Songs from the Pet Rock craze (1976)

 

Remember Pet Rocks? Mother Jones called them "one of the great crazes of 1976," and Time Magazine ranked them among the Top 10 toy crazes of all time. Inventor Gary Dahl struck gold, at least for a little while, by selling ordinary rocks in a pet-carrier-like container that held some excelsior as bedding and a pamphlet on how to care for the rock. Like most crazes, the Pet Rock also inspired a handful of novelty records that year. 

Introduced at the end of 1975 and priced at about $4.00, Pet Rocks were an instant success, but by 1977 the fad had run its course, and Dahl donated his remaining inventory of 100,000 Pet Rocks to Goodwill and the Salvation Army. 

Al Bolt "I'm in Love with My Pet Rock" (Cin-Kay CK-201, Feb. 1976)

Country singer Al Bolt wasted no time in rushing a Pet Rock novelty song to market. The title suggests that the song is about romantic love for a Pet Rock, but it's actually about a child who loves the rock that followed him home.

Walter Rockite – "The Pet Rocks Are Coming" (Westbound WT-5022, May 1976)

None of the creators of this break-in comedy record wanted to be identified by their real names, apparently, because the artist is credited as Walter Rockite, the composer as Sandy Granite, and the producer as Sparkle Quartz. Or maybe that was just part of the joke. The record is set up as an interview, like many of Dickie Goodman's break-in hits, with Rockite and others asking questions, to which snippets of hit songs play in reply. The topic, generally speaking, is the Pet Rock craze, but the questions veer into miscellaneous celebrity news, with rock puns and jokes being the only real thread. The B-side, credited to the Walter Rockite Rock Conglomerate, was a song called "Rocky Road."

Chuck McCabe & the K-ROCK News Team – "That Old Pet Rock of Mine" and "Live at the Pet Rock Show" (GRT Records, GRT-044, 1976)

Pet Rock inventor Gary Dahl actually cowrote the A-side of this double-sided Pet Rock single, which GRT Records advertised as "the greatest rock hit of all time." Get it? It wasn't a hit at all, and as far as I can tell didn't get substantial airplay, but the B-side, "Live at the Pet Rock Show," is a fairly amusing break-in comedy record in which all the snippets of popular songs sound like re-recordings, a strategy that would get around the licensing problems that often plagued break-in records. 

Michael Andrews – "Pet Rock" (Theta 2019-A, 1976)

Released in the summer of 1976, "Pet Rock" by Michael Andrews inspired a Los Angeles secretary named Jannene Swift to marry a 50-pound rock. The song got a little airplay but not nearly as much attention as the resulting marriage, which made national news. The wedding ceremony was performed at a park on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A., and the union was described as the first "inter-rock-cial" marriage.

Merlin – "Without My Rock" and "Pet Rock Rock" (Stonehenge 3001, 1976)

This double-sided Pet Rock record was supposed to accompany a book by author Thomas N. Corpening that was going to be titled either Pet Rock Jokes & Songs, as it says on the label of the 45, or The Pet Rock Joke Book, as it says in Corpening's obituary, but I haven't seen any evidence that this book was actually published. The Texas band Merlin set Corpening's lyrics to music for this single.

That was the end of the craze, but it wasn't the end of Pet Rocks. In fact, Pet Rocks are still available today. A record label called Pet Rock was active in the 1990s-2010s. Teenage Fanclub had a song called "Pet Rock" on their 1991 album Bandwagonesque. A band called The Pet Rocks released a couple albums. Some children's books about Pet Rocks have been published. And if you'd like to have an authentic vintage Pet Rock, they sell on eBay for around $40 these days.