Leader of the Laundromat

The Detergents
Originally uploaded by LORAC!

Answer songs were big in the early sixties for musicians trying to ride the coattails of a popular hit--Roger Miller's "King of the Road" had its counterpart "Queen of the House"; Leslie Gore answered her own "It's My Party" with "Judy's Turn to Cry"; and according to this article about answer songs, parodies, and death tunes, The Temptations "My Girl" was a response to Mary Wells' popular "My Guy".

Below is The Detergents' goofy answer to the mega hit Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las, entitled "Leader of the Laundromat". (The live performance demonstrates that teenage girls in the sixties would scream at ANY damn thing.) One of the Detergents, Ron Dante, was also the lead singer for the Archies (Bang Shang-a-Lang!), which makes for a pretty impressive resumé indeed.