vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 29, 2018 19:03:25 GMT 1
In 1986 the Christian rock band PowerSource recorded a single about child abuse. To ramp up the pathos they had 6 year old Sharon Batts (not Bott) do the vocals. It made a bit of a stir locally, and faded from the limelight.
In November 1987 a little girl called Lisa Steinberg was found dead. She had been hit on the head, knocked unconscious, and abandoned, dying slowly over the next 10 hours. Her adoptive father Joel was arrested for the crime. And suddenly airplay for this single took off. To the extent that it got into the top 70 of the Billboard charts.
Joel Steinberg had basically beaten her when he was high on crack. He was found guilty of manslaughter. American jury, so not the most intelligent of people. He's now out.
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Post by Smurfie on Jul 29, 2018 19:37:51 GMT 1
Wubble U - Petal
I bought this back in 1994 or something and always assumed it was a Euro DJ type affair. Apparently not, and got a re-release. Still didn’t trouble the Top 50. I played it a lot - not entirely sure why nowadays.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 2, 2018 23:22:50 GMT 1
Featuring, of course, the immortal Professor Stanley Unwin, who had topped the album charts when The Small Faces added their music to his tale of Happiness Stan. Deep joy.
The single itself is not particularly odd, other than it's a bit late for being experimental synthpop, but Tik & Tok were not known as singers - they had made their name as pioneer robotics dancers. I suppose with the likes of the Rocksteady Crew, the Ebonettes and Break Machine, none of whom were musicians, that it was worth throwing in something that was all about image rather than music. A bit like Michael Jackson.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 4, 2018 10:13:09 GMT 1
John Otway wanted to release a greatest hits album, but felt he could not do so while he had only touched the top 40 once. So for his 50th birthday his fans got him a second. The magnificent "Bunsen Burner" getting into single digits thanks to a brilliant social media campaign. But he had in fact already had two hit singles, both with Wild Willy Barrett. This one got to no. 45 in 1980. It is basically a nonsensical drumless sound assault. It's amazing it even got so high given its outré nature. And it's fantastic.
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Post by raliverpool on Aug 5, 2018 21:33:47 GMT 1
With Canadian hiphop artist being the biggest artist on the planet right now, I think it is time to go back to 1976 and this USA #1 hit by a US Radio Disc Jockey:
Rick Dees - Disco Duck
..... who was the singular biggest influence on UK DJ (& The Smiths nemesis) Steve Wright:
Steve Wright - The Gay Cavalieros (The Story So Far...) (UK #61 1984)
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 9, 2018 13:59:35 GMT 1
This is the weirdest thing to have turned up on my latest retro playlist.
Not much of a song, has just one line repeated again and again, but a load of dialogues between teenagers and disapproving parents, many of them unjustified in my opinion but then ends with a case of a drug overdose death, which may give the parents some justification into trying to stop the children's behaviour
It reached #23 in the US chart in 1972
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 13, 2018 23:07:53 GMT 1
That's almost an answer record to the Victor Lundberg one earlier in the thread.
The Firm did have a follow-up to "Star Trekkin'", but as befits a side project of a tiny label, it was a re-issue of a choon they'd done four years before. Only now they could do a video for it.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 18, 2018 22:44:00 GMT 1
Between 2009 and 2012, the Tranmere Rovers manager was Les Parry, who had been promoted from physio. The most notable thing about his tenure as both boss and spongeman was that he would always wear t-shirts and shorts on the touchline - even when the temps were minus something.
So in 2006 Tranmere decided to do a Christmas charity single - sung by Les "the white legs" Parry. Allegedly sold 2,000 copies.
Perhaps the most bizarre thing about this whole set up is that it's a Tranmere Rovers single and their most notable fans Half Man Half Biscuit are nowhere near it...
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 22, 2018 22:41:34 GMT 1
Amazingly GRIMMS had chart-topping pedigree; the name was an acronym, taken from Gorman (John), McGear (Mike) and McGough (Roger), who had had a Christmas no. 1 with The Scaffold. And McGear is of course Paul McCartney's brother. The S and I were also chart-experienced - Viv Stanshall and Neil Innes of Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band. Also produced by McCartney.
The interesting thing about this is that they planned to do a viral video. John Starkey, the band's manager (and also Jasper Carrott's), dressed as a Womble, and Gorman as a Womble-basher. They rocked up at Wimbledon for the tennis and tried to invade a court. Security stopped them in the aisles, without batting an eyelid.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 29, 2018 19:50:59 GMT 1
The first advert jingle to chart. Cliff Adams had been a member of The Stargazers and his Singers were a staple of Radio 2 right to 2001, striking to say - as Adams died that year it was as if the Beeb didn't want to end it to his knowledge. But he was also a jingle writer of some renown, the Smash theme being perhaps the most iconic of his.
One he wrote was this Sinatra-esque concept for Strand cigarettes, before the banning of cigarette advertising on telly, of course. The idea was to get a sort of Sinatra In The Lonely Hour vibe - a cool smoke for cool people...
...and the advert proved to be memorable in the extreme, people still talk about it today.
It was also just about the least successful advert ever. Because people watching it assumed Strand cigarettes were not for the cool, but for the losers. Strand sales never rose above de minimis and HD Wills abandoned the brand.
After a discreet period they revived the blend of Strand (probably had loads of them waiting for boxes) and created a new brand - Embassy. And its advert was the diametric opposite...showing a lonely man at a party who was suddenly surrounded by girls as soon as he lit up. Sort of Lynx Effect.
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 2, 2018 23:06:44 GMT 1
In 1977, the media mogul Kerry Packer, fed up with the authorities not opening up cricket television coverage to his Channel 9, decided that, if they wouldn't let him play, he'd create his own thing. So he spent a fortune (A$35m or so) on buying up a load of players to central contracts, challenging a ban on them playing via the High Court, and inventing an entirely new series and concepts. Many of which are now commonplace in cricket (coloured clothing, night matches, a stump mike).
He created three teams for his World Series Cricket - the two most powerful sides in the world (Australia and the West Indies) and a Rest of the World XI. And between the first and second season pushed his Australian side - which he promoted as the Real Deal - via aggressive advertising.
The jingle from that advert was turned into a single, with the label being basically a World Series logo, recorded by session singers under the name The Mojo Singers - Mo and Jo being Alan Morris and Allan Johnson, co-writers of the song and heads of the Mojo advertising agency, which had come up with the whole programme. and the b-side being "Establishment Blues", taking the mickey out of the Bufton-Tuftons, credited to Sidney Hill, who was Aussie artist Glenn Cardier with a Windies accent.
It topped the Aussie charts for a brace of weeks in 1979, and got to no. 2 in a pointless cover version for charity by Shannon Noll. World Series had two major impacts. One, England won the Ashes in 1977 3-0 and retained with a 5-1 demolition, as the best Australians had signed up with Packer. Two, the authorities had to do a deal with Packer to reunite the game, as a result of which he got a telly contract he wanted, and coverage was revolutionized for good.
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 19, 2018 23:27:31 GMT 1
Seems to be something about Star Trek that seems to attract bizarre music to it...
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 23, 2018 22:15:46 GMT 1
The seventies Aled Jones. Ward was a boy soprano from Workington who won Opportunity Knocks by singing hymns, which naturally got him lots of publicity, a record deal, an album, and just the one hit single, which top twentied in October 1973. It sounds the archetypal Christmas single so I presume its release was to tie in with OpKnocks. Although it did pop back into the charts over Christmas, managing to re-enter at no. 50 - and then not moving from there. (And hanging on for a third week but that was easy enough; the first chart of 1974 was the last of '73.) The adult Ward changed his surname to Sayzer for the chicken in a basket circuit.
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 29, 2018 21:43:05 GMT 1
I'm not sure what to make of this. A flexidisc released by the Conservative Party for the 1964 election. What the hell is it meant to do? I can't imagine the target audience. Was it meant to go to radio stations? To be early viral marketing? I can't imagine its release reaching floating voters. Perhaps a vanity project?
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 4, 2018 23:24:04 GMT 1
The BA Robertson lookalike is Rupert Hine, whose party trick was to give the name of a mountain in New Zealand, and used it to give this song a bit of a kick. Released in 1976 and banned for its homosexual and narcotic content. Kenny Everett dug it out in 1979 and it went top 5. Some great guitar twiddling by Mark Warner. Bassist John Perry had been in Caravan, but left before their two charting albums, and drummer Trevor Morais had charted with The Peddlers.
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 10, 2018 20:30:19 GMT 1
I think this is a tremendous single, it could be described as jazz-raga, but the lyrics are somewhat, well, grim.
Grim reaper of love, grim reaper of love Grim reaper of love, grim reaper of love Killing the living & living to kill Grim reaper of love thrives on pain; people, beware
It only just made the charts in 1966 and The Turtles' next three singles bombed harder than the Enola Gay. It looked like they would be considered one-hit wonders for their debut single nudging the top ten.
And then they released "Happy Together".
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 18, 2018 19:41:44 GMT 1
I usually put a bit of comment to explain why something is bizarre, out leftfield, or outré.
But with this one I can do nothing better than just putting in a deadpan description of what this is.
Maya Angelou and Jessica Mitford covering "Right Said Fred".
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 26, 2018 23:19:44 GMT 1
The name is a twisted double pun on Ogden Nash and the Ford Edsel - Nash is an American car brand from the fifties (they made Austin Atlantics under licence for a while, and it was a Nash that was the subject of The Playmates' novelty hit "Beep Beep").
I am not a pet person.
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 2, 2018 20:27:05 GMT 1
Although they're called The Shaggs, there's nothing sexual about it; it wasn't a rude word in the States in the sixties.
They're sisters, Dot, Betty, and Helen Wiggin, and they were pushed by their parents, in particular their father who believed a prediction from a supposedly fortune-seeing mother.
I think the best word to describe this, their one single, is "indescribable".
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 4, 2018 19:21:21 GMT 1
The forgotten Children In Need single? Ray Moore had the pre-Wogan slot on Radio 2 and if anything was even more gentle and whimsical. And out of nowhere he recorded this - a poem he used to read out on his show from time to time - for an Irish label (Play, most of whose extensive output was Brendan Shine), had a hit, and gave the royalties to CIN. Written by Shag Connors, described as Gloucestershire's answer to Adge Cutler, and featuring his band The Carrot Crunchers. He had a follow-up - "Bog Eyed Jog" - also a CIN single; his sponsored runs were a feature of the fundraiser in the 1980s.
Moore had got into radio presentation via continuity announcement work, and did voiceovers for Come Dancing and Eurovision. Described by Ken Bruce (who adds some sort of backing to the Wogan performance) as one of those heroes it is not a disappointment to meet. The Broadcasting Press Guild awarded him the Outstanding Contribution award in 1989. Sadly, it was posthumous; he died of throat cancer earlier in the year, aged just 47.
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