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The Buoys - Timothy (1971)

Track listing:
  1. Timothy 2:49
  2. Give up your guns 4:16
  3. Sunny days/memories 5:02
  4. Tell me heaven is here 3:33
  5. The prince of thieves 4:17
  6. Castles 2:27
  7. Bloodknot 2:13
  8. Tomorrow 3:26
  9. Streams together 2:48
  10. Good lovin' 2:30
  11. Pittsburgh steel 4:13
  12. Absent friend 3:51

Notes

The Buoys were one of a group of one-hit wonders from the early 1970s. Billy Kelly (lead vocals), Fran Bozena (keyboards), Gerry Hludzik (bass), Chris Hanlon (guitar), and Carl Siracuse (drums), from Wilkes-Barre, PA., generated a Top 20 hit with "Timothy," written by Rupert Holmes, who also played some of the keyboards on their album for the Scepter label. (Holmes later had his own chart success as a singer with "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" and "Him," before embarking on a career on Broadway with The Mystery of Edwin Drood in the late 1980s.) The Buoys vanished from the charts and the airwaves after two additional, far more modest chart entries, "Bloodknot" and "Give Up Your Guns," but later moved to Polydor before dissolving in the mid-1970s. Kelly and Hludzik subsequently returned a decade after "Timothy" as part of the group Dakota.

One-hit wonder band the Buoys debuted with this 1971 platter, the back cover of which features a photo of the group dining at a fancy restaurant with the ironic caption "Dinner Music." The centerpiece of the LP is, of course, "Timothy," the tasteless Top 40 hit that earned the Buoys temporary stardom and launched the career of songsmith Rupert Holmes. It's a classic death pop number, the sprightly tale of three miners trapped by a cave-in who turn to cannibalism for survival during their ordeal. Despite the gruesome theme, "Timothy" has a hooky chorus and a production rich with brass and strings, so it's likely that many of the song's fans never listened much deeper than the melodious tune. The rest of the album's material is relatively faceless, though the second single, "Give Up Your Guns," is a good country-rock number and strives for an "outlaw on the run" vibe that almost convinces. Nothing else on the album matches "Timothy" in either content or euphony, dispensing with the gallows humor and catchy refrains in favor of a rustic rock sound laced with a few contemporary psychedelic elements. Holmes penned half of the album's tracks, including "Guns" and the "Timothy" sound-alike "Bloodknot," but the Buoys' own songwriting suggests a band aspiring to Crosby, Stills & Nash heights, most successfully on "Tell Me Heaven Is Here." The Buoys failed to secure a spot among serious rock's elite, but their peculiar chart entry puts them in good company with such lurid Top 40 favorites as Bloodrock's plane-crash dirge "D.O.A." and Jody Reynolds' rockabilly suicide note "Endless Sleep."