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Vinyl Relics–(Turn on) the Music Machine

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  • Farmer John
  • July 29, 2025
  • 5:03 am

Vinyl Relics–(Turn on) the Music Machine

“Remove disc from jacket. Place on turntable and adjust treble, bass, and volume. Turn on. Caution: keep away from the old at heart.”

 

Those are the operating instructions written on the sleeve of the Music Machine’s 1966 offering Turn on The Music Machine.

 

If you haven’t yet read Ritchie Unterberger’s excellent book Unknown Legends of Rock ‘n’ Roll, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. It’s chock full of stories of those great, unheralded bands whose star burned brightly, but only for a brief time.

 

The Music Machine is one of those stories…

 

Ritchie connected me with the band’s guitarist, Mark Landon for my podcast Vinyl Relics. Together, we dove into each track of this garage rock classic.

 

Mark shared stories of the early days, working with lead singer and songwriter Sean Bonniwell. Sean had begun his singing career as a member of the folk outfit The Wayfarers. Their sound couldn’t be more different than the music he would later create with his garage rock band.

 

Bonniwell then connected with drummer Ron Edgar and bassist Keith Olsen. Together, they formed a new band called The Ragamuffins. Shortly after they drafted in keyboardist Doug Rhodes and began playing gigs and cutting some demos. Some of those early recordings were helmed by Boyce & Hart, the songwriting team most associated with The Monkees. They suggested a change for the band: bring in a lead guitarist. Bonniwell was handling guitar duties but wasn’t much of a lead player.

 

Fortunately, Mark Landon was working in the music store that day when bassist Keith Olsen walked in looking to check out some new basses. Mark brought him to the back of the store, plugged him in, and picked up a guitar to jam with his new customer. They hit it off immediately. Keith mentioned the band was playing at a club later that evening, and asked if Mark would want to stop by. Intrigued, he indeed went by and was even invited to join them onstage. The next day, he was asked if he wanted to be the band’s new lead guitarist.  “And I said….yeah!!!” Landon’s in his 70s now, but I swear you would think he was 17 when he recounted that story.

Band leader Sean Bonniwell decided to make a couple more changes. The Ragamuffins were out, and a new band name was in: The Music Machine. But Bonniwell didn’t want to be “just another band”. He envisioned something completely different altogether. The first change was to wear black – including dying their hair. Nowadays, of course, this is nothing new. But in the hippy-dippy California of 1966 when everyone else was wearing paisley, flowers, and beads, dressing only in black was a radical idea. And to top off the ensemble, they each wore a black glove. Not plural – ONE black glove. The idea, Bonniwell said, was that the glove represented the band while the bare hand represented the individual. The members were expected to wear the glove at all times – on and off the stage. Mark laughed when recalling the story about seeing a photo of him with a young lady while on the road. There he is putting his clothes back on wearing one glove!

 

When record producer Brian Ross decided to go bowling with his family one evening, he had no expectations of discovering a great, new band. When he heard The Music Machine playing, however, he wandered over to give them a listen. Within days, they were signed to Art Laboe’s Original Sound label and were ushered into the studio.

 

They recorded a couple of songs, “Come on In” and “Talk Talk”. “Come on In” was intended to be the A side of a single, but once “Talk Talk” was finished, it was decided that it was a better choice, and management convinced them the song could be a hit. And they were right.

 

Released in early September 1966, “Talk Talk” began its ascent up the charts, eventually reaching #15. Clocking in at a mere 1:56, DJs across the country were keen to play it. It sounded unlike anything else on the radio at the time, both musically and lyrically. “My social life’s a dud/my name is really mud”, Bonniwell sang with a snarl, predating a style punk rockers would explore a good decade later.

 

I asked Mark if he remembered the first time he heard the song played on the radio.

 

“I was driving down the Sunset Strip and I picked up two girls that were hitchhiking”, he recalls. “They were smoking a joint and I was driving, and we were talking and we were laughing, and we were listening to the radio. And then all of a sudden (switching into “DJ” voice) ‘…and now, here it comes, “Talk Talk” by The Music Machine’. I got like, what the fuck? I couldn’t believe it. I can’t explain it, John, the feeling. Right now, telling you about it, I got shivers, goosebumps down my arm”.

 

With “Talk Talk” riding the charts, the record label rushed them back into the studio to capitalize on the single’s success. Bonniwell had lots of original songs, but the band’s managers and the label were demanding they include some covers.

Photo of the band Music Machine performing with photoshopped background that greenish-yellow with a psychedelic sun transposed on it.

“He (Art Laboe) pressured us to do the covers”, Mark explained. “And we didn’t want to. It was not our intention. We didn’t really have a choice, you know? We were an unknown band that was just starting to make a noise. And we had to do what we were told to do, basically”.

 

Turn On the Music Machine was released just before Christmas, 1966. It contains 12 tracks in total– half originals, half covers. This album comes highly recommended by me, though not for the covers. However, the band does a formidable job on them. They do a good version of the Beatles’ “Taxman”, which had just been released earlier in the year, and they do a great job on “Hey Joe”. Every band did a version of that at the time, but I’m not aware of any other band that did a cooler, slower arrangement like these guys did. The highlights of this thing, though, are undoubtedly the originals. It’s a real shame they were forced to record other material when their own stuff was so strong. “Talk Talk” is the most well-known original song on the album thanks in part to its inclusion on several Nuggets-inspired comps, but other tracks like “Trouble” and “Masculine Intention” show the band had more choice material.

 

National tours followed. Radio and TV appearances. American Bandstand, Hullabaloo, Shindig. Live, they would often play uninterrupted sets, which they decided would distinguish them from the other bands. A complete set of songs back-to-back with no gaps between — again, a very novel idea for 1966.

 

While they had all the ingredients for success, it never went much further.

 

There were bad management decisions, and then there were BAD management decisions…

 

Mark relayed one particular “What If” story: “We were playing at The Three Thieves, a little, tiny juke joint by the airport in Dallas, Texas. The whole place held 30 people. There we are with a Top 10 record in the charts. And the Monterey Pop Festival was being put together, and we were asked to play. We didn’t know anything about it at the time. Our management turned it down because we were booked into the Three Thieves in Texas. When I found that out, I was stunned.”

 

In a later interview, drummer Ron Edgar said that their management not only turned down Monterey, but also Woodstock. He said management told them, “There’s no money in that.”

 

Financially, the band was broke. They were penniless, and Mark had had enough. He was the first to jump ship, but the rest soon followed.

The band Music Machine playing on a TV show wearing black.

Bonniwell forged onward, slightly changing the band name to The Bonniwell Music Machine and releasing a follow-up album in 1968. It’s a mixed bag, as half the tracks are recorded with the original lineup (the good tracks), and the other half are recorded by the new version of the band. It’s worth checking out tunes like “Double Yellow Line” and “The Eagle Never Hunts the Fly”.

 

Mark: “The other tunes that we had worked on finally were recorded, but they weren’t on that (Turn on the Music Machine) album. They wound up including those songs that the original group did on the second album and billed it as ‘The Bonniwell Music Machine’. And half that album was recorded by the original group. I just thought it was wrong, and I never really accepted it.”

 

The second iteration of the Music Machine folded shortly after, and Bonniwell released a solo album in a much more baroque style. After that, he essentially dropped out of the music industry altogether. He recorded a couple of tracks here and there and wrote a book, but was never again in the spotlight. Bonniwell died in California in 2011. Mark said his death was a sad one. “While everyone else moved on, I don’t think Sean ever did. He was living in a little rented garage at the end of his life, you know, selling memorabilia.”

 

Drummer Ron Edgar and keyboardist Doug Rhodes went on to record with The Millenium, whose 1968 album Begin is a psych-pop classic. Ron has since passed, but Doug is apparently living somewhere near Vancouver.

 

Bassist Keith Olsen? Well, he did okay for himself. He moved into production, working on over 100 albums. You may have heard of some of the hits he worked on. “Jessie’s Girl”, “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”, “Double Vision”, “Here I Go Again,” just to name a few. Keith passed away in 2020.

 

And what of Mark Landon? After the Music Machine, he did a 5-year stint in Ike and Tina’s band, playing everywhere and recording a ton of tracks. After that, he tried his hand at leading his own blues-rock band called Freight Train. While they achieved no real success, he still looks back on those days fondly.

 

From there, a chance introduction to a Hollywood makeup artist changed the course of his life. He learned the tricks of the trade, and his mantle now houses multiple Emmys and Academy Awards for his work on shows like The Young and the Restless, ER, Baywatch, Deep Space Nine, Roseanne, The West Wing, Lost, and more. Movies too, like War of the Worlds, The Hobbit, X-Men, and dozens of others. When it comes to make-up in Hollywood, this guy was an absolute rock star.

Mark has retired from his days in Hollywood now, but he’s rediscovered his passion for the blues, moved to Austin, Texas, and still performs there regularly. “Austin is where guitar players come to die”, he said. “And so, I came to Blues Guitar Town, Austin, Texas, the live blues capital of the world, and was able to get up on stage and start all over again.”

 

Mark shared some amazing stories throughout our interview. You can hear the full story of this band by tuning in, turning on, and dropping by The Vinyl Relics podcast. Turn on The Music Machine is featured in Epysode 43 and is available on all podcast platforms.

 

Mark has no regrets about his time with The Music Machine, but wishes it could have lasted longer. We do too, Mark. We do too.

 

Turn on The Music Machine is a quintessential garage rock album that laid the groundwork for countless bands that followed. Highly, highly recommended.

 

 

Farmer John hosts Vinyl Relics, which is part of Pantheon Media. Each epysode of the show features a deep dive into one album time has forgotten. Vinyl Relics is a podcast for groovy people who like music and is available on all Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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