rtbuck
Senior Member
Back in the mid/late 70’s , besides bending your mind & splitting your eardrums, rock & roll music was not only intended for your ears, rock & roll was also very theatrical with bands such as Alice Cooper, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Kiss, Utopia, Sensational Alex Harvey Band, ELO, & Pink Floyd (among others) leading the way. During the mid 70’s a band from the Cleveland, Ohio, area emerged on the theatrical rock scene & released one album on Janus Records. The band’s name was Molkie Cole & after their 1977 self-titled release, the band toured non-stop playing 4-5 shows a week from Atlanta to Chicago. Each show used 200 lbs. of dry ice, which the promoter at each venue supplied. Sadly by 1979 the band had gone its separate ways.
Molkie Cole featured Paul Pope on guitar & lead vocals, Tim Cole on drums & vocals, Pat Cole on bass, Bobby Steinmetz on keyboards & Sax, & Phil James on lead guitar. Pope would always wear baseball pants & socks, Converse All- Star sneakers(2 different ones), a base ball cap with its lid flipped up, & mime make-up & drummer Tim Cole had a full afro & dressed in clown clothes & clown make-up. Every Molkie Cole would start off with Tim Cole at the front of the stage telling some kind of wild & weird tale in a demented clowns voice which would always end with “Soooooooo Let’s ROCK & ROLL with …MOLKIE COLE!!!” & the band would launch into their opening number.
One of the highlights that would take place was during the song “Steel Grapes” which was a humorous tune about a guy who had an operation to have his privates enlarged. Pope would walk out onstage with a costume that made him look like one of the Fruit of the Loom guys as he was covered in huge grapes. Molkie Cole always performed a near perfect cover of “I am the Walrus” & one of their show stoppers was always a cover of Alex Harvey’s “Midnight Moses”. They had these two great tunes which they performed together, one was called “Kill Myself” which had a similar sound to the music on Alice Cooper’s “Second Coming” but with a Polka drum beat & as the song would gain momentum they would jam out with an almost note for note “Hotel California” solo with that Polka back beat rhythm. They would then launch into a song called “Untitled” which Pope wrote after his dad died when Pope was only 15. This song is unbelievable & I’m not kidding but this song deserves to be up there with “Stairway to Heaven” as it’s full of amazing changes & it’s always one part of the show where Pope is totally serious. As their shows would come to a close the band would jam out an instrumental of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” complete with a bubble machine & “Zorba the Greek” in which Pope would really “mime” out. Some of the shows would end with Pope stuffing an Extra Large Hershey Bar in his mouth & singing the “Nothing like the face of a kid eating a Hershey bar commercial”(Later after Molkie Cole split up he changed over to Big Mac’s!)
Molke Cole had a very minor hit from their album which was called “Winter” but to this day that song is still popular in a few of the night clubs in the Buffalo area. There were a few problems with the album. One problem was the timing of its release. Janus records was a small label & they dumped almost all of their cash on Al Stewart’s ‘Year of the Cat’ album which eventually paid off for the label (The rumor was that they paid Alan Parsons 250,000 dollars to produce it) & Molkie Cole’s production suffered. Personally I love the record & the sound never bothered me but Pope especially was very vocal about the poor production. He wasn’t happy that when the record came out they replaced some of the guitar on “Winter” with keyboards & a harmonica. The band continued touring opening for bands such as Ted Nugent, Dr. Hook, Kansas, & Cheap Trick. In 1979 Pope became ill with mono & the band cancelled a couple of huge gigs even though Pope wanted to play the shows which eventually led to the split up. It’s a shame because the song “Untitled” never got to see the light of day back then.
Glad to see someone else here have heard of Molkie Cole
