Flo & Eddie

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Flo & Eddie is the comedy/rock duo who are Howard Kaylan ("Eddie") and Mark Volman ("Flo" aka "Phlorescent Leech"). The two were the original founding members of the psychedelic / bubblegum rock group The Turtles. After The Turtles dissolved, Kaylan and Volman first joined the Mothers of Invention as "Phlorescent Leech & Eddie". Due to contractual restrictions made early in their career, Mark and Howard were prevented from using the name "The Turtles", as well as their own names in a musical context.

1 With Frank Zappa and The Mothers
2 After Flo & Eddie: Radio & Soundtracks
3 Discography
4 Filmography
5 External links

[edit] With Frank Zappa and The Mothers

While with The Mothers, they appeared on

Chunga's Revenge
200 Motels (soundtrack)
Fillmore East - June 1971
Just Another Band From L.A. ...as well as appearing in the film '200 Motels'.
Interesting to note... early in the Mothers' career, Reb Foster, an L.A. disk jockey (and Turtles' manager) had told Zappa, "I'd like to clean you guys up a bit and mold you. I believe I could make you as big as The Turtles."

Disaster struck twice. First, the incident at Montreux, Switzerland, chronicled in Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the Water", where the concert hall in which The Mothers were performing burned down. Then Frank Zappa was attacked by the irate boyfriend of a fan during a concert appearance in England. After Zappa's injury in London, Mark and Howard continued touring, as Flo & Eddie, initially with the musicians from the Mothers' lineup, including Jim Pons, Aynsley Dunbar and Don Preston, with Gary Rowles added on guitar.

[edit] After Flo & Eddie: Radio & Soundtracks

With the dissolution of the first Flo & Eddie Band, Mark and Howard turned their sights to broadcasting. Howard Kaylan explains:

"I began broadcasting in the Summer of '65 at UCLA before the Turtles' career ever took off.

"Later, in the early eighties, Mark and I did a guest shot on KROQ in L.A. and they liked it so much they gave us our own Sunday Night show which was produced by, then program director, Shadoe Stevens. When Shadoe left for a loftier position on KMET, the big alternative station at the time, we went with him.

"After getting about 30 shows in the can, we formed our own syndication company and edited the shows for distribution all over the U.S. We had about 50 stations going there for a while, and everybody wanted to do our show...we had Ringo, Keith Moon, Belushi, Nilsson, The Move (re-united by surprise on the air), Kiss, Queen, ad infinitum....Our thing, musically, was to play no more than 20 seconds or so of any given song. We'd create these montages of sound lasting about 5 or ten minutes each figuring that once the listener had heard the opening bars of a song, like..." Hey, hey, Paula...."..that was all they needed to hear to conjure up those sense memories or whatever. We'd have that going on the left speaker and play air-raid instructions, or Italian Cooking lessons or Stan Freberg on the right channel and by the time the listener was fed up, we'd move on to something completely different. This lasted about two years.

"Later in the 80s, we brought the same wacky show to WLIR in New York on a Sunday Night basis...sometimes we were actually there, but most times we recorded the shows in Los Angeles and sent them the tapes."

Having established a relationship with Murakami Wolf Productions while appearing in Frank Zappa's film "200 Motels", they created the voices and music for the animated feature "Dirty Duck". This led to work on music for the animated series "Strawberry Shortcake" and "The Care Bears".

Around the same time, the group evolved "The Two-and-a-Half-Man Show", featuring Mark, Howard and Andy Cahan in a "History of..." presentation, highlighted by their low-budget version of Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' called 'Flo & Eddie's The Fence'.

Howard continues Flo & Eddie's further radio adventures:

"In 1989, we were offered a REAL job...and went for it.

"We were on the air every day between 2pm and 6pm on 92.3 K-ROCK (WXRK) in New York City...the same station that STILL hosts the Howard Stern show. We did almost 2 years on the radio in Manhattan.

So, we go to Cincinnati or Louisville or Atlanta for a week at a time to promote a show or just for the fun of it... just to keep our hands in the radio biz...I still like it...."

Mark and Howard continued recording and doing session work, lending their trademark harmonies to T-Rex, John Lennon, Roger McGuinn, Hoyt Axton, Ray Manzarek, Stephen Stills, Keith Moon, David Cassidy, Alice Cooper, Tonio K., Blondie, Bruce Springsteen, The Knack, Psychedelic Furs, Sammy Hagar, Livingston Taylor, Burton Cummings, Paul Kantner, Duran Duran, The Ramones and others.

In 1984, as "The Turtles ...featuring Flo & Eddie",(together with three other groups from the 60's; Gary Puckett, Spanky & Our Gang, and The Association), they travelled across the US and Canada as "The Happy Together Tour". The tour was very successful and was the standard bearer for a resurgence in the interest of 60's music.

The following year they got together with The Buckinghams, Gary Lewis, and The Grass Roots, for a 1985 version.

For the eight months the tour was on the road it was consistently one of the top 10 grossing tours in the country.

They later performed under the shortened moniker of "Flo & Eddie", recorded albums, and also appeared as backup singers for T. Rex and Ray Manzarek under these names. In 1987, Kaylan and Volman appeared (as The Turtles) in a new music video of their song "Happy Together" promoting the romantic comedy: "Making Mr. Right"(1987), starring John Malkovich.

They also created the music for the films Down and Dirty Duck and The Adventures of the American Rabbit.