vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 27, 2010 23:03:46 GMT 1
No idea if he lurks, it's a rhetorical ellipsis. But while I am on an animal theme... Wonder DogSynthesized dog noises, prepared by German electro producer Harry Thumann, who j-u-s-t missed the 40 in 1981 with " Underwater". Thumann had been one of the first to appreciate the importance of synthesizers and was a pioneer in their use, building his own models in the early 1960s and using Commodore computers in the early 80s to create more complex things. Probably would not have been forgotten but for a young exec at indie company E&S Music, which he founded with a colleague at EMI, picking up the rights and thinking that something could be done with it. Said exec dressed as the eponymous Dog and gave interviews to promote the alleged single. Including a TOTP performance which turned into a miniature soap as Wonder Dog took on a bull(y)dog for the affections of some stupid bitch. Who is said rep? Have a shufti. Sadly, Thumann died in 2001. Even more sadly, Cowell didn't.
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 28, 2010 17:23:59 GMT 1
From one music scum to another.
Sakkarin
Something incongruous about Jonathan King. A relentless self-publicist and with a willingness to undertake practically any stunt to get his name across, be it standing as an MP, television presenting and recording "He's So Fine" in the style of "My Sweet Lord". Yet his record career was largely conducted under a series of pseudonyms. After a first hit whilst a student at Cambridge, with the wistful "Everyone's Gone To The Moon", he seemed to want to become a pop star without anyone knowing it was him, yet letting everyone know who it was.
First pseudonym under which he had a hit was The Weathermen, in 1971, followed swiftly by Sakkarin, St Cecilia's, Nemo, Shag, Bubblerock, 53rd And 3rd, Sound 9418, 100 Ton And A Feather, Father Abraphart And The Smurps and Fat Jakk, plus involvement with the Piglets and the Bay City Rollers (seriously - their first single was largely King's work). He even had a couple of hits under the name Jonathan King.
Most of these names were used for one- or two-off semi-joke singles, whilst King's major energies were devoted to his work as head of Decca Records, his own UK label (home of 10cc, the band he named from a dream) and promoting discoveries like Genesis. Even into the 1990s he was a big wheel in the industry, producing the Brits 1990 medley that nearly topped the chart and running the Brit Awards show following the crass-ic Sam Fox/Mick Fleetwood ventriloquist act where both were the dummy, before it came to a shuddering halt when he was charged with having sex with underage boys.
He was found guilty in 2001, although I have to say I harbour some doubts about the conviction and an appeal is currently going through the legal machinery. Nevertheless, King's work is a part of pop history...
And of all the pseudonyms he used, and records under them, this one is the one worth watching the most. For a number of reasons:
1. it has a TOTP rundown from 1971, which has a sort of simple nobility about it, like it was a real effort to make the chart, let alone climb it. Try to guess the unjustly forgotten number one before it gets there;
2. you can see how many of the acts you recognize - the only ones alien to me were those at 16 and 25;
3. it's astonishing how innocent all those Slough College studentettes look despite wearing tight rag t-shirts, kinky boots and hotpants (the one at 1m40 with the repetitive vogueing is my favourite, worryingly she might well be a grandmother now);
4. see whether you too thought that Olivia Newton-John was Suzi Quatro;
5. you can have a guess at how many sherberts the chap at 2m45 has had. I think seventeen;
6. it's one of the very best cover versions I have ever heard.
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 29, 2010 14:13:29 GMT 1
Klark Kent
Apparently, Bill Wyman was indulging in the Colombian nose candy after a Rolling Stones gig in the 1980s. A roadie poked his head around the dressing room door and said "Bill, the Police are coming."
Wyman quickly swept up the precious powder with his mates, popped it down the toilet and flushed like mad. Just as the last remnants of the illicit pharmaceuticals were vanishing down the u-bend, Sting and Stewart Copeland walked in to say hi.
What the roadie should have done to avoid any confusion was to refer to Copeland under his recording pseudonym. Both Sting and Copeland were songwriters, but Sting sometimes turned down Copeland's offerings, so Copeland just recorded them under the name Klark Kent.
A little-known point is that Kent hit the charts before the Police; he had also hit the charts earlier than that as the drummer with prog-rockers Curved Air. Kent appeared on Top Of The Pops as Klark Kent clad in camouflage paint, and later KK appearances were under a mask, thus perpetuating the supposed anonymity. Given that his bro was a big wheel at IRS Records, releasing stuff was never a problem. A handful of albums over a handful of years, before Copeland dropped the nom de disque and used his real name.
Now, I HATE the Police. Detest them. Stupid, pathetic, ignorant cod-reggae for proto-wangsters. All the depth of a puddle. Trite politicking. Since they split up, I reserve the same venom for Sting. Po-faced hypocrisy and pretentious pap. But Klark Kent...well, this is really rather good. Very different; if I didn't know who this was, I would say Talking Heads or maybe Devo in a poppy mood. Far more new wave and even slightly punky. So, it's pretty clear to me who the REAL songwriting talent in that band was...
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 29, 2010 22:39:44 GMT 1
The Brat
Thought I'd squeeze this one in whilst Wimbledon is on. The Brat is impressionist Roger Kitter, who had become sort of Penny Smith-level famous on Saturday teatime comedy variety "Who Do You Do?", which should have been "Whom..." of course. As a quick cash-in Hansa Records, briefly successful with acts as varied as Aneka and Japan, got him to perform as John McEnroe, along with occasional collaborator Kaplan Kaye (now a theatrical agent) as the umpire.
This was a rare (for the era) live TOTP appearance, after all it's difficult to mime when you're effectively talking (Les Gray of Mud overcame this problem on "Lonely This Christmas" by using a ventriloquist dummy). Many of McEnroe's famous on-court outbursts are parodied here. And at a McEnroe press conference he was confronted once with Kitter in full McEnroe mode. The brat was not impressed with The Brat, and the consequential publicity propelled this into the top twenty.
It was Kitter's lone excursion into recorded music; he went back to his more usual comedy roles in theatre, stand-up and audience warm-up, and probably is best-known for replacing Eastenders-bound Gavin Richards as Captain Bertorelli in "Allo Allo". Still actively performing and in demand as a panto dame, Kitter was recently appointed executive administrator of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, which looks after the Royal Variety Performance, so don't be surprised if he gets an MBE in a few years' time.
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 30, 2010 10:22:05 GMT 1
Bijou Drains
This could fit in under a couple of other possible themes as well. And this is a very misleading clip as Mr Drains is not present. And the lead vocalist Speedy Keen, shown with a guitar in this clip, played the drums as well as sang in the studio.
Who Speedy Keen was, is a clue to the identity of Bijou Drains. Keen was the chauffeur for The Who and a budding songwriter. When he showed some of his songs to Pete Townshend, the latter was highly impressed, and arranged for one of them - "Armenia City In The Sky" - to appear on the Sell Out album.
Townshend went further. The Who did not perform other people's songs as a rule - indeed "Armenia" was the only one that they had written for them - so if Keen was going to get his stuff recorded it would not be via The Who.
Instead Townshend booked some studio time, Keen (a drummer and guitarist as well as a chauffeur) drummed and sang, honkytonk jazz pianist Andy Newman was recruited for the thumping keyboard motif and 15 year old Jimmy McCulloch played backing guitar. And the bassist? Bijou Drains. A pseudonym of Pete Townshend himself...
Townshend produced the single and it reached number one this week in 1969. The only number one single for a Who member, unless you count Roger Daltrey appearing in the "The One And Only" video (hm, another theme?). It has a place in history; it knocked The Beatles off the top of the charts, and the Fab Four have not been back since. And what was the something in the air at the time? Amongst other things, Apollo 11...
Townshend could not show up for appearances with the impromptu band, named Thunderclap Newman after its jazzist, so Jim Avery did the job instead, and Jimmy's brother Jack took over on sticks to let Keen appear up top. The magic could not be repeated, indeed there never were any plans and the band barely appeared in this form, and TN went their separate ways, Keen into solo, session and production work (including producing the legendary "L.A.M.F" for the New York Dolls, sadly he died in 2002), McCulloch into bands such as Wings (until his drug-induced death in 1979), Newman back into jazz.
Oddly, the band reformed earlier this year...although that's stretching it a little, as it's basically Newman, Pete Townshend's son, Mark Brzezicki of Big Country and a couple of others. Still, more original members than the Sugababes.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 1, 2010 10:59:33 GMT 1
Apollo C. VermouthAs promised...and with a bonus bit of Professor Stanley Unwin, narrator of the Small Faces' gigantic "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake", at the beginning. Deep joy. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Lead singer Neil Innes, main motive force the late Viv Stanshall, poet laureate manque. Trad jazz mickey-takers, like a Temperance Seven on acid. They bagged themselves a slot as the resident musical band on "Do Not Adjust Your Set" - a sort of proving ground for future Monty Python stars, and the beginning of the long collaboration between Innes and Eric Idle, which culminated in The Rutles - and gained influential fans in the Beatles. Perhaps they would never have made the charts, had it been for the unexpected success of studio aggregation the New Vaudeville Band. Incidentally, if you ever need evidence to show that the Grammy Awards are the most pathetic excuse for an award ceremony, just point to the fact that in 1966 - the year of Pet Sounds, Aftermath and Revolver - the award for Best Contemporary Song went to the NVB's " Winchester Cathedral" despite it having ceased to be "contemporary" forty years earlier. I wish I had been making that announcement, it would have made legendary television... Thing is, to form the face of the NVB, producer Geoff Stephens approached Stanshall to see whether the Bonzos would be interested, as the music was not dissimilar. Only one of the Bonzos wanted to do it, so he left and the Bonzos ended up being egged on by management to try to score a similar hit. Hence "Urban Spaceman". An experiment that was never repeated. As you will see in the clip, this particular single was produced by Mr Vermouth, a pseudonym for Paul McCartney, more famous perhaps for having a brother in The Scaffold. Parlophone would not allow McCartney to produce under his own name for another label, hence the paper-thin deception; the Beatles were quite keen on pseudonyms, George being the Angelo Mysterioso when appearing with Cream, John being Dr Winston O'Boogie when guesting with Elton John and the Ramones being named after another of Paul's pseudonyms. A quick McCartney-related bonus track: The Frog Chorus...who were actually the King's Singers and St Paul's Cathedral Choir. The former an ever-changing group of a capella singers, formed at King's College, Cambridge, in 1968; the latter, well, obvious really. (For all the criticism this gets, as a video it knocks spots off most others; especially that over-rated line-dancing that is Thriller.)
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Post by raliverpool on Jul 3, 2010 12:28:06 GMT 1
This is a truly magnificent and informative thread.
Am I the only one who thinks Paul McCartney & the Frog Chorus - We All Stand Together was denied of the 1984 Xmas #1 spot by two inferior singles?; whilst I regard Ebony & Ivory & Mull of Kintyre as musical nadirs for the melodic ex-Beatle; I think the concept and application of We All Stand Together is the work of a godlike genius.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 3, 2010 14:06:32 GMT 1
I rate the Frog Song well above Last Christmas, but I think the Band Aid one is truly a classic and would be worthy of sales even without the all-star agglomeration. Then again I'm a big U-Vox/Boomtown Rats fan so it's not surprising I'd like the result of their songwriters working together.
The really robbed record was the one at number four, though...talk about exalted company for the Toy Dolls. That top ten featured seven acts who had multiple number ones in the UK and/or USA, Band Aid, and Ray Parker Jr, who had one of the biggest hits of all time.
Another one coming up, when I can work out which one to go with.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 3, 2010 22:41:17 GMT 1
The Cockroaches
This is cheating a bit, as it's more a name change than a pseudonym, but I couldn't resist including it. Besides which The Cockroaches was a name used by the Stones on occasion, hence this band choosing their monicker.
The story is simple enough; three Field brothers (John, Paul and, er, Tony), and their mates Jeff, Phil and another Tony. Formed in Sydney in the late 1970s and purveyors of Aussie MOR that the likes of John Farnham did so, erm...let's just say they did it.
They had a fairly mundane chart career down under, sort of on the level of someone like Amazulu; the above song was their sole top ten single. In 1988 Paul's infant daughter died. This caused a big strain on the group, but also provided a spark of inspiration. Although by 1991 The Cockroaches had disbanded, Tony Field had investigated the death of his niece and ended up studying child upbringing part-time at university. It gave him some ideas of how to make education fun for pre-schoolers and teamed up with Jeff, roadie Greg and another mate to form a band. And brothers John and Paul were also involved with promotion and songwriting for this new, sort of Cockroaches 2.0 outfit.
What did they come up with?
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 4, 2010 14:18:16 GMT 1
Geoff Stephens recruited Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band to go on tour as The New Vaudeville Band because the studio version was just session musicians, and Bob Kerr joined the tour with some others like Tristram the 7th Earl of Cricklewood. Great for a band though to put both Cricklewood and Finchley Central on the map. I have an office right opposite Finchley Central station.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 5, 2010 17:08:51 GMT 1
Yes, Kerr was the Bonzo who became a Vaudevillian. Limited internet access this week, so I will pick up a few more from the weekend, probably.
Incidentally those who like the Bonzos/NVB might like to try out The Temperance Seven, not dissimilar sounding or in outlook, who had some jazz hits a few years before. Their shtick was that each one of them had something unusual as part of their penguin suits, like a tam o'shanter or a fez. Same sort of whimsy, which extended to the name - one under the eight, as opposed to the very intemperate one over it.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 10, 2010 18:33:49 GMT 1
The Dukes Of Stratosphear
Sir John Johns, The Red Curtain, Lord Cornelius Plum and E.I.E.I. Owen. Masters of late 1960s psychedelia but who somehow slipped through the cracks. Only rediscovered in 1985 when an EP of material titled "25 O'Clock" was released in 1985. The clue perhaps was that its release date was April Fool's Day...
Uncle Alfred had invented a gold and silver 25 hour clock. The problem was that the Moles from the Ministry of Time were trying to uncover it to prevent the whole day being ruined. So Uncle Alfred buried it somewhere, and then forgot. Hence he brought in the Dukes of the Stratosphear to try to find it before the Moles did. However, they needed the assistance of a loyal band of fans, who could follow the clues in songs from the Dukes and dig it up for real if they could solve them first. (This sort of thing was all the rage in the 1980s.)
At least that was one idea, and there are hints of the storyline in DoS material. But the real thing about it was that the whole idea was cooked up by producer John Leckie and XTC's Andy Partridge when they were getting fed up trying to produce an album for Mary Margaret O'Hara. With some free time, Partridge knocked up some Beatles pastiches - fitting, given that XTC were often claimed in the posh music media to be the Fab Four's spiritual successors - and Leckie produced demo tracks. Partridge took the idea to Virgin, who gave him £5,000 to do something with; and with the rest of the XTC mob they produced firstly the EP and then a full length album, Psionic Psunspot, which, embarrassingly, proved more popular than the regular XTC releases...
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 11, 2010 18:40:09 GMT 1
The treasure hunt idea was meant to be supported by videos directed by Godley & Creme. Which segues neatly into...
The Ohio Express
You think it's hard enough tracing the Sugababes? Try following this lot. Indeed it could be argued they did not exist.
Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffrey Katz were producers working at Cameo-Parkway Records, who churned out formulaic bubblegum pop under the name Super K Productions. Quite often they had genuine bands to work with (e.g. The 1910 Fruitgum Company), but for odd tracks that nobody picked up on, or for which they fancied the readies themselves, they invented the name The Ohio Express, as a sort of brand for whichever session musicians were producing whichever song they were working with at the time.
The first band to masquerade under the name of The Ohio Express was Brooklyn band The Rare Breed, who released an early version of "Beg Steal And Borrow" - later a New Seekers hit - under their own name, and flopped. Super K were not undaunted; they just re-pressed it under the name The Ohio Express and had a decent US hit with it. Big advantage for Super K was that they owned the rights to the Ohio Express name...
To promote the record, Ohio band Sir Timothy & The Royals became the frontmen for The Ohio Express, and would probably have become the band full time, had it not been for the bankruptcy of Cameo-Parkway. Super K were signed up to Buddah Records (home of Melanie Safka inter alios) and songwriter Joey Levine prepared a demo with staff musicians of "Yummy Yummy Yummy" for the new signings to work on. Buddah liked the demo so much, they released it as is, and had a transatlantic smash...
For the next few records, The Ohio Express was the touring band promoting singles Levine wrote and sang for. Then Levine quit over a royalties dispute (and became one of the leading jingle-writers in the States - recently he has jingled a Budweiser campaign), and the hits dried up. There was one very minor hit post-Levine in the US for the Express; "Sausolito", the track above, which got to number 86 in 1969. The connexion with Godley & Creme? Well, one of Super K's songwriters was ex-Mindbender Graham Gouldman, who convinced the production duo that it would be cheaper for him to get some friends together to record his songs in the UK rather than getting session musicians in the US. He brought in fellow Mindbender Eric Stewart, a musician friend from school and one of his friends in turn; Kevin Godley and Lol Creme...
Their frantic sessions saw releases under other Super K names like Crazy Elephant and even as Freddie & The Dreamers (with Garrity dubbed on later) as well as the Ohio Express, before Gouldman went back to the States to finish up working with Super K. The remaining three had studio time and experience together, and so dashed off "Neanderthal Man" under the name Hotlegs, which became an unexpected hit. Before long, they had success bringing Neil Sedaka back to the limelight, Gouldman re-joined, and at Jonathan King's insistence (see? Everything is linked to everything else) they took the name 10cc. But the first 10cc hit was under this mass pseudonym.
As an aside, "Yummy Yummy Yummy", the Ohio Express' one UK hit, was mentioned in Monty Python's Flying Circus, in the "How Not To Be Seen" sketch, credited to Jackie Charlton & The Tonettes...does that count as a pseudonym2?
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 12, 2010 13:48:47 GMT 1
Really enjoying this thread vas. The Ohio Express story is fascinating. And I didn't know about XTC's extra-curricula activities either.
Keep 'em coming please.
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Post by raliverpool on Jul 12, 2010 19:25:28 GMT 1
The Dukes of Stratosphear = the greatest 60s band ever to emerge in the 1980s.
Indeed Tears For Fears Roland Orzabal was quite open about the fact that Sowing The Seeds Of Love was inspired by the Dukes; and the Stone Roses chose John Leckie to produce their debut album due to his work with this outfit.
The Dukes video to The Mole From The Ministry has to be seen (below) because it is a pure Magical Mystery Tour homage.
Also Swindon's finest other extra curricular work included The Three Wise Men; The Colonel & dub artist Mr. Partridge.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 12, 2010 19:50:26 GMT 1
Don't have that many more for the moment, unfortunately, but doubtless more will come to mind in due course. I'm not bothering with the DJs on the 133 House Artistes thread as their names were themselves, really, rather than hiding something else. For those who like the Stratosphear videos, which should be everybody, their collected works were reissued last year on the "Chips From The Chocolate Fireball" CD. In the meantime, and inspired (in part) by St Etienne becoming Cola Boy to avoid alienating their fans... Kokomo...Jimmy Wisner did it 30 years before. Basically Grieg's Piano Concerto, by Grieg, without Andrew Preview, but with a honkytonk piano played using hammers to give it a primitive sound. A bit of a departure for the classically-trained Wisner, who had moved into a more orthodox form of jazz with his self-named trio in the late 1950s, resident backing band for crooners who happened to tour through Philadelphia. Evidently he was worried about alienating his jazz audience and sought a release of this particular cut under the name Kokomo, a city in Indiana; the name "Asia Minor" for the track coming from it being in the key of A minor. Self-released, as none of the major labels were interested, it sold so quickly that Wisner's regular label Felsted (the jazz arm of Decca) picked it up and had a top ten hit Stateside on their hands - the label's biggest hit. Bit more modest in the UK, but still in the charts. The success of this caused Wisner to be signed up as a songwriter and producer; future releases under the Kokomo name lacked the same level of success, but he knew how to pen a tune, and his greatest achievement came when his "Don't Throw Your Love Away" became a number one for The Searchers in 1964. Wisner continued working in music for some time, but seems to have been retired for the last 20 years or so.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 13, 2010 19:38:45 GMT 1
Sananda Maitreya
Doesn't really belong here, but as there are no videos for a genuine pseudonym this will do. Terence Trent D'Arby had had an unconventional popstar background, but one which became oddly fashionable in the 1980s and 1990s - he was in the US Army in Europe (similar to Turbo B from Snap! and Shaggy). D'Arby kept going AWOL to record in Germany with his band The Touch and was eventually dismissed - only to burst onto the scene with some prime slices of pop soul, almost an overnight sensation, and one that proved to be just as successful in the States as he was in Europe.
At the start of his burst of hits, he adopted the pseudonym The Incredible E.G. O'Reilly, under which he remixed or produced his own tracks, as well as recording a one-off single "The Birth Of Maudie" under that name (it wasn't successful, although probably more interesting than TTDA output - a sort of blend of Jon Bon Jovi and Ladysmith Black Mambazo).
Then it started to go a bit wrong. The Incredible E.G.O. seemed to take over; second album Neither Fish Nor Flesh was panned for being pretentious and over-indulgent. Worse, he was excoriated for a publicity campaign that suggested D'Arby was the Second Coming (that was the Stone Roses, obviously).
It took three years for D'Arby to recover from that, and recover he did, the well received Symphony Or Damn being a big UK success - but fourth album Violator returned to the celestial theme, with D'Arby this time portrayed as an angel, and it bombed. Label Columbia and D'Arby had lost patience with each other and parted company.
On leaving Columbia, D'Arby had an epiphany. D'Arby was dead. His soul crushed by the machinations of major labels. He had been transformed. He was indeed an angel. The one who walks with Light among the sons of God. Sananda Maitreya.
And apparently this lightness with theogonal creatures manifests itself via Post-Millennium Rock. See above. D'Arby/Maitreya moved to Milan a few years ago and under his new name he has been recording ever since, with frequent free releases via his website. Needless to say without chart success, but, frankly, much of it sounds conventional enough to garner decent sales figures...
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Post by cosman on Jul 13, 2010 21:03:52 GMT 1
Fascinating thread and interesting read. It's a shame you don't have any more for the present time.
You could always mention Larry Lurex..
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 13, 2010 21:54:56 GMT 1
And Lieutenant Lush, Tom & Jerry, The Pendletones, The Primes and so on...they don't really suit the theme in the same way, as they're just names that were used for a while, rather than being in some way used to disguise the identity of someone else in the poppamundi. I've got some that will keep me going to the end of the week, and of course for others you can pop onto Shireblogger's far more comprehensive 133 House Artists thread.
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Post by vastar iner on Jul 14, 2010 21:50:57 GMT 1
Spitting ImageThe Gibb brothers are known for their jolly sense of humour. One may remember them storming out of the Clive Anderson show on the basis that he extorted some payback for them plugging whatever it is they had out at the time. And there was an earlier instance of them finding something not very funny. The Heebeegeebies. From left to right on the first picture, Philip Pope (the musical one), Angus Deayton (yes, him) and Michael Fenton Stevens. The three of them had done the whole Oxbridge revue thing in the late 1970s and later, together with Helen Atkinson-Wood and the late Geoffrey Perkins, concocted the tremendous and underrated Radio Active, a radio station parody that went out on Radio 4 back in the mid-80s; it was translated to BBC2 as KYTV. But before they started on Radio Active, they had been The Heebeegeebies. They had a surprise top five in Australia, but no success in Britain, missing the top 75 with their releases. Even though they diversified into parodying other acts, such as Status Quid (some things never change). Anyhoo, Pope and Fenton Stevens carried on with their television work, and Pope became the standard songwriter and arranger for latex satire Spitting Image; Fenton Stevens joined with many other actors in providing voices for the series (including Harry Enfield and Chris Barrie). And one of the songs Pope produced and arranged, sung by Fenton Stevens, was "The Chicken Song", a Black Lace parody. I remember watching the episode on which this song featured over the closing credits and, yes, I was humming it for weeks. The consensus at school was that if someone released it as a single it would be a big hit. Come May 1986, someone DID release it as a single, and it WAS a big hit. OK, I'm stretching the theme hugely, but given that this song was the output of two-thirds of the Hee Bee Gee Bees, and they were not acknowledged under their real names (or their group name) for deliberate reasons, I'm counting it. The remaining third of the Spitting Image line-up is actress/impressionist/Paul McCartney cousin Kate Robbins, who did the voice for Fergie (amongst others) in SI and who stood in for Atkinson-Wood once in Radio Active, but who also had nearly hit the top of the charts five years earlier with the ghastly " More Than In Love" - helped by her appearing in Crossroads singing it for obscure storyline reasons (using the words "Crossroads" and "storyline" in the same sentence looks a bit odd) - and who the year before had been third in Eurovision as one of Prima Donna. Let's just consider it as analogous to the Sugababes with Heidi replacing Siobhan. All three of the SI personnel are familiar faces on telly, Philip Pope was probably most known for being Tony Angelino - the wock & woll singer - in Only Fools And Horses although he's done loads of other stuff besides; Fenton Stevens also appeared in OFAH as the holiday representative in the one where Rodney had to pretend to be 15, and he still does lots of other bits and dabs. Last time I saw Kate Robbins she was appearing with her brother Ted in "The Legend Of Dick And Dom" as a haunted house con duo (she is also the mother of Emily Atack, who, as I am reliably informed, is also an actress), but she was also one of the key voices for "Dead Ringers". (Incidentally, The Chicken Song was written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor of Red Dwarf fame; one of the great mysteries of popdom is why they didn't have Clare Grogan sing the theme for that prog and release it as a 7 inch...)
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