Strange Lights: JACOB'S INVESTMENT - "Easily Done - Part 1 & 2" (M-A-Y-B-E

by Achille Brunet

Easily done indeed! Here are solid competitors for the shortest garage songs ever made. The A side is 0:30 and B side is 0:32!

"Easily Done - Part 1 & 2", amazingly pressed on wax in 1967, are fun primitive garage songs with cool organ riffs and guitar tracks but with weak vocals and would have probably gone under the radar wouldn't it be for its short time and the very fact it was actually released.

At first I thought it could be some kind of a radio spot, but it just doesn't sound like a jingle, and the title seems to indicate the songs were primarily made for a joke.

Let's see the lyrics:

Part 1:

Dark skies over the city

My baby just left me

Why must I feel so lonely

Why doesn't she love me

Part 2:

How long can I take it

The way I feel tonight

I guess I'll go on living

Guess I'll take that flight

Pretty straightforward. Only a little more than 1 minute for the protagonist to mourn the loss of his love and move on. Good for him.

Part 2 starts and ends with the sound of a plane taking off, which I had taken at first for the sound of a vacuum cleaner.

Anyway, what I find fantastic is that these guys went all the way with the joke. They did pay for recording, pressing and publishing and apparently sold or distributed them! The groove is, of course, hilariously short on the vinyl:

I didn't find a single trace of a band named Jacob's Investment anywere and there are no names on the label credits. It might have been a studio quip, or maybe a band that toured under another name. The band name might also be another pun: maybe the person who paid for the record was named Jacob (what an investment!) The publishing company, Ben-Jon Pub. Co. could also be a lead.

The single was pressed by Royal Plastics Corporation based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They pressed a good deal of Ohio releases like Mouse & The Traps and other singles on the Fraternity label, or the Prism label so that might be a lead.

However the plant also pressed singles for bands and labels in nearby states, like the Customs Five from Indiana, Sound On Sound from Virginia, and bands from Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and even Mississippi.

There was a Jacob's Investment Club in Newport, Virginia in 1965 so who knows, but it seems to be more of a religious association.

The single bears the vanity label M-A-Y-B-E to which it's the only output.

I'd love to hear more about that mysterious single so don't hesitate if you know anything about it!