vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Apr 29, 2020 10:56:12 GMT 1
Not a bizarre single. In fact it's rather good.
The thing that was bizarre was its timing. This is the official single of the 1999 Cricket World Cup.
The problem was releasing it on 31 May 1999, when the World Cup had started more than two weeks earlier. As a comparison "Three Lions" came out well before Euro 96 had started.
They might have got away with such a late release date. Had it not been for the fact that England had been knocked out two days before.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on May 22, 2020 11:24:17 GMT 1
Much has been written about the relationship between Brian Wilson and his father, Murry, especially about Murry's mismanagement of the financial side of the Beach Boys legacy.
Less well known is Murry fancied himself as a pop star as well. He co-wrote one Beach Boy hit ("Break Away", under the pseudonym Reggie Dunbar), and recorded an album, from which this instrumental was taken.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 29, 2020 15:44:33 GMT 1
Novelty records are not that bizarre, they fit within their own genre. But this is worth a look as being a very early genuine bona-fide pop video. John Inman reprising Mr Humphries from Are You Being Served and scoring a top forty.
What's more, it pre-dates "Bohemian Rhapsody" by a month. On DJM Records, who seemed to like doing videos for their comedy records, they came close to making one for Jasper Carrott's "Funky Moped", which only failed because the only person whom they could find to play his mother was the neighbour of the director - who had come over on the Windrush.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 3, 2020 16:53:07 GMT 1
The consumer programme That's Life had a number of complaints regarding some record impresarios who claimed to be able to link bands up to major labels. So, the show formed a band - Eats Filth being an anagram of That's Life - as a Trojan horse. And this was the song they were touting around for full release. For some reason the BBC agreed to put it out. I'm sure I read somewhere that it bubbled under, but I can't find any reference to it charting anywhere. Not surprisingly.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2020 19:43:05 GMT 1
The Condom Rap Tenerife was conceived and written in 1987 as a 'tongue in cheek' observational commentary of the (then) emerging AIDS virus. Condom Rap Tenerife - Safe Sex Without Pregnancy
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2020 18:35:32 GMT 1
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 3, 2020 20:36:20 GMT 1
This is, quite simply, brilliant. Chris Sievey, who had been singer/songwriter for The Freshies and would later enjoy cult success as Frank Sidebottom, was one hell of an imaginative visual artist, and came up with a video for his solo single "Camouflage" that he put on the b-side. Via software for the Spectrum ZX81. You had to record the b-side on tape and load the result onto your pooter, and play it in sync with the a-side.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 29, 2020 18:16:51 GMT 1
I was looking for footage of Prince Monolulu, as the video describes, a character of the turf; an outlandish character who claimed to be African royalty and who dressed the part, in order to sell tips to punters, his reputation being made by picking an outsider to win the Derby in 1920 and winning £8,000 (nearly as much as the horse's owner got for winning the race, and over a third of a million in today's terms). (He was actually a chap called Peter McKay and was from the Virgin Islands.)
He was famous for his catchphrase "I gotta horse!" and he was recruited to do some of his spiel for this cut. Which is interesting in itself as being very much a period piece.
What I found out though was that this was a b-side. The a-side? "Back Your Fancy (Race Game)". A recording of horses running - with commentary announcing a winner at the end. But the trick was that this was a multi-track groove. SIX different recordings. The idea being you'd play the record and place bets on which of the six horses (listed on the label) would win.
There was at least one other recording like this, with Ray Noble's Orchestra on the flip, and instructions that you played it alongside a board game (basically, keep playing the record until one horse wins six times).
But all this is from 1933. An early example of playing with the vinyl format.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 5, 2020 20:38:27 GMT 1
"Ready 'n' Steady" by DA - the band name a reference to songwriter DA Lucchesi (along with Jim Franks), a mortgage broker who performed part-time with a band as D.A. and the Dukes - had three weeks in the Billboard bubbling unders in 1979. Agonizingly stalling at no. 102 on 30 June. It's bad enough to be two places outside the charts, but to be one off being top of the bubbling unders as well...
The thing is...the single did not exist.
The band cut a demo and touted it around, but could not get anyone interested. Other than a small label, Rascal, which claimed to put it out with catalogue number 102. Rascal Records however did not exist. One of the bandmembers' relatives toyed with starting a label and put an ad in a Detroit paper looking for bands, but nothing came of it.
So how did this get in the charts?
Payola. It seems that a record plugger, who liked the band's sound and was trying to get them a deal, "persuaded" some Detroit radio stations to include the song in their "most played" lists that they submitted to Billboard. Detroit being a big area meant that its airplay points counted for something in the totting-up. With the result that the song spent three weeks in the "bubbling under" lists - despite not one person being able to buy it.
Of course, it didn't take more than a couple of decades for Billboard literally to include songs that literally nobody bought...
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Sept 16, 2020 20:08:35 GMT 1
Hughie Green was the presenter of Opportunity Knocks, a talent show for hardscrabble professionals who needed a break, for decades. He was known for being a total b*st*rd but for being very good at working for the acts on his programme. One comedian complained to his manager that Green kept directing him where to stand and what to where and what camera to look at, going against performing instincts. "Listen to him," said the manager, "he's dead right. You're working the cameras, not the audience."
He was also right wing. To the extent that, in the mid-70s, when the country was at a particularly low ebb, there were rumours that he was going to be a propagandist for a military coup. Certainly, when he delivered a rant at the end of the 1976 series, he demonstrated that he wanted to be a player rather than a referee.
Philips decided to put it out as a single. Gave it the catalogue number GB1 and put "Land Of Hope And Glory" on the b-side. It bombed and a couple of years later ITV scrapped the show because of Green's politics.
And it turns out that he was suffering from bipolar disorder. Only in those days it was never recognized. And nobody dared interfere when he was having a manic episode.
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Good Old Days
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Post by Good Old Days on Oct 3, 2020 11:49:22 GMT 1
The Pub Singer - I Sink Them My Way (1986)
Peaked at # 95 in UK.
Parody medley of popular 80s hits (Rock Me Amadeus, Like A Virgin, Livin Doll, Two Tribes, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go).
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Post by Whitneyfan on Oct 3, 2020 13:49:57 GMT 1
The Pub Singer - I Sink Them My Way (1986)Peaked at # 95 in UK. Parody medley of popular 80s hits (Rock Me Amadeus, Like A Virgin, Livin Doll, Two Tribes, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go). Oh my word!... I thought I had heard the worst of the worst songs ever, but that is a new low!
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 3, 2020 14:09:59 GMT 1
Meh. Poor man's Star Turn.
Whose first hit came in 1981, as part of the medley craze that befell that year. Features the chap who wrote "Right Back Where We Started From".
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 15, 2020 14:55:48 GMT 1
Most 45s are, as Buzzcocks pointed out, a spiral scratch; a single groove from outside to inside.
Not this one.
There are 100 separate grooves, all of them circular. So once the needle lands in one, it only plays that groove.
There are quite a few "locked groove" records, usually at the end of a regular 45 or LP side, but some labels have experimented with nothing but locked grooves.
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Robbie
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Post by Robbie on Oct 16, 2020 16:07:35 GMT 1
It appears that The Pub Singer consisted of former members of hit wonders Jigsaw (of 1975 top 10 hit 'Sky High' fame). What an awful song (The Pub Singer one). At least 'Sky High' is a decent song.
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Robbie
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Post by Robbie on Oct 24, 2020 19:45:05 GMT 1
I'm not sure if this has been posted. If not, this has to be the strangest record to make the charts. From 1980 this is Sweet People with 'Et Les Oiseaux Chantaient (And The Birds Were Singing)'
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Post by onehitwonder on Oct 25, 2020 12:29:15 GMT 1
This was #2 on Official Finnish Charts, luckily Iron Maiden prevented this from going to number 1.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 30, 2020 10:44:26 GMT 1
I was looking for footage of Prince Monolulu, as the video describes, a character of the turf; an outlandish character who claimed to be African royalty and who dressed the part, in order to sell tips to punters, his reputation being made by picking an outsider to win the Derby in 1920 and winning £8,000 (nearly as much as the horse's owner got for winning the race, and over a third of a million in today's terms). (He was actually a chap called Peter McKay and was from the Virgin Islands.) And the BBC website has an article about Prince Monolulu here. Quite the character.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 26, 2020 11:53:34 GMT 1
Not sure the BBC ever listened properly to Noosha Fox' only solo hit. Starts off with incest and finishes off with homosexuality. Yet she got on Ver Pops with it.
Fun fact: Noosha Fox is the mother of Bad Science writer Ben Goldacre.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 11, 2021 23:06:25 GMT 1
There were plenty of cash-in attempts off the back of The Beatles; covers of album tracks, homages, whatever. But only one father tried to grab a quick hit; Freddie Lennon, who recorded a single with an orchestra that included the two-thirds of the Jimi Hendrix Experience that were not Hendrix.
Allegedly John was so p*ssed off at this that he begged Brian Epstein to do whatever was necessary to stop it from being a hit. I'm guessing all Epstein needed to do was to get people to listen to it.
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