|
Post by raliverpool on Nov 18, 2017 8:47:23 GMT 1
^ A brilliant track by the underrated 1960s Wiltshire group .. There were a handful of singles around the turn of that decade which incorporated African & South American world beat.
So here are a couple of examples from acts you would not expect to do that sort of thing:
Neil Diamond - Soolaimon (1970 USA #30 & Aus #23)
Bee Gees - Ioio (1970 UK #49, USA #94, Aus #14)
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Nov 20, 2017 21:06:45 GMT 1
I really like this one, but it's part of that vogue from the late eighties of sticking a rapper in there apropos of nothing. And it's a particular contrast in this one, as Sinead's bit is a subdued and hypnotic vocal almost buried in an industrial take on shoegaze; then MC Lyte comes in and it's a completely different thing, like the radio picks up a signal from the wrong station. I'm not complaining, it shouldn't work, but it does.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Dec 8, 2017 22:26:54 GMT 1
After The Specials split, Fun Boy Three scored a run of decently-sized chart hits with a poppier sound. So what would the remnant Specials come up with? More ska? Even more pop? A deliberate challenge to FB3's chart supremacy?
No. They came up with perhaps the least commercial single ever released by a chart-topping act.
To start with it's Rhoda Dakar telling the tale of a date. Which gets gradually worse and worse, until it ends in sexual assault. One of the most harrowing song endings ever.
Originally a Bodysnatchers song, which Chrysalis refused to let them record, pushing them towards "Let's Do Rocksteady". Ironically this proved the bigger hit.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Dec 17, 2017 23:04:06 GMT 1
Time for a Chrimbo novelty...
...remember when Bart Simpson got Stampy? Well, Gayla Peevey's plaintive plea for a hippopotamus for Christmas nearly went the same way. Because the publicity from this single led to a campaign to buy a hippo. Fortunately, perhaps, the campaign was led by Oklahoma City Zoo, taking advantage of their little hometown heroine, and they raised $3,000 to buy a hippo. It was ceremonially handed to Peevey at the zoo, and she then generously donated it to OKZ.
|
|
|
Post by raliverpool on Dec 23, 2017 11:47:14 GMT 1
I heard this on Radio 2's Sound Of the Sixties with Tony Blackburn this morning ..... a timely reminder that cash in singles are generally a bad idea; and that decade had its own number of stinkers .... This Xmas 1962 single sounds like the backing track and lead vocals are taken from two separate recordings.....
|
|
|
Post by Mic1812 on Dec 26, 2017 22:29:49 GMT 1
After The Specials split, Fun Boy Three scored a run of decently-sized chart hits with a poppier sound. So what would the remnant Specials come up with? More ska? Even more pop? A deliberate challenge to FB3's chart supremacy? No. They came up with perhaps the least commercial single ever released by a chart-topping act. To start with it's Rhoda Dakar telling the tale of a date. Which gets gradually worse and worse, until it ends in sexual assault. One of the most harrowing song endings ever. Originally a Bodysnatchers song, which Chrysalis refused to let them record, pushing them towards "Let's Do Rocksteady". Ironically this proved the bigger hit. Indeed a harrowing song. I cant remember if this was played at all on the chart show and cut short or not played at all.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Jan 12, 2018 0:29:37 GMT 1
To remind everyone that the music industry is not after the next big thing, but the last big thing - something which is proved by every single f***ing track in the charts today being exactly the f***ing same...
...Rory Bremner hit the top 20 with a series of impressions, so Virgin signed up Phil Cool to follow in his footsteps. But instead of a variety of impressions he just focussed on his Rolf Harris. Which was blimmin' brilliant - as was this cover.
Not sure though why this did nothing at all in the charts. There was a lot of dross in 1986 and this at the very least stood out. More to the point Cool was a fairly big name on television at the time, he had a TV series Cool It!, and if Nick Berry could make the charts with something that sounded worse than smallpox then surely enough people would have bought this to get it into the charts.
It's also very unlikely ever to make any airplay ever again now...
|
|
|
Post by raliverpool on Jan 13, 2018 11:55:36 GMT 1
One of the worst things about streaming, is that it appears to have killed off the novelty single. Such as this late 2017 single which David Byrne gave approval to which lets face it is vastly superior to that Ed Sheeran Xmas #1 ......
Swedemason - Trump vs Talking Heads
|
|
|
Post by Laurence on Jan 14, 2018 23:27:13 GMT 1
Isn’t that Big Shaq monstrosity a novelty single? it’d be scary if it was serious effort at good music.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Jan 24, 2018 0:31:11 GMT 1
Definitely a novelty single. Raises a smile.
Has any artist seen their legacy as plundered as Elvis? In 1980 a box set of all sorts of odds and ends came out*, and included this version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight", recorded in Vegas in 1969 and seeing Elvis crack up in the middle. I've seen two reasons for this; one is he saw someone in the front row remove a syrup; the other is that the bizarre electric saw backing vocals caught him off guard.
The backing vocalist? Cissie Houston.
Astonishingly this got into the charts.
* called Elvis Aron Presley, but generally known as the Silver Box. Elvis memorabilia prices incidentally are falling through the floor as the Elvis collectors are all dying off and flooding the market. I wonder if the same will happen to The Beatles in a decade...
|
|
SheriffFatman
Member
Been spending most our lives living in the Cheshire countryside
Posts: 10,949
|
Post by SheriffFatman on Jan 24, 2018 14:12:38 GMT 1
Inviting your girlfriend over to your place, drinking too much until you're so offensive she leaves, and then hearing the next day that on her way home she died in a car crash, is perhaps not the most obvious source of material for a catchy pop hit. It's happened though, and it actually reached number 6 in the charts in 1978.
The story is based around the latest technology at the time, telephone answering machines. The chorus is the girlfriend's answering machine message.
For some God forsaken reason, when I was growing up this was one of my Dad's favourite songs. The tragedy at its heart seemed to be lost on him, I think he just liked the cheerful chorus, and he played it a lot. I still bear the scars.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Jan 25, 2018 0:22:17 GMT 1
One interesting facet of this single is that it was Evans' first hit for 16 years, and his biggest hit. Not many have come back from such a long gap with fresh material that is more successful than their previous go.
|
|
|
Post by raliverpool on Jan 25, 2018 21:41:38 GMT 1
Arguably David Bowie's most bizarre single (turned into a belated hit thanks to then Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn who did not like his then highly successful Ziggy Stardust persona):
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Feb 3, 2018 10:38:11 GMT 1
There was a bit of a vogue for a while of beating-up old choons. Things like "Ten Green Bottles" (Pete Chester & The Consulates) and "Greensleeves" (The Flee-Rekkers) were turned into more contemporary sounds and became hit singles.
The most successful act that focussed on this sub-genre was The Piltdown Men, who had three hits with Neolithic-entitled singles. This one for instance is basically the William Tell Overture given sax appeal.
Their one hit in their native US though was an original composition:
It's just that over here the DJs flipped it to the b-side, a take-off of "Old Macdonald Had A Farm"...
Perhaps surprisingly The Piltdown Men sort of had a couple of top ten hits in the US. The band was started by two members of The Four Preps, whose "26 Miles To Catalina" topped out at no. 2 in Billboard in 1958.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Feb 8, 2018 0:26:56 GMT 1
Lorraine Chase appeared in an advert for Campari as a mysterious dark beauty who had an accent so Cockney you could use it to cast the Bow Bells. The punchline being that she was not wafted in from Paradise, but from Luton Airport. Songwriters Paul Curtis and John Worsley threw together a knock-off tune and offered it to Chase, but the money on offer was non-existent. So dancer Bea Rowley took lead vox and scored a minor hit. Deena Payne (the one on the left) ended up starring with Chase in Emmerdale 30 years later; and had also been a dancer in Rock Follies.
|
|
|
Post by raliverpool on Feb 8, 2018 21:33:52 GMT 1
When you look at all the overated, plain dull (Bon Jovi inducted this year over Kate Bush & Radiohead = stupid stupid Americans) & minor rock acts in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame .... and yet this seminal group who have inspired countless subsequent acts are missing (plus their back story is second only to Badfinger in the unlucky, hard luck, they were robbed stakes) here is the New York girlgroup responsible for a number of great musical melodramas with unconventional lyrics which would leave the average Ed Sheeran, Adele or Sam Smith fan utter confused ....
So here is a USA #6 hit about the tale of a teenage girl who threatens to run away if her mother won't let her do as she pleases. The girl is advised not to leave home by another girl (the lead character) who did the same thing and now regrets it. When the lead girl fell in love with a boy, her mother told her to break up with him because she was too young to be in love. Strangely enough, after she left home, she forgot the boy completely, and her mind filled with memories of her caring mother. It's too late for the lead girl to return home because her mother died of a broken heart.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Feb 8, 2018 21:48:09 GMT 1
Jeff Barry said there were only two records he ever worked on that he knew instantly were no. 1 hits. And he was right both times. One was "Chapel Of Love" by The Dixie Cups, and the other was "Leader Of The Pack" by The Shangri-Las.
The above is a great single as the first few seconds make you think it's going to be totally different from what it is. There's a jukebox musical somewhere in the Shangri-La oeuvre. There was never a better girl group at selling melancholy. Their voices were suffused in it. You could call them character singers; but what character singers. The Joe Pesci or Jack Palance of the girl group world.
|
|
SheriffFatman
Member
Been spending most our lives living in the Cheshire countryside
Posts: 10,949
|
Post by SheriffFatman on Feb 13, 2018 1:19:43 GMT 1
I wonder how many records have ever made the charts with no artist credit? Singles that are not officially by anyone? Sounds unlikely, but this reached number 14 in May 1993, and I own the 7", but for the life of me I can't find an artist credit on it anywhere.
I'm pretty sure that on the charts at the time it was listed as being by Jungle Book Cast. On the OCC chart it's now listed just as Jungle Book. Wikipedia's various pages about the film and the songs from it lead me to the conclusion that the actual singers are Phil Harris and Bruce Reitherman. Still, they don't get any credit, and neither does anyone else, it's just The Jungle Book Groove.
Are there any other hit singles which are not by anyone?
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Feb 13, 2018 22:10:26 GMT 1
The Big Ben chimes, as mentioned a bit earlier in the thread. The Two Minute Silence, perhaps? Given the CD of JBG... ...that looks to me to be "Jungle Book Groove" by Jungle Book Groove.
|
|
vastar iner
Member
I am the poster on your wall
Posts: 17,467
|
Post by vastar iner on Feb 14, 2018 22:45:45 GMT 1
Motorhead meet The Nolan Sisters.
We need a lot more of this sort of thing, really. Little Mix with Ozzy Osbourne.
|
|