The Buoys was a progressive rock

Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...

 band from the early 1970s. Its membership included Bill Kelly, Fran Brozena, Jerry Hludzik, Carl Siracuse and Chris Hanlon, based in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, Pennsylvania

Scranton, Pennsylvania

Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...

 area. Bob Gryziec was the original bass player and a member of the group when they recorded "Timothy."

Hits by Rupert Holmes

They are most famous for their recording of Rupert Holmes

Rupert Holmes

Rupert Holmes is an American-British composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape " and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980...

's "Timothy

Timothy (song)

"Timothy" is a song written by Rupert Holmes and recorded by the Buoys in 1971, presenting the unnerving story of three men trapped in a collapsed mine, two of whom apparently resort to cannibalism against the third . Despite being censored or even banned outright by many U.S...

", a song deliberately written to get banned

Ban (law)

A ban is, generally, any decree that prohibits something.Bans are formed for the prohibition of activities within a certain political territory. Some see this as a negative act and others see it as maintaining the "status quo"...

, based on a theme of cannibalism

Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

. Holmes himself selected the group to record the song, although The Glass Prism had been his first choice. Because The Glass Prism were under contract to RCA, Holmes and C. Michael Wright had to go to their Plan B. Recorded at Scepter Recording Studios in New York City and released by Scepter Records

Scepter Records

Scepter Records is a record company founded in 1959 by Florence Greenberg. She had just sold Tiara Records with The Shirelles for $4000 to Decca Records. When The Shirelles didn't produce any hits for Decca, they were given back to Greenberg, who promptly signed them. By 1961 Greenberg launched a...

, with whom the Buoys had been signed but previously ignored, the song hit #17 on US charts in 1971. The song was recorded after the 1963 mine cave-in in Sheppton, PA, a small mining community outside of Hazleton, PA. Rupert Holmes told rock journalist Maxim Furek, “I learned about the Sheppton Mine Disaster after Timothy was on the charts. If I had known about that at the time, I probably never would have written the song because I don’t want to make fun of something that’s tragic.”
Scepter executives did not catch what the song was about until after it started climbing the charts, after which they claimed that Timothy was a mule

Mule

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...

, a concept Holmes found more offensive

Morality

Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...

 than cannibalism, which he intended. Holmes, with D. Jordan, wrote a less-successful hit for them titled "Give Up Your Guns", an epic narrative dealing with an escaped bank robber. Much more serious in tone than their previous hit, "Give Up Your Guns" reached only #84. By contrast it was a massive hit twice in mainland Europe, when originally released, and when re-released in 1979. Holmes wrote a number of other songs for the band, including "The Prince of Thieves", "Blood Knot", and "Tomorrow", most of which had much of the darkness but little of the humor of "Timothy". Like "Give Up Your Guns", they are complaints by criminals. Holmes now writes Broadway musicals.

Additional songs

Their other songs, written by the band without Holmes, include the following:

• "Sunny Days/Memories"
• "Tell Me Heaven Is Here"
• "Castles"
• "Streams Together"
• "Good Lovin'"
• "Pittsburgh Steel"
• "Absent Friend"
• "Sunny Days"
• "Look Back America"
• "Liza's Last Ride"

In addition, the songs "Don't Try to Run" and "Dreams" were written by Brozena, Kelly, and Hludzik only.

Style

Musically The Buoys combined CSN-style harmonies blended with assorted musical approaches. Their eclectic style combines piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 as a major instrument, with guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, drum

Drum

The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...

s, strings

Strings (music)

A string is the vibrating element that produces sound in string instruments, such as the guitar, harp, piano, and members of the violin family. Strings are lengths of a flexible material kept under tension so that they may vibrate freely, but controllably. Strings may be "plain"...

, winds

Woodwind instrument

A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...

, brass

Brass instrument

A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...

, and harp

Harp

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...

, but tends to vary in sound heavily from the 1950s rock 'n' roll sound ("Good Lovin'", "Sunny Days") to more 1960s-influenced songs of protest ("Look Back America", "Pittsburgh Steel"), 1930s-style pop like "These Days", to Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

-influenced prog like "Castles". Without Holmes, the darker lyrical aspects largely went away, though "Pittsburgh Steel" contains more dark humor

Black comedy

A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...

; Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

 steelworkers plot to kill their foreman by dumping him in a vat

Vat

Vat or VAT may refer to:* A type of container such as a barrel, storage tank, or tub, often constructed of welded sheet stainless steel, and used for holding, storing, and processing liquids such as milk, wine, and beer...

 of ore

Ore

An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....

.

Then and Now

After The Buoys, Bill Kelly and Jerry Hludzik teamed up as The Jerry-Kelly Band. In 1980 they formed a band called Dakota

Dakota (band)

Dakota were an English pop/rock band signed to GRL, a subsidiary label of Universal Music Group.Their debut single, "Wild Child" was reviewed questionably in the Daily Mail and Bent. They received airplay on one radio station throughout the UK, BBC Radio 2 where the band performed live on the...

. Dakato toured the country as the opening act for Queen. The national sold-out tour took them to places such as Baton Rouge, Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia, Houston and Atlanta. Danny Seraphine of Chicago, produced several albums for them. The group reformed, again in the 1990s with several new members, playing folk-country influenced rock. An album on compact disc

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 of eighteen of The Buoys' songs was released in 1993 by Movieplay S.A., Intermusic, Inc., and Remember Records, in some markets as Give Up Your Guns and in others as Timothy: Golden Classics. Both albums contained the same cover image: a vintage photograph

Photograph

A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

 by Michael Ochs

Michael Ochs

Michael Ochs is an American photographic archivist best known for his extensive collection of pictures related to rock music dating back to the 1950s and 1960s...

 of the five core band members standing before the entrance of a building, under an awning

Awning

An awning or overhang is a secondary covering attached to the exterior wall of a building. It is typically composed of canvas woven of acrylic, cotton or polyester yarn, or vinyl laminated to polyester fabric that is stretched tightly over a light structure of aluminium, iron or steel, possibly...

 that says "Timothy". On the right, "Give Up Your Guns" is spraypainted on the wall of the building. This includes most of their pressed recordings, although an alternate B-side take of "Liza's Last Ride" did not make it on. According to Rupert Holmes's webmaster, this pressing is unauthorized and neither Holmes nor the Buoys receive any royalties

Royalties

Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...

from its sales.The band Dakota disbanded in 1987. Bill Kelly has relocated to Nashville where he operates Sweet Suite Music. Jerry Hludzik moved to Philadelphia where he operates the cryptic Last Man Standing. Kelly and Hludzik have regrouped several times as The Buoys, but with a different lineup of musicians.