runoff rivals chase

Discard studies.

“Meanwhile, to boost sales of Moby Grape, the label’s marketing executives organized a ‘poetry-writing contest’ in collaboration with the radio station KRFC, with the promise that the band would select a winning poem and then transform it into a song for their second album. ...The result was one of the band’s least-liked songs, ‘The Lake,’ as featured on the following year’s Wow/Grape Jam. As Don recalls, ‘We really picked a song called “Hairy Mary” …and the suits at Columbia found it very scary. They put the kibosh on the song we picked.’ “ --What’s Big and Purple and Lives in the Ocean?

Footnote: “During the Summer of Love, Los Angeles radio station 93-KHU Boss Radio also beckoned listeners to send in their poems to compete for the prize of writing a lyric for the Buffalo Springfield’s next album…becoming ’The Hour of Not Quite Rain’ on Buffalo Springfield’s third and final album, Last Time Around...” --ibid