 and one on the Mark V label in 1972, but they failed to chart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI campaigned for Joe Scandori, Don Rickles’ manager,\u201d Lemongello told The New York Times in a June 1976 interview. \u201cHe had the hottest comic in the business. I figured if I could get him, it’d be great leverage. I could get a free ride opening for Rickles. The right people see me under the right conditions, they’ll see I can be a star on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rickles connection helped snag more \u201cTonight Show\u201d gigs along with appearances on Merv Griffin\u2019s and Mike Douglas\u2019 talk shows, and Lemongello landed a $7,500 recording contract that guaranteed the making of three singles for Epic Records, a subdivision of Columbia. But only one single was released in 1973 and Lemongello was dropped label.<\/p>\n

But Lemongello refused to throw in the proverbial towel. \u201cI was going straight to the public and ask them to vote,\u201d he told The New York Times. If they voted yes, then the whole market would open up. If they voted no, well I’d have taken my three swings with all my might, and I’d go back to the dugout, take off my spikes and go sell Mr. Coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with a Long Island banker named Bob Pascuzzi, Lemongello sought to bring himself into the public spotlight as the next big singing star. He arranged an appearance at the then-popular Westbury Music Fair on Long Island for a one-night engagement to attract additional financial backers, and then hired composers and musicians to create a double-album that was dubbed \u201cLove 76.\u201d (Half of the album was produced in a studio and the other half came from a recording of the Westbury gig.) And to sell the album, a television commercial was created, which debuted on New York City\u2019s television stations on New Year\u2019s Day of 1976.<\/p>\n

The commercial for \u201cLove 76\u201d promised the viewer: \u201cYou are about to witness a new dimension in entertainment.\u201d We see Lemongello, standing before a curtain and singing into an oversized microphone a 1970-style adult contemporary vibe that sounds a lot like Engelbert Humperdinck. The commercial\u2019s narrator insists that Lemongello was bring forth \u201ca mood rock experience\u201d rich with \u201ca new type of music that is romantic and moving.\u201d The narrator adds that \u201cyou will experience all of the warmth and tenderness\u201d of a Lemongello stage performance.<\/p>\n

Really? In the commercial, Lemongello comes across like a typical 1970s lounge singer with long hair, an open shirt exposing a hairy chest, and a passable voice. The music seems rather square \u2013 remember, this was the dawn of the disco era \u2013 and the charisma that the narrator insists is oozing from its star is not visible, despite the claim, \u201cWhen you hear \u2018Love 76,\u2019 you will fall in love with mood rock and a man named Peter Lemongello.\u201d Even for the 1970s, a decade known for its bizarre excesses, the two-minute-plus commercial stood out for being peculiar.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove 76\u201d sold as a mail order item for $6.98 for a two-album vinyl LP record and $8.98 for an eight-track tape; the album never made its way into traditional retail channels. The commercial hawking the record debuted on New York City\u2019s television stations on New Year\u2019s Day of 1976 and was shown incessantly in that media market during the first half of the year. The commercial also went to Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas television stations. How many albums were sold is unclear \u2013 Lemongello insisted the number was around one million, but a music industry trade journal put it closer to 43,000. Still, Lemongello became such a cultural oddity that Chevy Chase parodied him as \u201cPeter Lemon Moodring\u201d on the first season of \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n

The initial New York City run of the television commercial concluded in May 1976, with Lemongello coordinating two sellout performances at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center and a four\u2010year recording contract for albums and singles with Private Stock Records, a package worth about $250,000 if the options were picked up each year. Quite the Cinderella story, yes?<\/p>\n

Well, no. Lemongello\u2019s first Private Stock Records album \u201cDo I Love You?\u201d bombed, and it ended his association with the label. No other label wanted him and Lemongello would retreat to the fringes of show business, performing at retirement villages in Florida and at the tourist trap mecca of Branson, Missouri, while making his full-time income as a housing contractor in Florida. In the 1980s, Lemongello re-emerged in two headline-generating stories \u2013 one involving a conviction on arson and insurance fraud and one as the victim of kidnapping plot \u2013 but those stories are annoying post-script distractions to his fascination role in music marketing. While Lemongello\u2019s star never ascended, he managed to kick off a trail of television commercials hawking the mail order music of such unlikely stars as yodeling cowboy singer Slim Whitman and New Agey flutist Zamfir. And, quite frankly, Lemongello\u2019s direct-to-consumer approach with a self-produced album laid the groundwork for countless independent recording artists selling their work without going through major labels or retail chains.<\/p>\n

Today, Lemongello is best known to younger audiences as the father of Peter Lemongello Jr., an up-and-coming singer who has been featured on \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d and the PBS \u201cMy Music\u201d series. The elder Lemongello would later reissue \u201cLove 76\u201d on CD and still makes occasional concert appearances in under-the-radar gigs. The \u201cLove 76\u201d commercial can be found on YouTube<\/a>, appealing to survivors of the 1970s who vaguely remember the singer who threw mood rock music at a baffled yet amused audience.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 691: \u201cPeter Lemongello \u2013 Love 76\u201d (1976 TV commercial for a double-album release). LAST SEEN: It is on YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: There is no reissue channel for old TV advertisements. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely. Back in the 1970s, the only way aspiring singers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":31528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[2271,2273,698,2270,2272],"class_list":["post-31527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-love-76","tag-marketing","tag-music","tag-peter-lemongello","tag-television-commercial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31530,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31527\/revisions\/31530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}