Millionaire

This was my favourite song when I got married and so is dedicated to my wife because she loves a millionaire (or at least someone who she makes feel like one).

Beyond Good and Evil

I fancy myself as forward looking and living in the now but worry that music might be going backwards. The Guardian reported on an academic study that proved pop music uses progressively less varied melodic variation, rhythmn and timbre. Effectively this means that it does all sound the same. Kids now seem to accept this, unfortunately. This record is 34 years old, why are young people now not wanting to be as challenging as this? Also, look at their clothes. I always thought that Spandau Ballet ripped their look off the Pop Group. Here's the proof. 

There's a new girl in town

Previous song was from the There's a New Girl in Town EP and here is the New Girl doing her own version of the Wayward Wind. She's not exactly Gogi Grant but a surprisingly deep voice. Like Jim Reeves. Lily, you might like this. It looks a bit like your bedroom.

The Wayward Wind

My sister reminded me about this. So this is dedicated to her.

Sombrero Club 1962

After the Godz, another all time greatest group ever are Toots and the Maytals. Here they are at the Sombrero Club (no idea where that is) in 1962 backed by Byron Lee and his Dragonaires. Exciting vocals and some great dancing. This is brilliant, actually.

The Whiffenpoof Song

One last blast from the Godz. This was released as a single in the hope that it would compete with Strawberry Fields Forever or Good Vibrations. The Godz appeared to sincerely believe that their ur-music (and I have only posted their more musical stuff, some of it really is tuneless) had the potential to be widely successful. Gentlemen songsters off on a spree, doomed from here to eternity.

Soon the Moon

The previous video had poor sound so this is what the Godz could sound like properly recorded. A song of great depth and mystery that stays in your head. The less imaginative might have had a three note bass part to reflect the three syllables of the song’s repeated title. I think this is what Pink Floyd wanted to sound like but could not cut themselves loose from what was considered musical. No such qualms for the unfettered Godz who set the controls for the heart of the dissonance and achieve lift off. 

The Godz

I fancy myself a musical primitivist but The Godz take the primitivist biscuit. The ne plus ultra of primitivism, Easy to characterise as untutored and ill disciplined. Absolutely rubbish and completely brilliant at the same time. Barely photographed, hardly written about, this most obscure group sometimes seems not to exist, to be an invention of another fictitious Lester Bangs article. I cannot remember their names and know nothing of their biography. But they did exist and thanks to You Tube here they are in 1966 sitting in their apartment practicising their hopeless music and then having a party and dancing with girls and then playing a show. I was once asked what other time I would have liked to live in and I said there was none. But perhaps I might like to go to 1966 when Godz walked the earth.

Everybody's Talkin'

Cut to Chicago, more Bongwater. I like how Ann Magnuson manages to be funny and sad, poignant and telling all at the same time. I'm off to the lakeshore to help suicides.

You Don't Love Me Yet

 
Difficult to bill in Radio Times, I would have thought. Bob Weir, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Ann Magnuson, April March, Kramer plus assorted others introduced by David Sanborn and performing a song by Roky Erickson.

Me and Parvati

There is nothing by this group that I do not like and hearing this makes me want to hear everything else by them in one sitting. Erudite lyrics, simple yet complex melodies, pleasant arrangements, singalongability. They should be the most covered band in history, apart from The Beatles, like. Good selection of Diwali cards cut up to make the video.

The Cry of Eugene

Always liked this. Pretty song and the backing track sounds, in places, like it was thrown together by the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Dig the visuals, took me ages in the bath with a straw and some fairy liquid. Pass the spacedust. I think I'm Owsley.

Baby, Believe Me

This is the actor Kurt Russell singing. Not very funky, stiff white disco but the chorus is catchy. I think Morrissey should cover this. He should dress up like Elvis in the video also.

You Got Style

I fancy myself a stylist. I like the line about "your hair cut a half an inch shorter than mine" and I like how they get out of the corner of finding a rhyme for "class" in the chorus. The whole thing zips along and carries the optimism and joy of the sixties. This is what the people who sell records describe as a "mod dancer".

Walking In Different Circles

Sometimes the most inane of songs can have a resonance. Sometimes a phrase, whether musical or lyrical, can seem like the most profound expression of art. Then again, it might just be that people in real life at times of heightened emotion speak in the cliches of pop songs. Plus the fact that pop usually addresses the commonest of experiences. Who hasn't been in the situation described here?

In Jim's Garage

I fancy this song as hilarious (well, funny). A parody that also works as an example of what it is parodying. Makes me think of the sort of thing that Zappa would have done had he been genuinely funny. Sound effects by Lee Perry. In fact I wish Lee Perry had produced this, or done a dub of it at least.

Sweater

This song sounds like it should be by a cartoon band but it is not. It is by a real singer but it feels like a breeze on a hot day. Soon be summer.

Seventeen Ain't Young

Another song by a cartoon. The concept of authenticity in pop is a trick on teenagers (and their elders who really should know better). No one in pop is authentic, by definition. This band are as for real as any there has been. But seventeen is still quite young, really.

The Bells Part 2

By way of contrast with the previous post, this is the Phil Ochs original. Almost a different song.

The Bells

I fancy myself a campanologist and can often be found polishing my bell. Here is a sixties mash-up: Phil Ochs song, lyrics by Edgar Allen Poe in his Tin Pan Alley days, sung by future members of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Nice.

Can't You Hear My Heartbeat

I fancy myself a medical authority and would be surprised to encounter unaided audio evidence of a beating heart in the fashion envisaged by Marianne Faithful. And I am sure 9 out 10 Doctors would agree.

I Want to Hold Your Hand

Amazing Dylan/Stones collaboration covering Beatles. Seminal sixties interface thing, like the collision of galaxies or Bobby Davro's Copy Cats.

Kelly

I fancy myself abstemious but this is the most drunken sounding song I have heard that is not by people who are actually drunk. Then, there's this poor soul. To be fair, though, that looks like quite a steep hill he is attempting to ascend.

Hold the Night

More from Kenny Young, the American McCartney. I could fill this blog up just with Kenny Young songs. I could not find this on You Tube so have made a video with the soundtrack from my own scratchy copy of this record. Reparata and the Delrons do a nice version of this.

Do You Have A Soul?

Speaking of a big tune, the chorus on this is approximately the size of Jupiter. Its gravity sucks in all nearby objects. One from the most muscular of beat groups.

The Kissin' Game

This is a big tune, especially the "I got a surprise" bit. The bass drives it along like a superanimated Peter Hook and the whole thing seems to get louder as it goes along and the musicians get more excited. Pop the way it should be.

To Be or Not To Be, Babe

That is the question. Aye, there's the rub.

Judy is a Punk

When I get 5 minutes peace I am going to work out how to play this. Judy is a punk. On a piano.

A Frightful Situation

Joan Greenwood again. It's actually Mrs Brown's Beautiful Daughter Carol. Extraordinary diction this woman has. Everyone should speak like this all the time. Or at least one day a year.

Don't Go Out into the Rain (You're Gonna Melt)

I fancy myself an authority on corporeal matters and I am pretty sure that anyone is highly unlikely to melt in the rain no matter how sweet they are. But I am not Kenny Young who is the genius behind this and at keast one other song coming up. This got covered a few times but this is Kenny and his mates with the peerless original.

Will There Be Any Yodellin' In Heaven.

An important question asked here in musical form. I do enjoy voices in harmony.

Let's Do the Waltz

Supposedly comic but actually more inventive than it perhaps needs to be.

Come Follow, Follow Me.

I fancy myself a cinephile but I have neither seen nor heard of the film from which this song comes. It's powerful stuff - faux cockney accent, kids chorus, boom ta ra lang lyrics. Sorts the boys from the men and the women from the girls.

Thing

I fancy myself an advocate but I doubt I could justify the existence of this record on anything other than pure pleasure grounds. It really has no artistic merit whatsoever. I like the girl singer's voice and accent and the comic sounds made by the synthesiser. I have a memory of seeing this on Top of the Pops illustrated by cartoon drawings of the thing doing what is described in the song. Performed by Edwina Biglet and the Miglets. Whatever happened to them?

Class 4 show how theatrical rock should be done.

I had no idea that this song was so popular in Sweden but that is what the internet is for. This is wonderful and rules over Snow Partol's version. I hope class 4 do not mind it being posted here.

Jag är en Astronaut

Jag gillar mig själv en lingvist. Som utlovat här är tidigare inlägg på svenska.

I Am An Astronaut

I fancy myself an astronaut and so does Ricky Wilde. I have put up some of the good stuff from the Lost Jukebox and it is time for the harder stuff. A stern constitution is needed to stomach some of the following material and all persons are advised to proceed with caution. I like the lyrics to this (Dad's away and Mum's asleep conjures up a picture of neglected children in just 5 words). Ricky's performance here is so powerful it has inspired covers from Snow Patrol and a version in Swedish, which I will post next.