I went to rip the copy of the Cowsills' "Captain Sad & His Ship Of Fools" album that I got in the mail today, and saw in the bottom toolbar, for the first time, that their unreleased 1979 album "Cocaine Drain" is now available on iTunes. It's new this week, because I've been listening to On My Side a lot lately, and this is the first time the "mini-store" has shown it.

Audiophiles here will scoff, as these are obviously recorded from acetate, and the hisses and pops of any 30-year old LP are apparent. If they couldn't get it released when it was recorded, they obviously couldn't afford high-zoot remastering to clean it up, and the value in this release is that we finally get to hear these songs AT ALL. I like that the proceeds are going straight to the group, as it was released to Apple via their self-owned Robin Records label. Yeah, cleaner recordings would be nice, but I'm just happy to hear it.

So what do the songs sound like? I'm still listening to "side one" but it's been all Susan so far, and overall, it sounds A LOT like Linda Ronstadt. Different than their prior "On My Side" album from '71, and different from its successor, '98's "Global."

Pretty cool.

The Cowsills really did an album with the word Cocaine in the title????? It's not April 1st??????

Well, it's easy to call it that when you don't have a record deal. If they'd been able to sign, they almost certainly would have been forced to find a "less controversial title."

Gotcha! Still, wow. Wasn't there a "Mom" Cowsill like the Partridge Family & The Brady Bunch?

Yep....Barbara was the mom.......

This pic is from about 1966 or so....

Thank you Hank, i had no idea on this. It's about time. I am a little surprised about the sound quality issues though. In recent years i've acquired 2 differently sourced versions of these songs. The first was a cassette tape, and the volume level was at about .5 to start with, and there were lots of other glitches and pops, hiss, etc. (some songs had what sounded like portions of radio interference in them). When i finally got Adobe Audition about 2 1/2 years ago, trying to salvage that tape was one of my first projects. Due to the difficulty with the source and my inexperience with Adobe, i ended up spending about 2-3 weeks trying to fix that stuff as best i could. Naturally, only weeks after that, another Cowsills fan was able to provide me with a vastly superior source, with only minor sound quality issues here and there. The minor issues with that source were all dealt with pretty successfully. I did end up sending my finished version of that (and a few other rarities compilations i cobbled together using stuff in my own collection as well as numerous rarities provided by other fans) to their business manager. I guess what sort of surprises me is that if they were going to provide these songs to iTunes, from what you are saying, it sounds like they provided an inferior source to the "restored" version i sent to them.

There are several songs here that would've been power pop classics had they been released then (and i think even if only in indie power pop circles, would've been a very strong comeback for the Cowsills i love "Global", but IMHO this album is much stronger overall - had this come out then, i think the Cowsills would've been right at the forefront of the then emerging power pop revival).

And to Geff, this stuff was from the late 1970's, by then the parents were divorced, the Dad was in Mexico living off what was left of their fortune, the Mom was in Arizona and this attempted reunion album happened in California; the parents weren't involved at all at this point. I'm not 100% sure, but i think Billy had even come down from Canada and was involved in this project. Also, the song "Cocaine Drain", sung by Susan, is an anti-cocaine song, with no chance for misinterpretation. The lyrics are basically a plea to her beau to get off the coke. As with this song, there are a few tracks that reflect the quasi-disco dance beat style of those times, but the majority are pop rockers (or should that be rock poppers?), and at least about 4 or 5 are truly lost classics (including a couple of the ballads).

I'm surprised and very pleased that this is finally available to the public.

It's great that an album like this can make it into circulation at last, but I really wish some label would pick it up for distribution and press up some actual CDs. I'd buy it in a second.

Sad its such crappy quality. I wonder who gave this to iTunes. I know some of the Cowsills had tapes of this.
I got a cassette straight off the master from Chuck Plotkin years ago.

Yeah, the poor thing ended up in a pysche ward. I hoped she had recovered.

Now this family would be a docudrama that I would love to see. Overbearing father, Mother who really didn't want to be in the group, kids smoking pot and the old man banishing one from the band.

Hollywood, there's a big story here!

Well, the hisses and pops match the copy of "Bitter Jest" that they've had posted on their MySpace page for a while. The copyright listed is (c)2008 Robin Records, and that's their self-owned label.