"One Poor Correspondent"

Attention All Followers of "One Poor Correspondent"

2010-01-27T17:41:00.002-07:00

I am part of a new group blog called Debris Slide over at www.debris-slide.blogspot.com. Hope you'll join us over there.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

2009-08-28T17:12:00.003-06:00

This is the one thousandth post in the history of "One Poor Correspondent." It is with very mixed emotions that I feel compelled to announce that it will also be the last.

The posts on this site have dwindled down to a precious few in recent months, and it's not as if the lack of quantity has been accompanied by a surge in quality. I don't want this to be one of those blogs that ends up getting a post every three weeks, and everyone starts to wonder whether it's gone defunct or not until they stop caring and no longer click on it at all. The problem is that I have at times found myself running out of things to write about, and more importantly, I feel like I have no longer have sufficient time to devote to it.

As some of you may know, I am a freelance writer and editor, and as Bruce Springsteen put it, lately there ain't been much work on account of the economy. When I do have work, I don't have the time to adequately fill up OPC each day; when I don't have work, I feel like I ought to focus on getting more paying assignments. So I have decided to start putting the creative energy and time I put toward this blog toward more serious and remunerative undertakings.

One of those undertakings is putting together a book proposal based on the one-hit wonders that have been such an important part of this site to me. (If any of my friends in publishing would care to assist in getting that project off the ground, please feel free to do so.) There were other things I was planning to write about, like the one-two punch of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (originally done by Johnny Rivers) and "Wichita Lineman," or what Mick Jagger's lack of enunciation has cost us (I just the other day noticed, in "Turd on the Run" [nice title, Mick], which I have heard fifty times, that he sings, "Fell down to my knees and I hung onto your pants/But you just kept on runnin' while they ripped off in my hands," which cracked me up). I promised Joe I would write a post about Jim Stafford, and never got around to it. Yet I found the time to write a glowing assessment of Bread. Go figure.

I probably would have shut this thing down long ago if not for the incredible support and ideas coming from my readers. Just this past week, someone named Indiana Joe piped in to this thread to tell us all that Bob Seger has said it was in Rochester, Minnesota, where he stopped in a bar to have a brew. A special thanks to MJN, and Rob, and Kinky Paprika (you should go read his blog), and Joe, and Gavin (his too), and Volly (hers too), and Innocent Bystander, and Doug from Denver, and Marshall (and pike), and Mark Lerner, and jb (his too), and Scraps (his too), and Alex (my goodness, his too), and repoz, and everyone else who commented here. (The comments to that recent Leonard Cohen thread were almost enough to make me reconsider and keep this thing alive.) I apologize to those I have left out, but rest assured that every single comment was read and appreciated, except the Chinese spammer we had for a while and the anonymous person who wondered why I bothered to blog about music when I was so ignorant about it.

A thousand posts is a respectable body of work, isn't it? At about 500 words a post, that's two bound volumes worth of inanities and Partridge Family trivia. It's been a very enjoyable and educational experience for me, and I hope for you as well.

- Tom Nawrocki, Blogger (ret.)

Oh-Oh

2009-08-28T09:48:00.004-06:00

If you followed pop music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the name "Jimmie Rodgers" wouldn't have signified the Singing Brakeman so much as a folk-pop singer of the same name, born James Frederick Rodgers in Camas, Washington. This Jimmie Rodgers was discovered by Hugo and Luigi at Roulette Records, and almost immediately had a big hit with "Honeycomb," which went to Number One in the fall of 1957.

That was followed by several more Top Ten hits before the decade was out, including "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" and "Oh-Oh, I'm Falling in Love Again." But by 1960, the hits had mostly dried up. Rodgers made a couple of movies (including Monte Hellman's Back Door to Hell, costarring Jack Nicholson) and recorded a couple of dud albums before finally making it back to the pop charts with "It's Over" - which Elvis Presley covered so brilliantly on That's the Way It Is. Rodgers' version - he wrote it, too - peaked at Number 37 in the summer of '66, but hey, it was a hit. He also got a small part in another movie, and looked headed for a comeback.

Then, on December 20, 1967, Jimmie was pulled over by the Los Angeles Police Department. No one to this day is entirely sure why. "Some guy walked up to the window," Rodgers said many years later. "I rolled the window down. He hit me so hard, he broke the skull on my side. I put my arm up, and he broke my arm. I remember laying on the street. He was kicking me and I knew I was hurt real bad. He ran his foot down my leg and took all the skin off my legs.... He drove back and dumped me on the road and this black-and-white pulls up. I could see the feet and I knew it was cops."

Rodgers ended up in the hospital for a year, and needed a metal plate in his head. His career was more or less over, and he became addicted to painkillers. His first wife died. He sued the LAPD, which admitted that an off-duty cop had been involved in the beating, which Rodgers thinks was Mafia-connected. The notoriously mob-riddled Morris Levy had been the head of Roulette lo those many years ago, but why that means someone would have wanted to kill Jimmie Rodgers, I have no idea.

In 1969, Rodgers tried to cut a comeback album, Windmills of Your Mind, with forward-looking material like "Both Sides Now" and Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," but it went nowhere. Eventually, he gave up on the music business altogether.

Jimmie Rodgers is still alive, at the age of 75. Last I heard he was a golf instructor somewhere in the Ozarks. I'm sure he's just happy to be alive.

Here's Jimmie singing his first and biggest hit. I have no idea why he's holding his guitar that way:

Wonder

2009-08-23T22:35:00.002-06:00

Happy birthday to David Gates, the mastermind behind Bread, who turns 69 today. Bread purveyed a variety of music - wimp-pop - that is more or less reviled these days, but they did it far better than anyone else did, and that deserves our respect. Bread's oeuvre is much more satisfying than that of, say, Lobo, and worlds better than the likes of Ambrosia or Gino Vannelli.

The way Gates dis this was by avoiding the pompous self-pity of most wimp rockers, coming across instead as more ruminative about his often-pathetic fate. The basic theme of most Bread hits was to manfully face up to the fact that the woman you loved has become more interested in someone else; this is the idea behind "It Don't Matter to Me," "Aubrey," "Diary," "Everything I Own," "Lost Without Your Love," and probably a few others I'm forgetting. Even in "Baby I'm a-Want You," he is aware of the need to be a-praying that she'll always be a-staying beside him.

To see how these things can be handled badly, one need only listen to Chicago's bombastic "Look Away," maybe the worst Number One hit of all time. But Gates greets these moments with quiet acceptance, which makes them all the more heartbreaking. In "Diary," he ends up wishing for his ex-wife all the sweet things she can find with her new husband, which is probably more than I'd be capable of. It's not even like he's set his sights all that high; in "Aubrey," he sings, "I'd go a million times around the world just to say/She had been mine for a day." For a day!

"Aubrey" to me is the key song in the Bread catalog. In some ways, it's simple-minded - Gates actually rhymes "moon" and "June" - but it's also a gorgeous melody, and his singing, quietly evoking an obsessive memory, is stunning. "And Aubrey was her name/I never knew her, but I loved her just the same/I loved her name": The repetition of "name" echoes like the repetition of a memory you can't shake, and he sinks into a reverie when he sings that last line, wholly convincing himself that even her name had reached a kind of perfection. It is a nice name.

All of Bread's hits came in the short period between 1970 and 1973 (they were like the wimp-rock CCR), except for a brief reunion in 1976 that produced the hit "Lost Without Your Love." On that song Gates sounds like he has just returned from the dentist with a mouth full of novocaine; I would honestly like to know why his tongue sounds so thick. God only knows what was going on there.

Actually, David Gates' birthday is December 11. I just felt like writing about Bread. This, though, is the truth: Telly Savalas went all the way to Number One in the U.K. with a spoken-word cover version of "If." Crazy, huh?

Phrases That Leonard Cohen Got to Rhyme With "Hallelujah" in the Song of the Same Name

2009-08-17T11:38:00.003-06:00

Do ya?

The moonlight overthrew ya

How to shoot at someone who outdrew ya

I used to live alone before I knew ya

Do ya? (again!)

What's it to ya?

I didn't come to fool ya

I Might Be Mistaken

2009-08-10T08:22:00.002-06:00

On the American Top Forty from June 29, 1974, Casey Kasem introduced the latest hit from ZZ Top, a little song called "La Grange," entering the countdown at Number 33. There's only one problem with that: "La Grange" never even reached the Top Forty, peaking at Number 41.

How did this happen? Well, Casey had been invited to appear as a guest star on Hawaii Five-O, which necessitated his being away from the AT40 studios for a few weeks in the summer of 1974. They had a special countdown teed up for the Fourth of July weekend, "Top 40 Acts of the 1970s, So Far," but they tried to cheat the first week by guessing at how the Top Forty would fall that week and recording a show based on those estimates. They got the Number One song right, Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown," but according to my sources, they ended up with only three songs in exactly the right position.

And Casey inadvertently gave ZZ Top their first Top Forty hit. In actuality, the Top wouldn't make the countdown until 1975's "Tush," which went to Number 20.

The Spirit of the Radio

2009-08-05T21:23:00.003-06:00

To my dismay, but not to my surprise, Indie 101.5, Denver's best radio station, closed up shop last week. It's now trying to survive as the online-only Indie303.com, and hey, good luck with that.

What is surprising is what replaced it: 101.5 The Pole, which plays the kind of music you would hear in a strip club. I wish I were kidding about this. Do people go to those places to hear the music? It's like someone expecting baseball fans to tune in to a radio station that played the Mexican Hat Dance and "Charge!"

I'm mostly just listening to oldies stations these days anyway. When I first discovered oldies radio, it was Chicago's Magic 104 in the mid-1980s; I don't know how much earlier than that the format was in existence, although I'm sure Jim Bartlett does. At that point, the finishing line for the format was around 1979. As time has moved on, the oldies format now plays songs from as late as the mid-1980s. They traffic in nostalgia, and people my age - some of them, at least - have fond memories of going to the beach and listening to Bryan Adams and a-Ha. But in order to serve an audience interested in what you might call contemporary nostalgia, they never play anything older than the Beatles. No one has fond musical memories lasting from Bill Haley and the Comets all the way through to John Cougar Mellencamp.

What this has meant, fortunately enough, is that there's now a market for old oldies, going back to the 1950s and 1960s and ending around 1970. We have a station like that (on the AM dial, of course) out here in Denver now, and I listen to it far more than the new-oldies station. I do this not so much to relive my younger days - the first song I remember hearing on the radio is "American Pie," from 1971 - as for the tunes. Unlike most oldies listeners, I like it when I hear a song I haven't heard before.

Yes, I can remember listening to Huey Lewis and the News' "If This Is It." No, I don't particularly care to relive those memories.

Asking for a Ribbing

2009-08-04T16:16:00.002-06:00

In his biography, Moonwalk, Michael Jackson clues us in on the origin of Quincy Jones' nickname. Jones, who famously produced Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller, was known far and wide as Q. This was a result of, Michael tells us, Quincy's well-known love of barbecue.

The Ballad of Faul and Yoko

2009-07-30T20:39:00.004-06:00

I have one more Beatles tidbit for you, taken from the book Revolution in the Head, as have been the Beatles items of the past few days. The book, to tell the truth, is a bit disappointing; it purports to be a musicological look at each recorded Beatles number but ends up spending half its time telling the stories behind the songs and, in the end, isn't really satisfactory on either end.

It does have a neat Beatles timeline, though, which informs us that on November 9, 1966, Paul McCartney crashed his moped while out riding with his buddy Tara Browne. A rumor sprang up that Paul had been decapitated, leading to his being Officially Pronounced Dead. (Browne too would go down for the count just over a month later.)

Shortly thereafter Faul - the False Paul - was enticed to join the Beatles. The other Beatles would have gotten away with the whole thing had they not felt the need to taunt the newbie, making Faul wear a black carnation during the shooting of Magical Mystery Tour and whatnot, just to remind him that he wasn't a real Beatle.

Anyway, it was on that very same day, November 9, 1966, that John Lennon met Yoko Ono at her art exhibit in London. So if you're looking for the day that was the beginning of the end for the Beatles, that would be it.

Birthday Wishes, Eh?

2009-07-30T13:31:00.003-06:00

Canadian pop singer Paul Anka turns 68 today. Anka was a huge star back in the late Fifties when he was just a teenager; "Diana," which he wrote and recorded when the native Ottawan was just 16, went to Number One in the summer of 1957. Before Anka turned 20, he had seven more Top Ten hits, including the Number One "Lonely Boy."

One hit that failed to reach the Top Ten was his spoken-word record "The Teen Commandments," on which he collaborated with George Hamilton IV and Johnny Nash. It topped out at Number 29 early in 1959 and, it says here, consisted of "inspirational talk from the three ABC-Paramount artists." I bet it's a hoot.

Anka's superstardom more or less ended when he turned 20, which is a little sad. He had six more Top Forty hits by 1963, but none of them made the Top Ten. According to Anka, though, he ran into Johnny Carson when he was about to take over The Tonight Show, and Johnny asked him to write some new theme music for him. Anka reworked a song he had written called "Toot Sweet," and the rest is history. He also wrote the English lyrics to "My Way."

Anka made his pop comeback in 1974, when his song "(You're) Having My Baby," a duet with Odia Coates (had her parents really never heard of the word odious? Did she have sisters named Execra and Ignominia?), went to Number One, his first chart-topper in 15 years. A nearly identical version called "I'm Having Your Baby," by the country singer Sunday Sharpe, went to Number 11 on the C&W charts.

There's a street in Ottawa called Paul Anka Drive. In 2008, Anka's second wife was arrested after she smacked him in the head with a piece of ice.

All of Chuck's Children Are Out There Playing His Licks

2009-07-27T15:34:00.004-06:00

As everyone reading this blog already knows, the first lines of the Beatles' "Come Together" are "Here come old flat-top, he come/Grooving up slowly." There is a line in Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" that goes: "Here come a flat-top, he was movin' up with me." Morris Levy, the music industry macher who owned the rights to "You Can't Catch Me," somehow decided that John Lennon had appropriated too much of Chuck's song for "Come Together" and sued.

When I first heard this story, I thought, What? You can sue someone for using half a line of a song? How is it that Bob Dylan is able to walk the streets a free man?

The upshot of this is that Lennon reached a settlement with Levy, out of court, that he'd include three songs Levy owned on his next album, the nostalgia collection called Rock 'n' Roll. (During the making of the record, to get that proper Fifties feel, Lennon and May Pang went to far as to visit the set of "Happy Days.") The Levy songs Lennon agreed to cut were "You Can't Catch Me," Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," and, I believe, "Ya Ya."

Lennon started making Rock 'n' Roll (at first called Oldies but Mouldies) in December 1973 with Phil Spector during his infamous Lost Weekend, but soon went back to New York to make Walls and Bridges, leaving the oldies collection unreleased. When Walls and Bridges came out, in October 1974, Levy was po'd that the record didn't have his promised three songs, and threatened to sue again. Lennon went back into the studio, quickly finished Rock 'n' Roll, then sent the rough tapes to Levy to assure him that everything was OK.

Then things got even weirder: Levy suggested that he and Lennon would make more money if they sold the album via mail-order, on late-night TV, with Lennon appearing in the ads. Bizarrely, Lennon agreed. Capitol, however, wasn't so excited, and reminded Lennon that he already had a recording contract. Putting out albums via late-night TV was apparently not permitted by that contract. Lennon told Levy the deal was off.

But Levy still had the tapes, remember? So for three days in January 1975, before Lennon and Capitol got their lawyers in gear, if you were watching TV at the right time, you could have bought yourself a vinyl copy of Roots: John Lennon Sings the Great Rock 'n' Roll Hits. Lennon was reportedly very upset by the crappy cover art - as well as the fact that it took a month for his own mail-ordered copy to arrive.

All because of "You Can't Catch Me." Aside from the one line, Chuck's song has the vaguest resemblance to "Come Together" in the meter of the lyrics and a couple of similar chords, but you can be the judge:

Seconds of Pleasure

2009-07-24T23:13:00.003-06:00

In May 1968, Richard Harris' epic, multi-part "MacArthur Park" reached the Top Forty, where it would eventually crest at Number Two. It clocked in at an epochal 7:20.

Two months later, the Beatles recorded their own lengthy single, "Hey Jude." It was released on August 26, 1968, and went to Number One for nine weeks.

But Jimmy Webb, the author of "MacArthur Park," wasn't peeved by the chart position of "Hey Jude" as much as he was by its length. "After I put 'MacArthur Park' out and it was 7 minutes 20 seconds long," Webb said in 2005, "the Beatles put out 'Hey Jude' and it was 7:21, one second longer." He has claimed that the band specifically edited the single so that it would be longer than "MacArthur Park."

There's only one problem with this theory: "Hey Jude" actually runs only 7:11, just like the store. It makes a nice story, though, Jimmy.

And the Hits Just Keep On Comin'

2009-07-21T08:16:00.004-06:00

That business about Silver Convention that I wrote about the other day leads to another question: Which act had the most hits, all of which reached the Top Ten? For a long time, I thought this record was held by the odious Milli Vanilli, which placed five songs not just in the Top Ten but in the Top Five before exploding in a sea of backing tapes and hair extensions.

It does make sense: The artist who holds this record is likely to be someone who has a lot of early success, then totally disappears from the charts. Dying isn't enough; posthumous hits tend to wander into the lower reaches of the Top Forty.

Many artists have looked as if they'd beat Milli's record easily. The Lovin' Spoonful's first seven hits all went to the Top Ten, before "Darling Be Home Soon" topped out at Number 15. The Captain and Tennille matched the Vanilli Brothers by having their first five hits all go to the Top Five. The Jackson Five's first six hits all went to the Top Five (Top Two, as a matter of fact). More recently, the R&B singer Monica had her first nine hits all make the Top Ten, until breaking the string with "U Should've Known Better," which went to Number 19.

All of those artists could have had Rob and Fab's record, but blew it. One who didn't, though was the actress and singer Gale Storm, star of TV's "My Little Margie" in the early Fifties. She was already an established TV star when a record exec heard her singing on the "Colgate Comedy Hour" in 1954 and signed her to a record deal. Storm's very first release, a cover of "I Hear You Knocking," went to Number Two late in 1955, and her next five hits (including a cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love") all followed it into the Top Ten, giving her an unbroken string of six Top Ten hits.

Storm's recording career more or less ended at that point in favor of her own sitcom and appearances in Vegas. Good thing, too, because I always hated Milli Vanilli.

Two-Hit Wonders

2009-07-17T09:25:00.003-06:00

I write an awful lot about one-hit wonders on this site, but near as I can figure, no act has ever been a pure two-hit wonder: two songs going to Number One without anything else even reaching the Top Forty. The closest was the German disco act Silver Convention, which sent "Fly, Robin, Fly" to the top spot on November 29, 1975, then had "Get Up and Boogie (That's Right)" stall out at Number Two for three weeks the following spring. The followup, "No No Joe," peaked at Number 60, and Silver Convention was done making hits.

"Fly, Robin, Fly" won a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental, even though, as you'll probably recall, it had lyrics. The song had a total of six words, as a matter of fact; they were, in alphabetical order, "fly," "robin," "sky," "the," "to" and "up." "Get Up and Boogie (That's Right)" also had just six words, all of which are helpfully listed in the title, so I don't need to repeat them here. I don't know how many words "No No Joe" had.

There are a couple of footnotes to this feat. The Cuban bandleader Perez Prado had two Number One singles ("Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" and "Patricia") and no other hits during the rock era, but both those hits predate the Hot 100. "Cherry Pink" dates back to March of 1955, which is as early as my reference materials go, and I rather suspect that Prado had other Top Forty hits before 1955. He also wrote "Mambo No. 5," which Lou Bega turned into a hit in 1999.

Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders sort of matched Silver Convention's record. Their "Game of Love" went to Number One on April 24, 1965, and the next spring, the Mindbenders (note new band name) had another huge hit with "Groovy Kind of Love," which went to Number Two. But in between those two hits, Wayne Fontana left the group - in the middle of a show, from what I've read. He was replaced as lead singer by guitarist Eric Stewart, who would later form 10cc. Anyway, whether the two Mindbenders' hits are by the same band is a decision the reader will have to make.

A Taste of Honey went to Number One with "Boogie Oogie Oogie" in 1978, and then to Number Three with "Sukiyaki" in 1981. "Sukiyaki" did go to Number One on both the R&B and adult contemporary charts. Plus, it's better than anything Silver Convention ever did.

Strangers No More

2009-07-14T21:29:00.004-06:00

I heard a strange and wonderful thing the other day: An Elvis Presley song used in a Coke commercial, and not just one of the old usual suspects like "Heartbreak Hotel" or "Teddy Bear" but a nonhit, "Stranger in the Crowd," from the 1970 album That's the Way It Is. It wasn't Elvis' version, but it sure sounded good. "Stranger in the Crowd" was written by Winfield Scott, who had also written, along with Bumps Blackwell, earlier Presley hits "Return to Sender" and "(You're the) Devil in Disguise," as well as a never-used title track to Roustabout.

That's the Way It Is is my favorite Elvis album, accompanying a concert film of the same name, although most of it was cut in a Nashville studio. For much of Elvis' career, Colonel Parker demanded that writers submit songs to Elvis and give his management team a cut of the publishing, which meant that Presley rarely recorded covers that other people had already done. By 1970, for reasons I don't recall, Elvis was at liberty to do things like B.J.. Thomas' "I Just Can't Help Believin'" or George Harrison's "Something," and no matter who had done these songs originally, Elvis sang them better, because he was the best.

This period of Elvis' career is generally remembered for treacly hits like "Don't Cry Daddy" and the Mac Davis-penned "In the Ghetto," but the non-cover parts of That's the Way It Is is packed with what I think of as Kristofferson-type songs, full of adult emotion and quotidian detail. Love is negotiated around unpaid bills and babies crying at six a.m., and Elvis handles this territory marvelously. It's a wonderfully grown-up collection.

Truth be told, "Stranger in the Crowd" is one of the weaker songs on the album, but it's still real good:

The Swedish Thing

2009-07-10T08:45:00.002-06:00

That March 1977 issue of Creem ("America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine") I mentioned the other day had the expected features on Boston, Jefferson Starship and Patti Smith, but also a big blowout on Abba. I wonder how well this went over with the metalheads in Detroit who thought Ted Nugent had gone soft with Free-for-All. I suspect it looked a bit silly back then, but it's aged pretty well, better than the rave review of the new Rory Gallagher album.

"Like all pop masters," the piece reads, "Abba express and sell themselves entirely according to the grooves; they've rarely performed live [Ed. note: Note even when they appeared on Saturday Night Live] and have no personality - few people know their names and nobody knows which girl is which." As it happens, I do know which girl is which: Agnetha is the blonde and Annifrid, better known as Frida, is the brunette.

On the other hand, I probably didn't know this until Frida's 1982 solo hit "I Know There's Something Going On," produced and drummed into submission by Phil Collins. I certainly believe that no one knew the difference in 1977, because Creem didn't know. "Benny and Bjorn started recording together as Bjorn and Benny in 1966," one part of the article goes, "and Anna and Frida started their successful solo careers soon after." But Anna and Frida are the same person!

Allen Klein, 1931-2009

2009-07-07T09:59:00.002-06:00

Allen Klein, onetime manager of both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, dead at the age of 77, much to the relief of the surviving members of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. After his mother died when he was two, Klein spent much of his childhood in a New Jersey orphanage, and eventually got a degree in accounting from Upsala College, where his friend Don Kirshner suggested he go into the music business.

Klein made a name for himself discovering unpaid royalties to the likes of Bobby Darin and Sam Cooke, and eventually got himself installed as the Rolling Stones' business manager. In 1966, Mick Jagger supposedly told Paul McCartney that the Stones were making much more money than the Beatles were, all because of Allen Klein. After Brian Epstein's death and the disaster that was Apple, the Beatles turned to Klein for financial help, trying to create a management mishmash with Paul's future in-laws the Eastmans. (McCartney was said to be impressed by the fact that Klein was wearing a sweater and sneakers when he came to meet the Beatles, as opposed to the rest of the suits Paul had to deal with.)

Klein wrested full control, and after the Let It Be sessions foundered on the rocks, it was Klein who called in Phil Spector to help rescue them. This helped spur McCartney to leave the group - they'd been screwed over by businessmen before, but having them meddle in the Beatles' music was just too much.

Klein went on to build a whole music-publishing empire at his company ABKCO, and kept himself busy harassing people who ever suggested that his motives weren't pure and righteous. One time I was working on a magazine story that mentioned ? and the Mysterians' "96 Tears," including the fact that the song had never been released on CD, and that all CD versions of the song were remakes. My original version noted specially that Allen Klein had never allowed the song to be released on CD, but the editor took out Klein's name, saying that he didn't want to be the recipient of an angry phone call from Allen Klein the morning after the issue appeared.

But now, the truth can be told.

Happy Birthday

2009-07-04T09:37:00.002-06:00

Happy 233rd birthday to the greatest country in the history of the planet. How many songs mention the Fourth of July? You'd think there'd be a bunch, given rock & roll's fascination with summer, but I can't think of that many:

"Saturday in the Park," by Chicago
"Good," by Better than Ezra
"4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," by Bruce Springsteen (doesn't actually mention the Fourth of July, but whatever)

There are also songs called "Fourth of July" by U2, Soundgarden, Mariah Carey, X, and Galaxie 500.

Spirit of '76

2009-07-03T19:33:00.003-06:00

Hey, were you wondering who won the readers poll over at Creem magazine ("America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine") back in 1976? Well, I just happen to have the March 1977 issue, on loan to the OPC archives from the permanent collection of Rob Sheffield. The choice of Creem readers for best album were:

Rocks, by Aerosmith
Frampton Comes Alive, by Peter Frampton
The Song Remains the Same, by Led Zeppelin
Destroyer, by Kiss
Agents of Fortune, by Blue Oyster Cult
Presence, by Led Zeppelin
Blue Moves, by Elton John
A Night on the Town, by Rod Stewart
Station to Station, by David Bowie
Black and Blue, by the Rolling Stones

Boy howdy, they loved the Zep, didn't they? Songs in the Key of Life came in 13th, Ramones 16th.

Here's the singles list:

"Don't Fear the Reaper," by Blue Oyster Cult
"Last Child," by Aerosmith
"Don't Go Breakin' My Heart," by Elton John and Kiki Dee
"Show Me the Way," by Peter Frampton
"Bohemian Rhapsody," by Queen
"Beth," by Kiss
"Magic Man," by Heart
"Tonight's the Night," by Rod Stewart
"More Than a Feeling," by Boston
"Rhiannon," by Fleetwood Mac

Interesting how much poppier that singles list is. But really, guys, "Last Child"?

The Power of Ten

2009-06-25T21:18:00.004-06:00

Is there anyone, anywhere, who thinks that this plan to announce ten Best Picture nominees at the Academy Awards rather than the traditional five is a good idea? Certainly it has occurred to someone at the Academy that if every movie is a contender for Best Picture, then the distinction has no meaning.

What's going to happen next spring is that the Oscars will announce the ten Best Picture candidates, and before the producers of those films even have a chance to congratulate themselves, the story will become which movie didn't get nominated: Up, or Away We Go, or Night at the Museum 2: Another Night at the Museum. No one will much care who did get nominated, because when you're throwing a party that big, the most interesting part is who wasn't invited.

And then by the night of the Big Dance, no one east of Nikki Finke will even be able to remember which ten movies are up for the top prize. Every single person watching the awards ceremony will say to themselves, at least once, "That got nominated? No way." There will be no attendance bounce for any of the nominees. And even the winner will end up being screwy, because when you have people voting from a slate of ten names, the winner is going to be the movie favored by something like 19 percent of the voters. Well, I guess it couldn't be any worse than Crash.

I give this thing two years, tops.

I Want You Back

2009-06-25T18:52:00.004-06:00

It's hard to overstate what the Jackson 5 meant to Motown when they signed with the label in 1969. The Four Tops, the Supremes, the Miracles, all were getting long in the tooth, and had one Top Ten hit left among them after 1970 (the Tops' "Ain't No Woman [Like the One I've Got]" from 1973). Holland-Dozier-Holland had long since left. Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder were both itching to create their own music, free from the Motown corporate constraints.

So when the Jackson 5 came along, everyone instinctively knew that this was the next generation of Motown stars. Diana Ross was installed as their official patron, and a writing-producing team called the Corporation was created to shepherd their music. The Corporation was a group of four gentlemen, one of them Motown founder Berry Gordy, who had long since left behind his hands-on in-studio duties. He had co-written "Reet Petite" and "Lonely Teardrops" for Jackie Wilson and "Money" for Barrett Strong, but that seemed like a long time ago, and one could be forgiven for wondering if Gordy still had his chops.

Till the Jackson 5 took over the world. Their first single, "I Want You Back," went to Number One in January 1970. Their next single, "ABC," also went to Number One. Their next single, "The Love You Save," also went to Number One. The one after that, "I'll Be There," also went to Number One. That brings us to 1971. The Jackson 5 were so good, and so popular, that MGM had a bunch of Mormons from Utah do a note-for-note imitation of the Jackson 5, and that went to Number One, too.

At the end of 1970, Michael Jackson was eleven years old, and if he had never done another thing in the world of music, he'd still be a legend. Say, say say what you want about his personal life, but those Jackson 5 records sound as fresh and exciting today as they ever did, as any pop records ever did. All the little birdies down on Jaybird Street loved to hear the robin going tweet, tweet, tweet.

But Now, It's Up to Us, Babe

2009-06-23T20:04:00.005-06:00

One more note on Elton John: Has any major pop-music figure done more projects with other stars throughout his career? We talked about his work with John Lennon, but it's been basically a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer a year for ol' Reg Dwight. I'm sure my list is incomplete, but I have compiled a pretty extensive list of notable Elton sidemen:

Beach Boys Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston (plus Toni Tennille), doing backup vocals on "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," 1974

Dusty Springfield, backing vocals on "The Bitch Is Back," 1974

John Lennon, guitar on "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," 1974

Jackson Browne: Elton played piano (as Rockaday Johnny) on "Redneck Friend," 1974

Kiki Dee, co-vocalist on "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," 1976

Pete Townshend, acoustic guitar on "Ball and Chain," 1982

Stevie Wonder, harmonica on "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues," 1983

Millie Jackson(!), backing vocals on "Act of War," 1985

Dionne Warwick and Gladys Knight, plus Stevie again, on "That's What Friends Are For," 1985

Cliff Richard, backing vocals on "Slow Rivers," 1986

Aretha Franklin, co-vocalist on "Through the Storm," 1989

George Michael, co-vocalist on "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," 1991

Sting: Elton played piano (as Nancy Treadway) on his cover of "Come Down in Time," 1991

Eric Clapton, guitar on "Runaway Train," 1992

Rick Astley (plus Kiki Dee again), backing vocals on "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," 1994

Luciano Pavarotti, "Live Like Horses," 1996

Leann Rimes, co-vocalist on "Written in the Stars," 1999

Eminem, co-vocalist on "Stan" at the 2001 Grammys

Joss Stone, co-vocalist on "Calling It Christmas," 2007

The Killers: Elton played on their 2008 single "Joseph, Better You Than Me"

The George Michael single was actually from Elton's Duets album, on which he also paired up with k.d. lang, P.M. Dawn, Little Richard, Don Henley, Kiki Dee (again), Chris Rea, Tammy Wynette, Nik Kershaw, Gladys Knight (again), RuPaul, Marcella Detroit, Paul Young, Bonnie Raitt, and Leonard Cohen (!).

Public Service Announcement

2009-06-21T10:52:00.000-06:00

I had reason to be in the car very early this morning, Sunday morning, and of course I was listening to the radio. As the clock turned over to 6:00 a.m., every station on the dial seemed to switch over to either public affairs programming or infomercials. I have nine FM music stations on my presets and two AM music stations, and the only music I could find on any of them was England Dan and John Ford Coley's "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight."

Now I ask you, how is that serving the public?

Long-Dead Threads

2009-06-20T18:40:00.002-06:00

We'd like to welcome a new reader to OPC, one who goes by the name of Alex and has been posting some choice comments in threads that are so dead Vincent Price is doing the voiceover for them. To this item on Warren Zevon, Alex contributed the following personal reminiscence:

Some friends of mine were apartment managers at the building where Warren lived. They used to run into him sometimes in the halls and he was always extremely friendly (and I think brought them cookies one Christmas).

After they told me this, I checked the directory outside the front door the next time I visited (it's one of those buildings where the buzzer to the front door is keyed to people's phone lines) and sure enough the last name listed was "Zevon." I almost called to say how much I admired his music, then decided he deserved his privacy, peace, and quiet.

I'm still not sure it was the right decision...

Then there's this one, as I was wondering whatever happened to Mal Evans:

Mal also managed Joey Molland's short-lived post-Badfinger band Natural Gas (whose only album was produced by Felix Pappalardi, who was shot and killed by his wife in 1983). Talk about a confluence of the doomed!

Of course we love the Beatles and Badfinger around here, so that kind of thing is much appreciated. Felix Pappalardi was the bassist for Mountain and the producer for Cream and was a totally different person from Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals, as I often have to remind myself. Pappalardi's wife, Gail Collins, is a totally different person from the Gail Collins who runs the New York Times editorial page, and co-wrote "Strange Brew" for Cream. She shot Felix in the neck at their Upper East Side apartment on April 17th, 1983, but claimed it was an accident. She was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and ended up serving just over 18 months. For killing a guy!

Thanks, Alex!

What's Going On?

2009-06-18T23:16:00.002-06:00

Near the beginning of "Let's Get It On," Marvin Gaye points out, "We're all sensitive people." Now, Marvin had a tendency to be a bit out there, so I wouldn't put anything past him. But I'm very curious as to why this line isn't "We're both sensitive people." Just what exactly was he proposing here?

Clive Scott, 1945-2009

2009-06-15T12:10:00.004-06:00

Clive Scott, the singer-songwriter-keyboardist genius behind the Jigsaw hit "Sky High," has died at the age of 64. Yes, he passed away last month, so I'm very late on this, but how many blogs are even going to mention his passing at all?

Jigsaw had been kicking around the U.K. since 1966 without making any headway on the pop charts, gaining a reputation as a strong live act and backing up the likes of Arthur "Sweet Soul Music" Conley. On the recommendation of their manager, Scott and his songwriting partner in Jigsaw, Des Dyer, the band's drummer, decided to try for a poppier sound and came out with a little gem called "Who Do You Think You Are." Jigsaw's version went nowhere, but Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods made it the followup to their Number One hit "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" and took it to Number Fifteen in the summer of '74.

Despite the success of the cover, Jigsaw was promptly dropped from their label. So the boys began recording on Splash, a label started by their own manager, and almost immediately hit big with "Sky High," which went all the way to Number Three in the fall of 1975. They had one more Top Forty hit, "Love Fire" in the spring of 1976, then that was it for Jigsaw.

Clive Scott's last words were: "The guys from Pilot live on."

I Got the Blues

2009-06-14T14:34:00.004-06:00

I have long had an aversion to white people playing the blues, and it has taken me a long time to figure out why. For one thing, the blues is far from my favorite style of music; what I most respond to is songwriting - chord changes, lyrics and melody - and blues songs tend to be fairly repetitive. Blues aficionados listen for vocal performance, which I quite like, and instrumental pyrotechnics, which ain't my cup of meat.

But you get Muddy Waters playing the blues, and that sounds pretty good. You hear the ache and desperation in both the singing and the playing, the pain of being a big music star and still having to paint the ceiling of the Chess studio. You don't get that with white people. White people aren't oppressed enough. Especially the ones who choose to sing the blues - they're too happy to sing the blues. Muddy sang the blues because he had no choice; white people sing the blues because they like to.

Sure, you get your occasional Allman Brothers, scraggly white trash from the non-Atlanta parts of Georgia, who are downtrodden enough for this music. If you shoot yourself in the foot on your eighteenth birthday to get out of going to Vietnam, then you really might know what it's like to have the blues. Or if you're as much of a mess as Janis Joplin was.

Yeah, I know, Eric Clapton playing "Crossroads," but at that velocity and volume, it's turned the corner from blues into heavy metal. What you usually get when white people play the blues is more like Jonny Lang's "Anything Is Possible," which only could have been written by a white person. When you got no job and no money and your woman done left you, very little is possible. I advise switching to power pop.

Elton and John

2009-06-09T20:57:00.003-06:00

While I was researching yesterday's item on Elton John, I was struck by how serious his relationship with John Lennon was. Everyone knows that Elton sang backup on "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night," but there was a lot more to it than that.

The two of them met during Lennon's Lost Weekend in Los Angeles, at the time when Elton was becoming the biggest pop star in the world. Elton then popped into the studio while Lennon was making Walls and Bridges in the summer of 1974, and sang harmony and played piano on "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night." Elton loved the song and told Lennon it would be a big hit. When Lennon demurred, Elton got him to promise that if and when it hit Number One, he would appear onstage to sing it with Elton as a duet.

The pair had already recorded Elton's cover of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," which would come out as a non-album single in December 1974. Initially, Elton just invited Lennon up to Colorado's Caribou Recording Studio to watch him cut the track, but Lennon was so impressed with the little ska movement in the middle that he wanted to play guitar on it. Supposedly, he had forgotten the chords - and you know what, I believe it, since it would have been a good seven years since Lennon would have played the song - and had Davey Johnstone show him what they were. In the end, the song carried a credit of "with the reggae guitars of Dr. Winston O'Boogie."

"Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" came out in early October, and went to Number One on November 14, 1974. Elton John was near the end of his tour then, so he arranged to have Lennon appear at the final night, on Thanksgiving at Madison Square Garden. Elton asked him to do "Imagine," but John didn't want to trot out old hits like he was Frank Sinatra, so they settled on "Whatever," "Lucy in the Sky," and "I Saw Her Standing There." This, by the way, would be the last time John Lennon appeared on a concert stage. Unbeknownst to John, Yoko was in the audience; as the story goes, they reconnected at a party after the show, and the Lost Weekend was duly ended.

"Lucy in the Sky" was the first Number One hit of 1975. By then, John and Yoko were back together, and on October 9, 1975, John's 35th birthday, Sean Ono Lennon was born. John asked Elton to be Sean's godfather, in recognition of the role he had played in reuniting him with Yoko. However, John later admitted that since Elton was gay and would not likely produce any natural heirs, he figured it wouldn't hurt to have Sean in position to inherit the "Crocodile Rock" fortune. Good thinking.

Anyway, the Thing Is, What I Really Mean...

2009-06-08T21:30:00.006-06:00

It has become kind of a truism that any music released by Elton John after 1976 wasn't worth the wax it was distributed on, as we discussed in the comments section a few weeks ago. And sure enough, Elton's last single released in 1976 was "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word," while the first in 1977 was "Bite Your Lip (Get up and dance!)," complete with the wonky Euro-capitalization on the parenthetical, according to Whitburn.

So what happened at the end of the Bicentennial Year? Let's take a look at some possibilities:

* For one thing, Elton turned thirty on March 25, 1977, exactly 23 years to the date before the birth of unofficial OPC adjunct Mark Nawrocki. Lots of rock & roll stars lose a bit of their mojo around this time. Dion never had another hit after he turned thirty.

* After Blue Moves came out in October 1976, Elton didn't release another album until A Single Man a full two years later. ("Bite Your Lip" was Blue Moves' second single.) At a concert shortly after Blue Moves came out, Elton said from the stage, "That's it, this is the last one." In November 1977, he formally announced his retirement. (It didn't take.)

* Bernie Taupin left Elton's side after Blue Moves, and did not return until the duo worked together on some songs for 1980's The Fox. Bernie would go on to write the lyrics for the Starship's "We Built This City," about which the less said the better.

* Disco reared its ugly head starting in 1976, and by the time Elton made his return in 1978, the Bee Gees had taken over the charts. Elton's dalliances with disco, from the single "Ego" to his work with Thom Bell, were rather unfortunate.

So if you look at everything that was going on, it would be remarkable if Elton John were able to carry on with as much proficiency after 1976 as he had before then. He still had a hefty thirty-nine post-'76 Top Forty hits, which is more than you've had.

Only a Motion Away

2009-06-06T21:41:00.004-06:00

Graceland seemed like something totally new for Paul Simon when it came out in 1986, but if you listen to that opening itchy guitar figure on 1972's "Mother and Child Reunion," it sounds an awful lot like it could be on that later album. It's not totally dissimilar to the guitar part for "Gumboots."

"Mother and Child Reunion" was recorded in Jamaica with a bunch of reggae musicians, and the guitarist was a guy named Hucks Brown, who had been in Toots and the Maytals. It's probably not much of a stretch from Jamaican reggae to South African mbaqanga.

Hey, that's not really enough information to sustain a full item, is it? How about this: Do you know where the titled "Mother and Child Reunion" came from? It was an entry on a menu at a Chinese restaurant that Simon was eating at in lower Manhattan - specifically, Say Eng Look in Chinatown. "Mother and child reunion" refers to a dish with chicken and eggs - which is kind of sad and gross, if you ask me.

This Post Has No Title

2009-06-04T22:00:00.003-06:00

I figure the practice of giving songs titles that have nothing to do with the lyrics is a way of keeping some street cred, of distancing yourself from easy pop worship by casual fans. If you want to know what's going on with a band that gives its songs obscure names, you can't just hear them on the radio; you've got to buy the album , or at least download some of it. The true fans will be into the band enough to recognize that the song's real title is "Sliver," and they get to laugh at the Johnny-come-latelies who start screaming for "Grandma Take Me Home."

I think Led Zeppelin was the first well-known, major band to give songs those kinds of titles regularly: "Black Dog," "D'yer Mak'er," etc. I have been reliably assured that "Kashmir" doesn't quite fall into this category.

At the same time, though, the mighty Zep would haul out the occasional "Stairway to Heaven" or "Whole Lotta Love," where it would be pretty unmistakable which song you were talking about. Near as I can tell, it was New Order that took this to the next level: Hardly any New Order song titles reflect what's in the lyrics. "Blue Monday"? "True Faith"? What has that got to do with anything? I am a New Order fan, and I have to occasionally remind myself which song is which, although not with the titanic "Bizarre Love Triangle."

And it's pretty ridiculous. Why can't they just give us a name that we can quickly associate with the song? Some really good bands do a lot of this kind of thing these days, like Radiohead or the Shins, and it's time for them to cut it out. You know what the Beatles called that song that went "Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be"? Coldplay would have called it "Armored Arrow," but the Beatles called it "Let It Be."

Guess Who Quit

2009-06-03T19:46:00.002-06:00

Back in 1965, a band out of Winnipeg called Chad Allan and the Expressions recorded a cover of "Shakin' All Over" that went to Number Twenty-Two on the U.S. charts. That same band went on to record six Top Ten hits, and became the first Canadian band to have a Number One hit in the United States.

If you've never heard of Chad Allan and the Expressions, there's a reason for that. The Expressions cut their cover of the old Johnny Kidd and the Pirates song (later torched by the Who on Live at Leeds) early in '65, and as a publicity stunt, their label, Scepter, put out the single with a label that just read "Guess Who?" When it came time to release an album, with "Shakin All Over" as the title track, the record was by then credited to "Guess Who? Chad Allan and the Expressions."

As you can imagine, folks found this mighty confusing, and not just Canadians. Pretty much everyone started calling the band Guess Who?, rather than Chad Allan and the Expressions. For the band's second album, Hey Ho (What You Do to Me), the crediting remained the same, but by the time of the third one, It's Time, they were down to merely Guess Who?

And guess who it wasn't: Chad Allan. The band had brought in Burton Cummings after that second album, and Allan, who was the band's vocalist and co-guitarist with Randy Bachman, started to develop throat problems in 1966. He also hated traveling, so he quit the band, and eventually was given the job of hosting a CBC music show called Let's Go. The house band was the Guess Who.

Randy Bachman left the Guess Who in 1970 to form a band called Brave Belt, and when he couldn't find anyone to play with him, Chad Allan volunteered. But Allan quit, again, after the first Brave Belt album, and after the second Brave Belt album, Brave Belt II, the band changed its name to Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Oh, and the Guess Who finally lost that question mark by the their 1968 album Wheatfield Soul. Since they didn't return to the American charts until 1969's "These Eyes," Chad Allan and the Expressions and the Guess Who both had an American hit, but the Guess Who? never did.

Leftovers

2009-06-01T16:06:00.003-06:00

There were a couple more notes I wanted to throw out here on all that one-hit stuff I've been doing. I want to thank everyone who suggested songs to write about, even though I didn't use most of them. I'm not sure how much of a purist to be about these things, but I decided to disallow any artist who had a second Top Forty hit, like Michael Sembello, who went to Number One with "Maniac," but also hit with something called "Automatic Man," which went to Number Thirty-Four in the fall of 1983. I really wanted to write about the Toys' "A Lover's Concerto" or Jimmy Soul's "If You Wanna Be Happy," but I had to deal with "Attack" (Number Eighteen in very early 1966) and "Twistin' Matilda" (Number Twenty-Two in the spring of 1962), respectively, even though no one has heard either of those songs in forty years.

I did find out that the S.O.S. Band, which went to Number Three in 1980 with "Take Your Time (Do It Right) Part 1," had a drummer named James Earl Jones III, although I don't think he's related to the real James Earl Jones. The Seventies disco group Silver Convention was almost a two-hit wonder: "Fly, Robin, Fly" went to Number One late in 1975, then "Get Up and Boogie" stalled out at Number Two (for three weeks!) in the late spring of 1976. Those were Silver Convention's only hits; I'm pretty sure no act has had two Number One hits and no other Top Forty action.

Incidentally, Whitburn lists "Fly, Robin, Fly" as an instrumental, but "Get Up and Boogie" as a non-instrumental. A few weeks ago, Gavin pointed out that a lot of instrumentals actually have their titles as their only lyric, like "Tequila" or "The Hustle" (yes, there's a "do" in there as well). It would seem a reasonable cutoff to me to call something an instrumental if it had virtually no words beyond its title, but of course "Fly, Robin, Fly" also says "up, up to the sky" in there. Surely, a topic for further investigation.

I also found a terrifying piece of video when researching "Lovin' You." It's a talk show featuring Sammy Davis Jr., Richard Pryor and Minnie Riperton, which really would be enough in and of itself, but you also get to see Minnie get attacked by a lion. And Richard imitates Minnie giving birth, but seriously, guys, this video shows MINNIE RIPERTON BEING ATTACKED BY A LION.

One-Hit Wonder Week: "Mickey," by Toni Basil

2009-05-29T14:11:00.003-06:00

Everybody loved Sweet, the British boys who turned the corner from glam to power pop with "Ballroom Blitz" and "Little Willy." The masterminds behind Sweet were the writing/producing team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. When Sweet decided they wanted a harder-edged sound, they turned away from Chinn and Chapman, who went on to write "Stumblin' In" for Suzi "Leather Tuscadero" Quatro and "Kiss You All Over" for Exile.

The duo also wrote a song for a British pop combo named Racey, called "Kitty," released on the 1979 album Smash and Grab. Racey had a few hits in England, but nothing over here in the U.S.

But let's leave Racey for the moment and take the story back to 1961 and over to Las Vegas, where Louis Basil has recently moved his family from Chicago in order to become the bandleader for the house orchestra at the Sahara Hotel, and his daughter Toni (born Antonia Basilotta) is about to graduate from Las Vegas High School, where she has been head cheerleader. "There's nothing better than being head cheerleader, let me tell you," she said last year, and I don't doubt her for a second. Toni's mom was in Wells & the Four Fays, an acrobatic comedy act that appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show the same night as the Beatles.

After leaving high school, Toni headed to Los Angeles, and by 1964, she had landed a job as an assistant choreographer on a new pop-music show called Shindig. (One of her dancers, who became a good friend, was Teri Garr.) Toni appeared as a go-go dancer in the 1964 film The T.A.M.I. Show, which led to appearances in such movies as Head, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. In 1966, she cut a single, the title song to the experimental film Breakaway, in which she also danced. (It's not the same song as the later Art Garfunkel classic.) Breakaway has been removed from all the customary Internet outlets, so I haven't seen it, but I have it on good authority that Toni appears very naked in it.

In the early 1970s, Basil worked with David Bowie on his Diamond Dogs tour, but left that behind for a while to found and dance with a street troupe called the Lockers, who generally consisted of five or six black dudes (including the late Fred "Rerun" Berry) and Toni Basil. The Lockers got a slot dancing on one of the first episodes of Saturday Night Live, then, for reasons that remain obscure to me, Toni was asked back later in the first season to sing a song called "Wham Re-Bop Boom Bam." She didn't have an album out, or a single, and as far as I can tell, she hadn't sung professionally since 1966. Go figure.

Later on, she conceived and choreographed a short film, directed by Gary Weis, for SNL that featured members of the Lockers dancing Swan Lake with some ballerinas. Toni wanted to do, for her next video, something with cheerleaders dancing and chanting, coincidentally right about the same time that a British label exec named Simon Lait met her in Los Angeles and thought he could turn her into a pop star. Lait went to his friend Nicky Chinn to see if he could get a song for his fledgling star, and Chinn suggested "Kitty."

Basil liked the song and thought it would work even better with the cheerleaders' chant appended on to it. (The cheerleaders were from Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, class of '81.) She changed the title to "Mickey," both because it rhymed with "Kitty" and because she had developed a crush on Micky Dolenz while making Head. None of the other lyrics were changed, so "Any way you wanna do it, I'll take it like a man" had a different, less racy meaning in the Racey version. Basil recorded the song in 1980 and directed the video, in which she appeared in the same cheerleaders' outfit she wore back at Las Vegas High School. (She is very proud to say that she still, to this day, at the age of 65, fits into that uniform.)

When the BBC saw the video, it asked Basil to make her own TV special around it. That helped push "Mickey" to Number Two in the U.K.; the single was released here on October 5, 1982, around the same time as her album Word of Mouth (I have had a very hard time tracking down the release date for the album), which featured a couple of Devo covers and several members of Devo playing on it. (Toni was involved with Devo bassist and designer Jerry Casale at the time.) "Mickey" immediately leapt into the Top Forty the first week it was released, and on December 11, 1982, it replaced Lionel Richie's "Truly" as the Number One song in America.

Toni released a second album, Toni Basil, in 1983, with three more Devo covers, but none of them made any kind of a splash, although "Over My Head" won an MTV Video Award. Basil went back to her day job, choreographing David Byrne's herky-jerky dance for the "Once in a Lifetime" video and those great Gap commercials with all that bossa nova style dancing in them. (She has estimated that, since 1982, "Mickey" has earned her the grand sum of $3,000 in royalties.) She's now choreographing Bette Midler's Las Vegas revue.

I can't find the original cheerleading version of "Mickey" online, although Toni will have you know it's in the Musuem of Modern Art. But this is a mini-documentary synced up to that video, and it'll do:

One-Hit Wonder Week: "The Worst That Could Happen," by the Brooklyn Bridge

2009-05-28T16:05:00.003-06:00

The Crests were one of the few interracial doo-wop groups of the 1950s, consisting of two black men, a black woman, a Puerto Rican man and an Italian man. The black woman was Patricia Vandross, Luther's big sister; the Italian dude was Johnny Maestro. "Johnny Maestro" is the fakest-sounding name I have ever come across; I'd sooner believe someone was born "Tre Cool" than "Johnny Maestro." Sure enough, he was born Johnny Mastrangelo.

Maestro was from Brooklyn, although the Crests were formed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was just 18 when the Crests got together in 1957, and they had a local hit almost out of the box with "My Juanita." In 1958 they recorded the immortal "Sixteen Candles," which was a monster, going to Number Two on the pop charts early in 1959. (Appropriately enough, it was on the Coed label.) The Crests followed that up with four more Top Thirty hits by the summer of 1960, at which time Johnny Maestro, still only 21, decided to go solo.

Billed as "Johnny Maestro, The Voice of the Crests," Johnny had two quick Top Forty hits in 1961, "Model Girl" and "What a Surprise," neither of which is remembered much today. His solo career apparently fell on hard times at that point; he had no more chart action. By 1967, a vocal group called the Del-Satins - whose claim to fame was backing up Dion after he cashiered the Belmonts, although they had no hits of their own - ran into Johnny Maestro at a gym in New York City and asked him to become their lead singer. Johnny agreed.

This didn't turn around the Del-Satins' fortunes, however, and in 1968, they found themselves playing in a Battle of the Bands in New York City. Another group in the competition was a seven-man brass outfit called the Rhythm Method. They decided to join forces, this four-man vocal group with a big horn band, and call themselves the Brooklyn Bridge.

At this point, our story shifts to the West Coast, where the 5th Dimension, in the summer of 1967, are recording their album The Magic Garden. After having their first big hit earlier that year with "Up, Up and Away," written by the brilliant Oklahoman Jimmy Webb, they turned the entirety of their next album over to Webb, still just 21, with the exception of a cover of "Ticket to Ride." It didn't really work; the LP spawned two minor hits, "Paper Cup" (which went to Number 34) and "Carpet Man" (Number 29).

It also included a song called "The Worst That Could Happen," another in the series of songs Webb wrote about his doomed love affair with a woman named Susan; other entries included "MacArthur Park" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." In fact, Mariyln McCoo called The Magic Garden "Susan's record." "The Worst" followed Susan to her wedding to another man, one who makes her "more safe, more sane and more secure." Given all of Webb's obsessing over his breakup with Susan, I believe the "sane" part.

Back in New York, the Brooklyn Bridge had been given two songs by Buddah Records to cut as singles, but no one was very happy with them. Johnny Maestro happened to listen to the new 5th Dimension album, and thought "Worst That Could Happen" might work for them. They recorded it, and it ended up being the leadoff single for their debut album, Brooklyn Bridge, released late in 1968.

"The Worst That Could Happen" entered the Top Forty in the first week of 1969. It eventually soared as high as Number Three. The Brooklyn Bridge released its second album, The Second Brooklyn Bridge, later that year, but singles like "Your Husband, My Wife" failed to recapture that "Worst That Could Happen" magic. Near as I can figure, they never covered another Jimmy Webb song, to their detriment. Let this be a listen to you, all you musicians out there: Cover Jimmy Webb songs.

This is already a really long item, so since hardly any of you are likely to have made it this far, I wanted to editorialize a bit and say that this entry turned out to be a great story, didn't it? I chose this song because I didn't have another single from the Sixties, I knew this had turned into an oldies-radio staple, and Johnny Maestro is always a cool name to write. But I had no idea that "Sixteen Candles" and Jimmy Webb and Luther Vandross' sister were involved. Every single one of these one-hit wonders I research ends up having a compelling story behind it, rich in detail, except maybe Pilot's "Magic," and at least with that one I found out that those guys were in an early version of the Bay City Rollers. I'd love to do a whole book of them.

The Brooklyn Bridge lasted for a total of four albums on Buddah, although on the last one they changed their name to the Bridge. They reconvened in 1989 to put out a Christmas EP (!), and they've been a standard on PBS oldies shows pretty much ever since. Somewhere along the line they slimmed down to a five-man group, all of whom sang and played instruments, and changed the name to Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge. Despite the fact that he had hits in the Fifties, Johnny Maestro just turned 70 a couple of weeks ago. Shoot, Jimmy Webb is only 62. He wrote "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (originally done by our old friend Johnny Rivers) when he was 19.

It appears that there used to be a contemporaneous video for this song on YouTube that has been removed for copyright reasons. And hey, you guys have heard "The Worst That Could Happen" a billion times already anyway. So here's an old video for the Bridge's follow-up, "Blessed Is the Rain," complete with a wrong title on the chromakey:

One-Hit Wonder Week: "Love Is Strange," by Mickey and Sylvia

2009-05-27T21:24:00.003-06:00

It all goes back, as so many things do, to Bo Diddley. Bo wrote and recorded "Love Is Strange," although the guitar lick had been composed by Jody Williams, who played with Bo, for an instrumental called "Billy's Blues." Bo took that lick, put it together with his own parts, and had himself a tune. In the ways of pop songs in the 1950s, though, Diddley couldn't take the songwriting credit because of a legal dispute, and there was no way he was giving it to Williams, so "Love Is Strange" went down on record as being written by Ethel Smith, Bo's wife.

I'm not sure when Bo cut his version of "Love Is Strange," whether it was a single, or B-side, or what, but that track did end up on I'm a Man: The Chess Masters 1955-1958, his 2007 box set. I do know that Bo and Jody Williams were playing it on tour in 1956, and one of the other acts on that tour was Mickey and Sylvia.

Raised in an orphanage in Kentucky, MacHouston "Mickey" Baker ran away to New York City at the age of 16. There he worked as a pool shark for a while before picking up a guitar at a pawnshop. He taught himself to play jazz on it but soon realized the bluesmen were the ones making the real money. By the mid-1950s, Baker was the lead session guitarist for Atlantic Records as well as on the Savoy and King labels.

He also taught guitar, and one of his students was a singer named Sylvia Vanderpool. Sylvia supposedly cut her first record at the age of 14, in 1950, and was signed to the Cat label as "Little Sylvia" when she met Mickey. Mickey, cognizant of the success of Les Paul and Mary Ford, asked her to form a musical duo with him. (Rumor has it that Mickey wanted them be a combo in more ways than one, but Sylvia rebuffed him.)

Their first single (I think we're in 1954 at this point) was on that Cat label, "Fine Love" b/w "Speedy Life"; they were billed as by "Little" Sylvia Vanderpool and Mickey Baker and His Band. Then they moved on to the Rainbow label and released three singles as Mickey and Sylvia in 1955. That apparently landed them the slot on the Diddley tour.

According to Dave Marsh, Bo didn't want to record "Love Is Strange" at all because of a war with his publishers, so when Mickey and Sylvia expressed interest in the song, he went ahead and gave it to them. On October 17, 1956, Mickey and Sylvia went into a studio and laid down the song with the drummer Bernard Purdie, making his recording debut. Producer Bob Rolontz overdubbed and overdubbed the guitars, and by the end of the day, Mickey and Sylvia had another single.

By the time Mickey and Sylvia got done with the song, it didn't sound much like Bo Diddley. The blues guitar contrasted nicely with M&S' harmonies, but it was the spoken-word passage - which had been a gruff call and response in Bo's version - that really made it special. "Love Is Strange" hit the Top Forty on January 12, 1957, and went as high as Number Eleven on the pop charts. It spent two weeks at Number One on the R&B chart.

Mickey apparently hated touring and the high life associated with being a pop star. M&S had a few more R&B hits, but in 1959, Mickey decided to break up the group. After a few more years of session work and a single billed to "Mickey and Kitty," Baker split for France in 1962 and went back to playing mostly jazz. Sylvia married a gentleman named Joe Robinson in 1964, and the two of them started a strong of indie labels in New Jersey: All Platinum, Stang, Turbo and Vibration.

In 1973, Sylvia offered a song called "Pillow Talk," which she had co-written, to Al Green, but the Reverend Al turned it down as too risque. So Sylvia recorded it herself, for her own Vibration label, and it turned out to be a huge smash, going to Number Three on the pop charts and spending two weeks at Number One on the R&B charts, just like "Love Is Strange" had 16 years earlier. Then, Sylvia pulled off a third act in 1979 when she herded a group of rappers into the studio and christened them the Sugarhill Gang.

Like Sylvia, "Love Is Strange" resurrected itself as well when it appeared in the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, as lip-synced by Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. They were supposedly just goofing around in rehearsal, miming the famous spolen-word bridge, but director Emile Ardolino had the cameras rolling, and liked it so much he kept it in the final cut. By 1987, that eerie guitar still sounded futuristic.

Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Paul McCartney & Wings and Peaches and Herb all covered "Love Is Strange," as did, of course, Bo Diddley, at some point. None of them sounded as good as Mickey and Sylvia. There's no video from them; I can't find anything on YouTube showing M&S performing at all. But you can at least listen to it:

One-Hit Wonder Week: "Lovin' You," by Minnie Riperton

2009-05-26T17:42:00.004-06:00

The youngest of eight children, Minnie Riperton was recognized early on as a vocal prodigy, and she received serious operatic training while growing up in her hometown of Chicago. But the pop world called as well, and at age 15, Minnie joined a singing group called the Gems. While they didn't have any hit records, the Gems became well-known in Chicago, and before long they were a sought-after troupe of studio singers. Minnie reportedly cut high school to go do recording sessions for ten bucks a pop. After high school, she went to work as a receptionist at Chess Records, and she supposedly backed up people like Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Etta James at Chess sessions, but I don't know for sure that that's true.

Riperton eventually met a songwriter/producer named Billy Davis (not the one who married Marilyn McCoo), who had written "Rescue Me" for Fontella Bass. (The Gems did the backing vocals on that one.) Calling herself Andrea Davis, Minnie cut a single, "Lonely Girl," which was a local hit, then became the singer for a kind of psychedelic prog group called Rotary Connection, which had been put together by Marshall Chess, Leonard Chess' son. Still just 19 when she joined up, Riperton stayed with Rotary Connection for three years and five albums.

One songwriter that Rotary Connection worked with was a young man named Richard Rudolph, and when Minnie went to record her first solo album, Come to My Garden, in 1971, she brought along Rudolph to write most of the lyrics. They also got married. Future Earth, Wind and Fire-meister Maurice White played drums on the album, but it didn't go anywhere.

With her solo career not exactly gaining traction, Riperton kept on working as a backup singer, which led her to Stevie Wonder. She joined Wonderlove, Stevie's troupe of background singers, in 1973, and sang on his album Fulfillingness' First Finale. In turn, Stevie coproduced (with Richard Rudolph, under the nom de guerre Scorbu Productions) Minnie's second solo album, Perfect Angel, and wrote the title track and another song, "Take a Little Trip." (The other seven songs were all written by Riperton and Rudolph.) Stevie played piano, too, under the name El Toro Negro.

Epic released three singles from the album, including "Take a Little Trip," but none of them charted. The label was about to give up when Rudolph persuaded them to try one more single, "Lovin' You," which had initially been sung as a lullaby to Minnie's daughter, Maya. Maya, a year and a half old at the time, was there in the studio when her mother cut the track, and is name-checked on the outro.

"Lovin' You" was released in January 1975, and crashed the Top Forty on February 15. It reached the top of the chart on April 5, staying at Number One for a single week.

Minnie's follow-up album, Adventures in Paradise, spawned a Top Five R&B hit in "Inside My Love," but contained no pop hits. It was apparently around this time that Riperton discovered she had cancer. In 1976, she went on The Tonight Show and told guest host Flip Wilson - who had no prior knowledge of the situation - that she was suffering from breast cancer and had undergone a mastectomy. My guess is that he flipped.

Riperton continued to make records while also becoming a spokeswoman for cancer awareness. President Carter gave her the American Cancer Society's Courage Award; she was named that organization's national education chair. Though the spreading cancer had immobilized her right arm, she continued to sing on TV; there's a clip of her with Mike Douglas in which she hardly moves, but seems in good spirits. Her final album, Minnie, came out early in 1979 and went to Number 29 on the pop album charts. In what would be her final TV appearance, she appeared on The Merv Griffin Show on July 6th of that year. Six days later, in her husband's arms and with a song Stevie Wonder had written for her playing in the background, Minnie Riperton died at the age of 31. Maya Rudolph turned seven a couple of weeks later.

Those ridiculously high notes Minnie hits are known as the whistle register, and while a fair number of singers can hit them, Minnie was one of the few who could sing in those tones. She had a five-and-a-half-octave range. “I’ve met only three people who had a truly wonderful voice and spirit to match," Stevie Wonder said many years after Riperton's death. "My first wife Syreeta, Minnie Riperton and Mariah.” Here's the second of those two on The Midnight Special:

One-Hit Wonder Week: "Come On Eileen," by Dexys Midnight Runners

2009-05-25T14:05:00.003-06:00

Kevin Rowland was a hairdresser in late 1970s London, trying to break into the music biz, when he formed his first band, Lucy and the Lovers, supposedly influenced by Roxy Music. They released a single, which didn't go anywhere, so Rowland broke up that band and started a punk group called the Killjoys, which cut a few singles and even appeared on the BBC's legendary Peel Sessions.

Rowland used his hairdressing skills to give the other dudes punk dos, but they still hated him. Band members kept dropping in and out - at one point, a guitarist named Kevin Archer joined up, but Rowland insisted he be called "Al Archer" so there would only be one Kevin in the band. The Killjoys got offered a contract but Rowland rejected it, because it was only for a series of singles, not an album, which pissed off the other members. After 18 months, before they ever put an LP together, the Killjoys broke up.

Rowland then decided that Irish soul was the next big thing, so he and Archer assembled a band complete with a horn section called Dexys [sic] Midnight Runners, named after Dexedrine. Their first single, "Dance Stance," flopped, but the second one, "Geno," a tribute to a soul singer named Geno Washington, went all the way to Number One in the U.K. in May 1980. By the end of the year, they had put out a debut album with the preposterous title Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, but still, everyone quit the band in short order, with the exception of the trombonist.

Rowland soldiered on, assembling an almost entirely new group under the Dexy brand. He also began a practice of rigorous exercise, expecting all the band members to go running together and to do group calisthenics before shows. He also changed their look from what he called "straight out of De Niro's Mean Streets" to hoodies and boxing boots. This incarnation put out a couple of singles in 1981, but before 1982 dawned, Rowland changed direction again.

The new Dexys added a trio of Irish fiddlers and began dressing like down-at-the-heels farmers from somewhere outside Wexford. They released an album called Too-Rye-Ay, and although the first single flopped, the second was "Come On Eileen." Released in the U.S very early in 1983, it became an MTV staple, in large part due to the enormous appeal of "Eileen" (portrayed by the sister of one of the girls in Bananarama), who appeared clad in overalls with nothing underneath. This vision was only partially negated by repeated shots of Rowland's armpits. Legend has it that the drummer, very visible in the daylight parts of the shoot, had been fired by the time they finished the video that night. I believe it.

"Come On Eileen" entered the Top Forty on February 26, 1983, and hit Number One on April 23rd. It stayed there for only a single week, sandwiched between Michael Jackson's twin colossi "Billie Jean" and "Beat It." The followup single was a cover of Van Morrison's "Jackie Wilson Said," which was a Top Ten hit in the U.K. but did nothing here. Not only did Dexys never return to the Top Forty here, but apparently they never even made it back to the Hot 100.

Dexys' followup to Too-Rye-Ay, Don't Stand Me Down, didn't come out till 1985, with the band (now down to four members) featured on the album cover in slicked-down hair and business suits. Ever the artiste, Rowland refused to release a single from the album - until it became apparent that the album, which was critically panned, wasn't going to sell anything.

Following that disaster, Rowland went solo. In 1993, he released an album of cover versions, My Beauty ("The Long and Winding Road," "Daydream Believer," etc.; he wanted to include a version of "Thunder Road" reworked with his own lyrics, but Springsteen didn't approve of the rewrite). The cover showed him in a dress, and not just in a dress but a dress pulled down to reveal his scrawny chest and hiked up to reveal a pair of black panties. It allegedly sold fewer than 500 copies. I believe it.

Dexys reunited (with which incarnation of the band, I couldn't tell you) for a tour and a greatest-hits album in 2003. Rowland recently announced he wants to go back in the studio and is looking for a record deal. Aren't we all.

But hey, "Come On Eileen" was really good. Watch out for that disappearing drummer:

Everything Is Going Wrong, but We're So Happy

2009-05-24T04:05:00.000-06:00

It makes perfect sense to me that the Wombats' "Let Dance to Joy Division" should sound, aside from a bit of Stephen Morris-type drumming, nothing like Joy Division but an awful lot like the Cure. After all, who is it that would be going out to dance to Joy Division? Not Joy Division!

The Cure were contemporaries of Joy Division - each band released its first full-length album in 1979 - but I can certainly believe that they would be fans. Hey, look, it's a video:

Celebrity Sweepstakes

2009-05-23T07:13:00.003-06:00

Three weeks ago, I had never heard of Jon and Kate, so when I saw them appear on the cover of Us Weekly, I had no idea who they were, although they certainly smacked of reality TV stars. I thought maybe one of them had appeared on Dancing With the Stars or something. Literally the first thing I knew about them was that Jon was accused of having a tryst at a motel. It must be a little demoralizing to have something like that be the first thing people learn about you.

Since then, I have figured out that Jon and Kate have eight kids, and that they're the stars of an unscripted show called Jon and Kate Plus Eight. Jon's adultery seems to have been confirmed - with a 23-year-old schoolteacher! - and now Kate's fidelity has been called into question, with a chauffeur. In fact, their whole marriage seems to have descended upon us from Marin County circa 1977.

That may be moot, because now Jon and Kate seem to be on the brink of divorce. The amazing thing about all of this is that this entire story has unfolded on the covers of gossip magazines that I've seen at the supermarket checkout stand. I don't know a single thing about Jon and Kate other than what's been on those covers; I've literally never touched one of those magazines, and I've never heard a word about them from anywhere else. Fortunately, since they've been on the covers of all of them lately, I've gotten a well-rounded, 3-D view of their situation.

There is so much I don't know about Jon and Kate. I don't know where they live; I don't know what network their show is on. (I did recently find out that their last name is "Gosselin.") And I'll probably never find that out; their gossip-worthiness must surely be reaching a merciful end by now. And there's no way I'm actually going to open up a copy of OK to find out.

One-Hit Wonders, Part Three

2009-05-20T21:41:00.002-06:00

Yesterday we left off with Lipps, Inc.'s 1980 hit "Funkytown." There were no pure one-hit wonders in 1981, not even Stars on 45, so our story resumes in the spring of 1982:

Vangelis, "Chariots of Fire," went to Number One in May 1982 Vangelis worked with Yes for several weeks in 1974 after Rick Wakeman left, but eventually decided not to join the band.

Toni Basil, "Mickey," December 1982 Basil, who started out as a choreographer on 'Shindig,' was pushing 40 when this song came out.

Dexy's Midnight Runners, "Come On Eileen," April 1983 Wikipedia lists 21 people who are former members of this band.

USA for Africa, "We Are the World," April 1985 Several members of this group did indeed have other Top Forty hits.

Jan Hammer, "Miami Vice Theme," November 1985 More recently, Hammer did the score for the TV movie 'The Babysitter's Seduction.'

Gregory Abbott, "Shake You Down," January 1987 This to me is the most surprising entry on the list, maybe because there were eight other mid-80s R&B crooners who sounded exactly like Gregory Abbott. He was once married to Freda "Band of Gold" Payne, who is 11 years older than him.

Bobby McFerrin, "Don't Worry Be Happy," September 1988 This ascended to the top spot on the day I got married.

Sheriff, "When I'm With You," February 1989 It was recorded in 1982, and the band broke up in 1985, but for some reason a DJ started playing it in 1988.

R*S*F (Right Said Fred), "I'm Too Sexy," February 1992 Whitburn calls them R*S*F, but heaven only knows why.

Sir Mix-a-Lot, "Baby Got Back," July 1992 Sir Mix-A-Lot went on to work with the Presidents of the United States of America, but they never released any of the material they recorded.

The Heights, "How Do You Talk to an Angel," November 1992 I bet the suits at MTV figured if they could only give this wimped-out Monkees a big hit song, the show would be a long-lived sensation.

Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle, "A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)," March 1993 I wasn't sure how to score this one, since Peabo had other hits, but Regina never did.

Ini Kamoze, "Here Comes the Hotstepper," December 1994 How this found its way into a Robert Altman movie, I'll never understand.

And that's it, through the end of 2000. I end the list at 2000 for both practical reasons and because it's still too early to know if any acts from this decade will be shut out from future hits. Nobody really wants James Blunt to have another hit, but hey, it could happen; even Daniel Powter managed to slither his way back into the Top Forty.

One-Hit Wonders, Part Two

2009-05-19T21:25:00.002-06:00

We left off yesterday with all the pure one-hit wonders - acts with a Number One hit on the Billboard chart, but no other songs that reached the Top Forty - through 1970. Now we pick up the action in the spring of '73 - the charts went more than three full years without a one-hit chart-topper. Even Billy Paul, of "Me and Mrs. Jones" fame, eked his way up to Number 37 in 1974 with a song called "Thanks for Saving My Life."

Vicki Lawrence, "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," went to Number One in April 1973 Written by her then-husband, Bobby Russell, who also inflicted upon the world Bobby Goldsboro's much-maligned "Honey."

Stories, "Brother Louie," August 1973 This was a cover of a song by Hot Chocolate, who later hit big with "You Sexy Thing."

Terry Jacks, "Seasons in the Sun," March 1974 Earlier done by Jacques Brel and the Kingston Trio, this became the biggest-selling single ever by a Canadian artist.

MFSB featuring the Three Degrees, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)," April 1974 You might not want to count this one, since they were the house band for Philadelphia International.

Paper Lace, "The Night Chicago Died," August 1974 Chuck Eddy has credited this song with inventing rap.

Billy Swan, "I Can Help," November 1974 Despite being a one-hit wonder, Swan has a huge reputation in the music world, and has been a longtime sideman for Kris Kristofferson.

Carl Douglas, "Kung Fu Fighting," December 1974 The first Jamaican-born artist to have a Number One hit in the U.S., Douglas released a follow-up single called "Dance the Kung Fu."

Minnie Riperton, "Lovin' You," April 1975 Minnie was dead of cancer four years later, though not before she gave birth to future SNL star Maya Rudolph. Also, I believe, the last person with a chart hit who was named "Minnie."

Van McCoy, "The Hustle," July 1975 Also tragically died early, of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 39.

Starland Vocal Band, "Afternoon Delight," July 1976 Happy Bicentennial! They managed to parlay this into a network-TV variety show.

Wild Cherry, "Play That Funky Music," September 1976 The B-side was a cover of "I Feel Sanctified" by the Commodores.

Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band, "A Fifth of Beethoven," October 1976 Walter Murphy played nearly everything on the record, but the label felt it would sell better if it was credited to a group.

Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots, "Disco Duck," October 1976 The non-hit follow-up was "Disco-rilla."

David Soul, "Don't Give Up on Us," April 1977 At least that's one more hit than Starsky ever had.

Bill Conti, "Gonna Fly Now," July 1977 He did write another big hit, Sheena Easton's title track from his score for 'For Your Eyes Only.'

Alan O'Day, "Undercover Angel," July 1977 It's been done.

Nick Gilder, "Hot Child in the City," October 1978 He later co-wrote the Scandal hit "The Warrior."

Amii Stewart, "Knock on Wood," April 1979 Let's hope this put a few bucks in Steve Cropper's pocket. Stewart has been a pretty big star in Italy, where she has lived since 1982.

Anita Ward, "Ring My Bell," June 1979 She was a schoolteacher before this song hit; it's always nice to have something to fall back on.

M, "Pop Muzik," November 1979 It peaked at Number Two in M's native U.K., unable to dislodge Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes" out of the top spot.

Lipps, Inc., "Funkytown," May 1980 The genius behind Lipps, Inc. was, swear to God, a guy named Steven Greenberg.

One-Hit Wonders, Part One

2009-05-18T21:53:00.002-06:00

One thing I wanted to do was put together a canonical list of all the true one-hit wonders: the artists who had a song go to Number One, then never again reached the Top Forty. I figured this was the kind of thing that happens maybe once a year - it seems like any old schlub who has a Number One hit would then carry enough clout to put at least one more song on the charts. Even Bobby "Boris" Pickett had another hit song, "Monsters' Holiday," which is apparently some sort of Christmas version of the "Monster Mash" and went to Number 30 right after Christmas 1962.

But there sure are a bunch of these. As a result, I'm going to break the list up into segments, starting tonight from the inception of the Hot 100 on October 13, 1958, and carrying through to 1970:

The Teddy Bears, "To Know Him Is to Love Him," went to Number One in December 1958 This one almost doesn't count, since one of the Teddy Bears was future murderer Phil Spector.

Mark Dinning, "Teen Angel," February 1960 The song that stepped off the teen-death craze.

The Hollywood Argyles, "Alley-Oop," July 1960 The chief Argyle, Gary Paxton, was also the leader of Bobby "Boris" Pickett's Crypt-Kicker Six.

Larry Verne, "Mr. Custer," October 1960 His only other chart action, "Mr. Livingston," about the explorer, I presume, stalled out at Number 75.

Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, "Stay," November 1960 At 1:39, the shortest Number One ever. The Four Seasons took it to Number Sixteen in 1964.

Ernie K-Doe, "Mother-in-Law," May 1961 Warren Zevon later covered his "A Certain Girl," on 'Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School.'

Bruce Channel, "Hey! Baby," March 1962 Delbert McClinton blows harp on this, and it was when Channel was touring with the Beatles that McClinton famously taught John Lennon to play the harmonica.

Mr. Acker Bilk, "Stranger on the Shore," May 1962 A clarinet instrumental that is certainly one of the least-remembered Number Ones of all time.

David Rose, "The Stripper," July 1962 It sure seems like a lot of instrumentalists end up as one-hit wonders.

The Tornados, "Telstar," December 1962 Our third and final one-hit instrumental of 1962, and by far the best.

Kyu Sakamoto, "Sukiyaki," June 1963 The Japanese title was Ue o muite arukō, or "I look up when I walk."

The Singing Nun, "Dominique," December 1963 Debbie Reynolds played her in the movie version.

Lorne Greene, "Ringo," December 1964 The last-ever spoken-word Number One. Maybe the only one.

The New Vaudeville Band, "Winchester Cathedral," December 1966 Their leader also wrote "There's a Kind of Hush" and "The Crying Game."

John Fred and His Playboy Band, "Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)," January 1968 While the Beatles were off in India, three straight one-hit wonders sneaked onto the top of the charts.

The Lemon Pipers, "Green Tambourine," February 1968 Written by the same guy who wrote "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye [see below]." There was actually an album that came out in 2001 called 'Green Tambourine: The Best of the Lemon Pipers.'

Paul Mauriat, "Love Is Blue," February 1968 Mauriat contributed to another Number One, as the co-composer of "I Will Follow Him," by Little Peggy March.

Hugh Masekela, "Grazing in the Grass," July 1968 Masekela plays trumpet on the Byrds' "So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star."

Jeannie C. Riley, "Harper Valley P.T.A.," September 1968 Written by Tom T. Hall.

Zager & Evans, "In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)," July 1969 Also went to Number One in the U.K., making Z&E the only act to be pure one-hit wonders both here and in Great Britain.

Steam, "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," December 1969 This was of course a studio-only group, but when the song hit, mastermind Paul Leka put together a band called Steam to tour behind it. Amazingly, that band broke up before they ever went on the tour, so Leka had to then put together another touring group.

The Shocking Blue, "Venus," February 1970 Nirvana's first-ever single, and the first record in Sub Pop's Single of the Month Club, was a cover of the Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz."

Green Revival

2009-05-17T21:24:00.003-06:00

Green Day's new album, 21st Century Breakdown, was released on Friday, and as usual, OPC is a bit late with its commentary, but what the heck. What do you guys think of Green Day as the modern equivalent of CCR?

Both bands are from the Bay Area, but from the working-class parts, so they come by their populism and their liberal political outrage honestly. Each has a singer-songwriter-guitarist backed by a rubber-band-tight rhythm section, most of whom had been playing together since high school. They're both really good.

The biggest difference is that Creedence worked hard and died young, while Green Day - the punk band - has now stretched its career over more than two decades. Despite this, 21st Century Breakdown is the album that finally makes the Green Day discography heftier than CCR's; it's their eighth studio album, and Creedence managed to put out seven from 1968 to 1972.

I suppose I'd have to grant that Creedence Clearwater Revival was the better band, on both peak and career value. "Fortunate Son" is nigh-impossible to surpass. On the other hand, no one in CCR ever had a name as great as "Tre Cool."

The Clash on Broadway

2009-05-15T11:59:00.002-06:00

I mentioned the other day that the Clash made their American television debut on ABC's Fridays in April 1980. This was the start of kind of a whirlwind tour of late-night TV for the boys. They did the requisite stop on Saturday Night Live in October 1982, on a show hosted by Ron Howard, but more interestingly, they also appeared on the Tomorrow show just after Sandinista! came out in 1981.

Those of you who know Tom Snyder only from his parodies on SNL might want to check this out: He is respectful of and curious about the band, and Topper Headon repays his interest by sticking a Clash button in his lapel. The boys are relaxed and jovial, even though they're all four crammed on some kind of plastic bench.

The Clash did "The Magnificent Seven" on that show, in all probability introducing rap to the Tomorrow show, as well as "This Is Radio Clash," whose herky-jerky rhythms were apparently hard to reproduce live. For musical performances, the real keeper remains that first one: They played "London Calling" and "Train in Vain" back to back, and in keeping with Fridays' pre-Seinfeld theme, Mick Jones looked like a very young Jerry in a big grape-colored suit:

Ho Ho Ho pt. 2

2009-05-13T22:44:00.002-06:00

How many Weezer songs have wordless choruses? There's "Dope Nose," "Perfect Situation," and I feel like I'm missing a couple of others.

The irony is, of course, Rivers is hilarious. If he wanted to put some great lines in the chorus of "Dope Nose," I'm sure he could have. But he chose not to.

Now Taking Requests

2009-05-13T07:37:00.002-06:00

We'll be doing our annual One-Hit Wonder week at the beginning of the summer this year. The one song I known I am going to cover is "Come On Eileen," by Dexy's Midnight Runners, but the other four slots are still up in the air.

In case you're late to the party, here are the songs we've previously given a full run-through in One-Hit Wonder Week:

"O-o-h Child," by the Five Stairsteps

"Tubthumping," by Chumbawamba

"Undercover Angel," by Alan O'Day

"You Were on My Mind," by We Five

"Fade Into You," by Mazzy Star

"Telstar," by the Tornados

"Steal My Sunshine," by Len

"Magic," by Pilot

"Cars," by Gary Numan

"I've Never Been to Me," by Charlene

Off the Wagon

2009-05-12T15:17:00.003-06:00

This morning on the radio I heard "Keep On Loving You," from REO Speedwagon, the finest rock & roll band ever to come out of Belleville, Illinois. Right after Kevin Cronin, in his finest downstate drawl, sings, "Instead you lay still in the grass, all coiled up and hissing," I thought I heard a faint sound effect like a rattlesnake rattling.

I've never noticed that before, but that doesn't mean a whole lot; it took me a long time to even understand what Cronin was saying in that line, so it's not like I ever went listening for a snake. It may be that the rattler had been swallowed up by the AM radio all these years - and if ever a song deserved to be heard on a staticky handheld transistor, it's "Keep On Loving You."

Most of all, if there is a little sound effect in there, it ranks by far as the most subtle thing REO Speedwagon ever did.

Friday on My Mind

2009-05-11T20:58:00.003-06:00

Back on 1980, the big brains at the ABC television network came up with the idea for a show called Fridays. The idea was it would be exactly like NBC's Saturday Night Live, except it would air one night earlier. I couldn't tell you if it was funny or not; although I vaguely remember watching a bit of it, I don't recall any specifics, and it's not been rerun since the 1980s, nor released on video.

The putative breakout star of Fridays was a guy named Mark Blankfield, who parlayed that notoriety into the starring role in the 1982 film Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again. Since then, he's been doing things like guest-starring on Charles in Charge and starring in the TV movie The Jerk, Too. By far the biggest talents on Fridays were Michael Richards and Larry David. It's not surprising that David failed to break out, though, since he's a brilliant writer but such a poor comic actor.

The one way in which Fridays tried to differentiate itself from SNL was through edgier comedy, such as a cannibalistic skit set in a zombie diner, which supposedly resulted in six ABC affiliates to stop carrying the show. This attitude also lent itself to the musical acts, which is why I mention this series at all. I recently saw the Pretenders lighting up a song called "Louie, Louie," their third number in their Fridays appearance on September 18, 1981. Live performances by the original Pretenders quartet are hard to come by, but all the ones I've seen have been scorching.

Fridays also featured acts like the Jam, Split Enz, the Tubes, Jim Carroll, Rockpile, and the Clash in their first time on AmericanTV in April 1980, shortly after London Calling came out. A DVD of Fridays musical performances would be totally hot. Supposedly, Michael Richards has the right to sign off on any DVD release of the show, which doesn't make any sense to me, since he wasn't a big deal back when it was airing.

Fortunately, a bunch of this stuff is on YouTube. Come on, Kramer, pull the trigger; here's what we're missing:

Talk Talk

2009-05-07T21:54:00.003-06:00

Our pal Jim Bartlett over at The Hits Just Keep On Comin' recently posted a video of a David Bowie song called "Stay," off of Station to Station. The most noteworthy thing about this is its source: It was on Dinah Shore's daytime talk show from 1975. Imagine that: A bunch of housewives turned on the TV thinking they were going to see Hope Lange or George Gobel, and they got the Thin White Friggin' Duke.

These talk shows used to be a lot hipper than they are now. Everyone's heard about that infamous week in 1972 when John and Yoko cohosted on the Mike Douglas show: The guest list was tailored to John and Yoko's style, with people like Ralph Nader and Bobby Seale and George Carlin. Chuck Berry came on, too, and performed with John; it was supposedly horrible. Then there was time Lennon and McCartney went on the Tonight Show to announce the formation of Apple. Unfortunately, Johnny was off that night, and in his stead was Joe Garagiola, who didn't know the Beatles from Earl Battey.

But we were talking about Bowie and Dinah Shore. If you watch her interviewing him, like here and here, you can tell she's really interested in his work and has paid attention to his artistry. Dinah points out that Bowie's wardrobe and dance moves seem steeped in the 1930s and gets him to talk about influences like Puerto Rican clothes and Bryan Ferry; this is miles ahead of anything Jay Leno asks his guests. Plus, Nancy Walker and Henry Winkler were also guests on the show, and you get to hear Bowie say, "I'm a great fan of Fonzie."

Anyway, here's the song:

Funeral for a Friend

2009-05-06T21:22:00.003-06:00

Is there any song that sounds more like New York City than "People Who Died" by the Jim Carroll Band? You've got all those locations like Rikers and the Tombs and the East Two-Nine, kids growing up too fast, and prodigious drug use. You've got noisy, not particularly well-played punk music. You've got all that death. It's like an episode of Barney Miller telescoped into a single four-minute punk song.

In that song, Jim Carroll lists, by my count, thirteen people who died. They were all his friends, and they died. It seems like more because he repeats half the song at the end, but I don't think even a degenerate like Jim Carroll could convince people that he had 24 friends who died.

If you asked me to count, I don't think I would be able to scrape up even 24 friends who lived. (Somehow, I have managed to amass 92 friends on Facebook; don't ask me how that happened.) On the other hand, hardly any of my friends have died. If you're wondering whether to befriend Jim Carroll or me, the choice ought to be obvious.

The Great Pretender

2009-05-05T19:28:00.003-06:00

When I first heard "Brass in Pocket," I thought Chrissie Hynde had a really unique way of saying things, or, at the very least, she was more interested in how words could sound than in what they mean. She sings phrases like "Got whiskey, so reet," and something that sounds like "Detroit leaning," which made me think I must have misunderstood her completely.

Then, when "Talk of the Town" came out, and Chrissie clearly sings that she "made a weesh," I figured she was just saying things funny. But I was wrong! She was pronouncing the words right; they just weren't the words I thought they were.

"I ... quote Robert Crumb's character Flaky Foont: '"It's so reet" - it's so discreet,'" Chrissie said a while back. "'I got new skank' was referring to reggae dancing. 'Detroit leaning' comes from a kind of Motor City slouch behind the wheel, driving with attitude.... This song was like the rummage drawer where I threw all my favorite oddball words and phrases."

Then again, she also says of the phrase "brass in pocket": "It was a turn of phrase that never appeared in the song, but describes someone who is doing alright." Um, Chrissie, maybe you haven't sung it lately, but "brass in pocket" is the FIRST LINE OF THE SONG.

Adult Education

2009-05-04T16:12:00.003-06:00

Do you know what the biggest Adult Contemporary hit of all time was? No, you probably don't: It's Phil Collins' "You'll Be in My Heart," from his soundtrack for the Disney animated movie Tarzan. It's not the kind of song you would think of as the biggest AC hit ever for a couple of reasons: For one, it's not very good, and for another, it went only to Number Twenty-Seven on the pop charts in the summer of '99. But it was at Number One on the Adult Contemporary chart for a whopping 19 weeks, or almost four months.

That's a very poor performance on the Hot 100 for a song that did so well on the AC charts. Seven other songs spent 13 or more weeks at the top of the AC chart, and they all reached at least Number Five on the pop chart. Four of them went to Number One.

What's the biggest AC hit that never hit the real Top Forty? I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think it might be a song called "You Gotta Love Someone," by Elton John, which was at the top of the AC charts for five weeks in 1990, but never sniffed the real charts. I'm pretty sure I've never heard it.

OPC Shopping Tip of the Week

2009-05-04T08:53:00.003-06:00

There is a technical definition of "organic" that can help you differentiate between a product so labeled in the grocery store and its conventional equivalent. Next time you're shopping, just keep this distinction in mind: The organic version of a product, compared to the regular version, must always be more expensive.

The Further Mysteries of Canada

2009-05-01T23:15:00.000-06:00

April Wine's biggest hit, "Just Between You and Me," as I mentioned the other day, was the first song to be played twice on MTV. And whoever wrote their Wikipedia page seems very proud of the fact that April Wine was the first Canadian act to appear on MTV.

They always seemed like the simplest kind of band, as would befit an act out of the far corners of Canada (they hail from a suburb of Halifax). "Just Between You and Me" was awfully straightforward, even for a pop-metal ballad; the chorus was simply:

Just between you and me
Baby I know our love will be
Just between you and me
Always I know our love will be
Just between you, just between you and me

But then when they got to the final chorus, the singer slipped in something that sounded like "Some in at the one and one." What in the world was that all about? I never had the slightest idea what he was saying.

But now, thanks to the handy-dandy World Wide Web, I can find out. It turns out the line is actually "Seulement entre toi et moi." Get it? They're Canadian, and it's French! The line means "Only between you and me"; the full passage is "Seulement entre toi et moi/Means that our love will always be," which of course it doesn't.

The remarkable thing about all this is that I wasn't prompted to look this up because of that MTV deal, but because I heard "Just Between You and Me" on the radio the other day. Someone is still playing April Wine!

Birth of a Nation

2009-04-29T21:18:00.003-06:00

The redoubtable Mark Lerner sends along the following link to the first twenty-four hours in the history of MTV: Music Television, from August 1, 1981. I doubt you want to watch the whole thing, but the winsome Martha Quinn is still worth checking out.

To make things easier for you, here is a list of the songs played that day on MTV. The playlist is better than I remember - the Pretenders and "Oliver's Army" are always worth hearing - but also more repetitive. If you were watching MTV that day, I hope you liked Rod Stewart and REO Speedwagon:

The Buggles: "Video Killed the Radio Star"
Pat Benatar: "You Better Run"
Rod Stewart: "She Won't Dance"
The Who: "You Better You Bet"
Phd: "Little Susie's on the Up" I have no idea who or what this is.
Cliff Richard: "We Don't Talk Anymore" This video, from 1979, is basically someone using every digital effect on their brand new videotape editing machine. Gerry Todd would have loved it.
The Pretenders: "Brass in Pocket"
Todd Rundgren: "Time Heals"
REO Speedwagon: "Take It on the Run" If you're going to play a bunch of REO, this is the one to kick it off with. I always liked it much better than "Keep on Loving You."
Styx: "Rockin' the Paradise"
Robin Lane & The Chartbusters: "When Things Go Wrong"
Split Enz: "History Never Repeats"
.38 Special: "Hold On Loosely"
April Wine: "Just Between You and Me"
Rod Stewart: "Sailing" Was this the Christopher Cross song?
Iron Maiden: "Iron Maiden"
REO Speedwagon: "Keep On Loving You" "I don't want to sleep/I just want to keep": Genius!
The Pretenders: "Message of Love"
Lee Ritenour: Mr. Briefcase"
The Cars: Double Life"
Phil Collins: "In the Air Tonight"
Robert Palmer: "Looking for Clues"
The Shoes: "Too Late" The Shoes were a pretty great power-pop band from Zion, Illinois, sort of the missing link between Cheap Trick and Enuff Z'Nuff.
Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty: "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"
Rupert Hines: "Surface Tension"
Madness: "One Step Beyond"
Gerry Rafferty: "Baker Street"
Pat Benatar: "I'm Gonna Follow You"
Tom Johnson: "Savannah Nights
Rockestra: "Lucille" This was a one-off formed for some charity thing, with Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Robert Plant, bunch of other guys. Useless.
Styx: "The Best of Times"
Carly Simon: "Vengeance"
Iron Maiden: "Wrathchild"
Blotto: "I Wanna Be a Lifeguard"
Rod Stewart: "Passion"
Elvis Costello: "Oliver's Army"
REO Speedwagon: "Don't Let Him Go"
The Silencers: "Remote Control/I'm Too Legal"
Juice Newton: "Angel of the Morning"
Rockestra: "Little Sister"
Bootcamp: "Hold On to the Night"
Cliff Richard: "Dreaming"
Lee Ritenour: "Is It You?"
Fleetwood Mac: "Tusk"
Michael Stanley Band: "He Can't Love You"
REO Speedwagon: "Tough Guys" The fourth REO song of the day.
Blondie: "Rapture"
The Who: "Don't Let Go the Coat"
Rod Stewart: "Ain't Love a Bitch"
The Pretenders: "Talk of the Town"
Rainbow: "Can't Happen Here"
Andrew Gold: "Thank You for Being a Friend" The Golden Girls would debut in September of 1985.
Gerry Rafferty: "Bring It All Home"
April Wine: "Sign of the Gypsy Queen"
Kate Bush: "The Man With the Child in His Eyes" So even if they weren't playing Michael Jackson at this point, they were playing songs about Michael Jackson.
David Bowie: "Ashes to Ashes"
April Wine: "Just Between You and Me" Yes, that's the second time in the first 24 hours that viewers were treated to "Just Between You and Me."
The Specials: "Rat Race"
Talking Heads: "Once in a Lifetime"
Bootcamp: "Victim"
Rod Stewart: "Tonight's the Night"
Nick Lowe: "Cruel to Be Kind" I do my best to understand it.

Long Distance Dedication

2009-04-28T16:47:00.002-06:00

All of us here at OPC wish a very happy birthday to Casey Kasem, who is 76 years old. His birthday was yesterday, actually, but he probably doesn't read this blog, so the lateness doesn't matter very much.

Kemal Amin Kasem was born in Detroit, where he got started in radio, but he made his name as a DJ in Los Angeles throughout much of the 1960s. He launched American Top Forty, his signature show, in 1970, and remained there till 1988, when, if memory serves, he was replaced by Shadoe Stevens. Someone recently had the bright idea to repackage those old AT40s to oldies stations, and they are now heard around the world on great radio stations like WBBG, Youngstown, Ohio; WHHN, Bay City, Michigan; KXKL, Denver; and 2ZM, Wellington, New Zealand. Now, on with the birthday tribute.

Casey was hired to be the narrator on Soap, but left after the first episode, because he didn't approve of the racy content. He's a liberal, though, going so far as to back Nader in 2000, although that was probably more of a Lebanese thing. He's also a vegan.

For a while there in the 1980s, Casey also did a TV show called America's Top Ten. Here he is with his "exclusive" interview with Kiss upon the release of their dreadful Music From the Elder, or rather, here's Casey talking about Kiss from the studio in L.A. while the guys in Kiss answer some questions a producer has shot at them somewhere else in the world. Note that Gene says they all wrote their new single, "World Without Heroes," without mentioning that Lou Reed also collaborated on the song. Maybe Lou had it in his contract that the band members could never say his name in public in the context of the band. Note too that this song never made it anywhere near the Top Ten, belying the title of the show:

Own It Today!

2009-04-27T13:40:00.000-06:00

In this Sunday's New York Times, a writer describes director Jim Jarmusch as "a true independent who insists on final cut and who even owns all his negatives." That sounds like something out of a self-help book, doesn't it? If you're ever going to defeat them, you must own your negatives.

Incidentally, Quentin Tarantino totally stole the tripartite, time-overlap structure of Pulp Fiction from Jarmusch's Mystery Train, starring the legendary film duo of Joe Strummer and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Tarantino's entertaining and all, but his movies are for the most part all about the other movies he's seen. And one of them was clearly Mystery Train.

Head to the Finnish

2009-04-24T18:21:00.005-06:00

In the movie version of Woodstock, the Jefferson Airplane are shown singing two songs in their sunrise set: a medley of "Saturday Afternoon" and "Won't You Try," followed by "Uncle Sam's Blues." The Airplane, you may remember, featured Grace Slick and Marty Balin as co-vocalists who didn't play an instrument, but both sang very well. But for the second song shown in the film (not, it should be noted, the second song of their set), Grace went to the side of the stage and watched as guitarist Jorma Kaukonen (seen at right) took the lead vocal. Marty Balin apparently went back to the Bethel Holiday Inn.

Grace seemed amused enough, smiling occasionally but never dancing, never really moving, truth be told. The camera remained trained on her for much of the song. People would rather look at Grace than Jorma, I suppose.

The question is: Why was this in the movie? It's like fitting in only two Beatles songs but having one of them be "Octopus's Garden." The Airplane even ended their set with their two biggest hits, "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," plus they played "Volunteers." Till I saw the Woodstock movie, I didn't even know Jorma could sing.

By the way, despite having the most Finnish name of anyone west of Helsinki, Jorma Kaukonen was actually born in the capital of this nation, Washington, D.C.

Making Electricity

2009-04-24T18:02:00.003-06:00

Who would have guessed that lo-fi synth-pop would be the sound of 2009? Well, MGMT did, which is why they're now rich and I'm not.

At their first show, back at Wesleyan University, MGMT (then known, or at least pronounced, as "Management") played a 45-minute version of the Ghostbusters theme - something strange in your neighborhood, to say the least, but I bet it was a lot of fun. I have not been able to determine whether Bill Belichick was in attendance.

Jack and Glen

2009-04-22T20:29:00.003-06:00

It's Jack Nicholson's birthday today. Glen Campbell's, too. Do you know which one is older?

Glen had his first sort-of hit in 1965, when "Universal Soldier" went to Number 45, but his first real hit was in late 1967 with "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." Jack had his first sort-of starring role with The Raven in 1963, but he didn't become a star until 1969's Easy Rider.

In 1975, Jack won the Oscar for Cuckoo's Nest, while Glen had a Number One hit with "Rhinestone Cowboy." Near as I can figure, though, they've never worked together.

Did you figure it out? Glen Campbell is 73, and Jack Nicholson is 72. Happy birthday, boys.

Just Call Him Keef

2009-04-22T17:52:00.002-06:00

Maybe it's just because of my recent post on "Sister Morphine," but there has been a lot of interest lately in an old post of mine on Keith Richards' last name. The gist of that post was that Keith had his name changed to Richard by Andrew Loog Oldham, then eventually went back to Richards at some point. No one is quite sure when that latter switch happened; shortly after my original post, Joe opined:

I think you'll find him credited as "Keith Richard" on England's Newest Hitmakers, and "Richards' on everything else thereafter, though it may have lasted until "Aftermath."

Now Kinky Paprika has weighed in:

On my copy of 1974's "It's Only Rock n' Roll," which is either an original pressing or pretty close to it, he is credited as Keith Richards.

On my copy of 1976's "Black and Blue" (ditto) he is back to being Keith Richard.
Same deal for 1977's "Love You Live."

But here's what's really messed up:
On 1982's live album "Still Life," the writing credits are "Jagger-Richard" on the older songs and "Jagger-Richards" on the post-'78 material.
Couldn't the credits have been standardized in recognition that Richard and Richards were one and the same?

Kinky also offered up the above poster, signed by Keith with no S, dating to 1964 but possibly signed at a later date.

My guess now is that Keith unofficially switched back to Richards in the late 60s, but not officially until after 1978. I can't think of any other reason for the niceties of the Still Life credits. But I'm sure at this point that Keith doesn't even know.

Shhhh.....

2009-04-20T21:51:00.002-06:00

The other day, in an American Top Forty rebroadcast from April of 1975, Casey Kasem announced that he was about to play the song that had the longest wait between the date of its recording and its debut on the charts. I had no idea what single he was talking about, figuring it was by Johnny Mathis or Louis Armstrong or somebody like that. Casey then said it was by a man named Benny Bell. I still had no clue; I'm not sure I'd ever heard that name before.

Then he played the song, and its tinkling melody was instantly recognizable: "Shaving Cream." I was nine years old in 1975, and "Shaving Cream" was a huge hit with the nine-year-old crowd:

I have a sad story to tell you
It may hurt your feelings a bit
Last night when I walked into my bathroom
I stepped in a big pile of shhhhaving cream
Be nice and clean
Shave everyday and you'll always look keen

Hearing it now, it sounded like something that was cut in 1946 (and released on the Cocktail Party Songs label): scratchy, low fidelity but carefully enunciated lyrics. It never occurred to me in 1975 that the song was that old; I never would have figured that people used (or at least alluded to) language like that back in 1946.

Benny, who was known for his risque records, had a whole basketful of songs with titles like "Without Pants," "I'm Gonna Give My Girl a Goose for Thanksgiving," and "Everybody Loves My Fanny." Dr. Demento began playing "Shaving Cream" at some point on his show in the early 1970s, leading to a re-release of it as a single in 1975, when Benny Bell was already 69 years old. (The vocal on the single, confusingly enough, was by Paul Wynn, although Benny sometimes sang it his ownself, too, and also sometimes performed under the name Paul Wynn. Near as I can tell, the hit single did not feature Benny's own vocal.)

The Benny Bell revival was short-lived; "Shaving Cream" peaked at Number Thirty and stayed on the charts only four weeks. Benny became a Dr. Demento favorite for a while and released several more comedy records before dying in 1999 at the age of 93.

Benny's real name, by the way, was Benjamin Samberg. OPC has contacted the press people for Andy Samberg, the SNL and YouTube star, to see if the two are any relation (although we highly doubt it). The Andy Samberg camp has not, as of yet, chosen to respond.

Things Are Not What They Seem

2009-04-17T16:47:00.002-06:00

The Rolling Stones' "Sister Morphine" had its origins back in 1968, when Mick Jagger was fooling around with some chords on an acoustic guitar, and his then-girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, had the idea for a story about a man in a car accident who was taken to the hospital and given morphine. The song was finished shortly thereafter, and Faithfull released it as the B-side to a single in 1969. Her version had Jagger on acoustic guitar, Ry Cooder on slide guitar, Charlie Watts on drums and Jack Nitzsche on piano.

The Stones recorded their version around the same time (reports differ on whether it was March or May of 1969); in fact, I suspect it was at exactly the same time, since theirs also features Ry Cooder on slide and Nitzsche on piano. For whatever reasons, the track didn't show up on Let It Bleed, but hung around for two years before Sticky Fingers came out in April 1971.

By then, Mick and Marianne had broken up, and Faithfull had started having serious drug issues of her own. She claims the song has nothing to do with her own drug use, which might sound slightly dubious, but I believe her. It's about a man developing an addiction after being given morphine in a hospital, so it's the good, Rush Limbaugh kind of addiction rather than the bad David Crosby kind.

Of course, the Stones being the Stones, by the time they released their version, the song was credited to Jagger-Richards. I would love to know what the songwriting credits were on Faithfull's 1969 single. When it appeared on her 1987 Marianne Faithfull's Greatest Hits, it was credited to Faithfull-Jagger-Richards.

According to Faithfull, at some point along the line, it was Keith Richards who told Stones manager Allen Klein that she deserved a songwriting credit. "This story I heard from Allen Klein, it might not be true," she said in February. "Keith Richard told him that I did write the words and I needed the money. So now and again, I get a royalty cheque for 'Sister Morphine'. I've been living off 'Sister Morphine' for years. I just got one today. £485!" Apparently, the first time she got any credit for a Stones version was when it appeared on the 1994 re-release of Sticky Fingers.

Mick, naturally, is still whining about giving up a few pounds to his old squeeze. "[Marianne Faithfull] wrote a couple of lines; she always she wrote everything, though," he said in 1995. "She's always complaining she doesn't get enough money from it."

Doink!

2009-04-16T20:42:00.002-06:00

John Madden, the greatest football broadcaster of all time, has announced his retirement at the age of 73. People claimed that Madden had lost it a few years ago, but in the last couple of years, on the brightly lit stage of Monday/Sunday Night Football, he seemed refocused, as into the game and perceptive as ever, not afraid to be technical and loving every minute of it.

As coach of the Oakland Raiders for ten years, Madden was rumpled and ornery. Once, after calling a practice on Christmas Day, which fell in the middle of playoff season, Madden angrily erased the "Merry Christmas" someone had written on his blackboard.

But as a broadcaster, he was engaging and funny. He reminded me of the great rock critic David Fricke; they each had a seemingly limited palette of pet sounds (e.g., doink! for Madden, skronk for Fricke) but would employ them with such originality and in such fresh settings that they never grew tiresome. And more importantly, they never lost their excitement for what they were seeing or hearing, and showed an enthusiasm about getting you to see it the same way.

I used to go out of my way to catch any game Madden was doing on CBS or Fox, even if it featured the hated Giants. Of course, that was much easier once he moved to prime time. Let's hope someone brings him back for a Super Bowl or two a la Keith Jackson and the Rose Bowl.

The Disappeared

2009-04-14T19:14:00.004-06:00

The first Rolling Stone Record Guide came out in 1979. The second edition came out in 1983, and is the oldest one that I own. Tucked into the back of this, making up the final four pages of the book, is a list of the artists who appeared in that first book but not in the second one. The list is headed up by this note:

"The following artists, all of whose material is now out of print, have entries in the first edition of the Record Guide only:" [emphasis mine]

That's a lie. Porter Wagoner is listed, and he not only continued to have records in print but released several records in this time period, including a duet album with Dolly Parton that went to Number Nine on the C&W album chart in 1980. I bet plenty of other acts had their work remain in print as well.

More interesting than that is that there are some true worthies on the list. I mean, I love "Sky High" but I totally understand why Jigsaw is on the list. What is an album guide going to say about Jigsaw, except to point out which LP has "Sky High" on it? On the other hand, some big, recognizable names fell off the cliff between 1979 and 1983:

Frankie Avalon
Tommy Bolin
Boney M
Brewer and Shipley
Arthur Brown
Albert Brooks
Eric Burdon and War
George Clinton (!)
Dick Dale and the Del-Tones
Nick Drake (!!)
David Geddes
Philip Glass
Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
Clarence "Frogman" Henry
Gabriel [sic] Kaplan
King Harvest
Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams (!!!)
Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.
Lee Michaels
Freda Payne
Chris Rea
Starland Vocal Band
Bonnie Tyler
The Undisputed Truth
Dennis Wilson
Johnny and Edgar Winter
Bill "Je Suis Un Rock Star" Wyman

...plus a whole bunch of Seventies one-hit wonders like the Hues Corporation and Pilot and David Essex and Silver Convention.

What I wonder is how many of these artists had enough of a second wind to get re-established in later editions of the Record Guide? Clinton, Drake, and Rea did, I'm sure. If I were getting paid big money to write this blog, I'd surely spend half a day or so checking that out.

Mark Fidrych, 1954-2009

2009-04-13T16:04:00.002-06:00

I got nothing funny or cute to say about this. Mark "the Bird" Fidrych was a source of endless joy to baseball fans in Detroit, in his native Massachusetts, and around the nation in that magical summer of 1976, when he won 19 games as a 21-year-old rookie for the Tigers. Fidrych was killed on his farm on Northborough, Massachusetts, earlier this afternoon.

The MLB Network recently aired Firdych's masterful beatdown of the Yankees just before the All-Star break in 1976, before a huge, raucous crowd at Tiger Stadium. Afterward, a dazed but happy Fidrych came out in his stocking feet to do a postgame interview. When the interview asked him if he knew he was still throwing 91 mph in the ninth inning, Fidrych looked kind of confused and said, "I don't know, no one's ever timed my ball before. I don't know how hard I throw."

His delirious smile made him look like a kid who had just come out of an Aerosmith concert having unexpectedly scored front-row seats. The Bird's innocent exuberance captured the way a lot of us fell in love with baseball. None of us who watched him pitch that summer will ever forget him.

Rubber Soul

2009-04-12T19:21:00.003-06:00

I recently picked up an album called Soul Tribute to the Beatles, which, unlike most things billed as a tribute, collects old covers rather than new recordings, in this case of Beatles songs by great R&B singers, and I do mean great. You get Aretha Franklin churchifying "Let It Be" and Earth, Wind & Fire's super-peppy "Got to Get You Into My Life," Al Green's reinvention of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and Wilson Pickett's gutbucket "Hey Jude," with a Duane Allman guitar solo subbing in for the extended na-na's. You also get Natalie Cole doing a live version of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." Really.

I was especially interested in Fats Domino's cover of "Lady Madonna," which I'd never heard before. It was a mite disappointing, very faithfully reproducing the original arrangement, which makes sense since it was supposed to sound like Fats in the first place. At last Fats gets to N'Awlins' up the vocals, singing "Friday night arrives wit'out no suitcase."

The Pickett "Hey Jude" was a hit, going to Number Twenty-Three back in 1969, and the EWF went Top Ten in 1978, just two years after the Beatles' version did likewise. But you also get a rarity like Marvin Gaye's revelatory "Yesterday," which originally appeared on his album That's the Way Love Is, released in early 1970. It's long out of print, the song was never released as a single, and no one these days owns any Marvin albums from before What's Going On, so it's anybody's guess as to the last time anyone heard this gorgeous performance before this compilation came out in 2003.

Harvey's Wallbanger

2009-04-10T19:12:00.003-06:00

The radio market out here really fascinates me. Denver is hardly the hippest city in the nation, or even in the Mountain States region, yet our radio choices are lively and different and plentiful. I'vd written before about the late, unlamented Martini on the Rockies, which has now morphed into something called Indie 101.5, playing the choicest of current indie rock. It's really kind of shockingly good.

What's really remarkable is how well they choose the older stuff they play (and how unapologetic they are about playing older stuff). This morning I heard PJ Harvey's incredibly fierce "Sheela-Na-Gig," which I've heard on the radio maybe once before in my life. (Is it supposed to go "Put money in your idol hole," or "Put money in your idle hole"? Maybe I'm better off not knowing.) Every so once in a while you hear a song on the radio and think, "That's the best song I'm gonna hear all day," and that's what I thought when I heard "Sheela-Na-Gig."

Still, there was some competition: This afternoon, I heard "See a Little Light," from Bob Mould's Workbook, heretofore best known as the last vinyl album I bought before getting a CD player. This suggests that someone at Indie 101.5 is programming the station by rummaging through my record collection circa 1995.

What makes it even bolder is that there's already a Modern Rock station in town, which the offhandedly cool Indie DJs dismiss as teenager music. I'm not a teenager, so I wouldn't know. This idea of taking a format another station is already purveying and doing it better seems pretty common in this market. A year or two ago a station called KCUV started playing smart adult-alternative rock, sort of like WXRT in Chicago, in direct competition with the World Class Rock of the venerable Boulder-based Whole Foods-ish KBCO. KCUV closed up shop last Labor Day, but God bless 'em for trying.

But yeah, "Sheela-Na-Gig." Greil Marcus once wrote a whole column in Esquire about how alarmingly great Sleater-Kinney's "Start Together" was, but concluded that it could never be a hit because it would make everything else on the radio sound silly. That's probably what happened to "Sheela-Na-Gig." Hide the small children and anyone with a heart condition:

Even the President of the United States

2009-04-09T16:06:00.003-06:00

In anticipation of Bob Dylan's upcoming album Together Through Life, the Bard has submitted to a fairly lengthy interview, which is posted at BobDylan.com. In it, Bob offers his take on Barack Obama:

He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage - cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love.

Bob's way too smart to be taken in by all this pretty storytelling though:

Do you think he’ll make a good president?
I have no idea. He’ll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of them going back. You know, it’s like they all fly too close to the sun and get burned.

Incidentally, the most Dylanesque thing I have ever seen was an old man missing a ring finger who was playing a little electric organ in a subway station in New York City. I had to go back and check the lyrics of "Desolation Row" to see if "the nine-fingered organist" was in there.

Sufferin' Saltwater

2009-04-08T22:09:00.003-06:00

Isn't that common songwriting trope of drowning in one's own tears - cf. Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds' "Don't Pull Your Love," Ray Charles' "Drown in My Own Tears," Dolly Parton's "Endless Stream of Tears," Bon Jovi's "I'll Be There for You," Otis Redding's "That's How Strong My Love Is," Eric Clapton's "River of Tears," the Bee Gees' "Tragedy" - actually kind of gross?

So Sweet and Clear

2009-04-07T19:09:00.004-06:00

I recently had the good fortune to be asked by the winsome editor of Oklahoma Today, Louisa McCune, to write an article on Leon Russell, the Master of Space and Time (and isn't that ever one of the great lost rock & roll nicknames), for that magazine's upcoming special Rock and Roll issue. One thing I discovered, but did not have room for in the story, was that Leon wrote the song "Superstar," which the Carpenters took to Number Two back in the fall of 1971.

(Karen and Richard, by the way, had four songs stall out at Number Two, plus two more that peaked at Number Three. But they also had three Number One hits, so no one should cry for them, unlike Creedence Clearwater Revival, who had five Number Two hits and no Number Ones. But I digress).

Leon actually co-wrote "Superstar" with Bonnie Bramlett, when they were on tour with, among others, Rita Coolidge, who originally had the idea for a song about a deranged groupie. Rita also gave it the title "Superstar," for reasons that elude me. From there it was picked up by Bette Midler, who sang it on The Tonight Show - which I guess could be true, and has been printed in a major magazine, but would mean that Bette was on Johnny long before she ever released an album, which makes me skeptical - where Richard Carpenter heard it and brought it to Karen.

The Carpenters altered the words slightly to make the song more palatable to their audience: “At that time, Top 40 radio in America would not have played something that said 'can hardly wait to sleep with you again,’" Richard told Blender magazine. "So I changed it to 'be with you again.’ ”

Once again, I'm skeptical; I think he was deferring more to Karen's sensibilities than to those of radio programmers. One song that kept "Superstar" out of the top spot had Rod Stewart asking Maggie to wake up, so sleep was not unheard of at the top of the charts back then. It was the Seventies!

Applause, Applause

2009-04-06T19:15:00.003-06:00

How many songs have hand-clapping that lasts throughout the entire song? I can think of only one: "Right Back Where We Started From," by Maxine Nightingale. (Actually, I thought of another, but now I can't remember what it was.)

Are there any others?

Etta's Place

2009-04-05T01:06:00.000-06:00

Speaking of Etta James, she had nine Top Forty hits between 1960 and 1968, and the highest-charting of these was "Tell Mama," which hit Number 23 in the early days of 1968. (This is the same song, co-written by Clarence "Patches" Carter, that would become a staple for Janis Joplin.) At a guess, I think this makes Etta James the artist with the most Top Forty hits who never had a Top Twenty hit. I realize that it's highly unlikely that anyone would ever check out (or even care about) such a thing other than me, but I will see what I can do to confirm it for you.

What's most surprising about this is that "At Last" is not one of those nine Top Forty hits. Etta's recording of "At Last" came out in April 1961 and went to Number Two on the R&B charts, but only Number 47 on the Hot 100. I'm not sure why it didn't cross over better, because Miss James had already had three Top Forty pop hits by then.

I Just Wanna Stop Gino Vannelli

2009-04-04T21:20:00.002-06:00

The irrepressible Mark Lerner, who is just full of fun and games, has suggested another little amusing diversion for us in the comments to On and On. It's a game called "A song, a singer, a sentence," with a variation called "A singer, a song, a sentence." The challenge is to come up with a singer and a song that combine into a sentence, such as, as Mark suggests, "Blow Away George Harrison."

Other contributors have already made suggestions in the comments to that thread. Here are some that I've come up with:

I Do Lisa Loeb
The Marvelettes Please Mr. Postman
The Beatles Can't Buy Me Love
I Need to Know Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
J. Geils Band Must of Got Lost
I Hear You Knocking Dave Edmunds
Don't Stop Til You Get Enough Michael Jackson
I Can't Go for That Daryl Hall and John Oates
You Can Make It If You Try Sly and the Family Stone
Keep a-Knockin’ Little Richard
Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit
Let’s Get It on Marvin Gaye

Some of these aren't quite sentences, but I thought they were funny anyway:

Fastball out of My Head
Vienna Calling Falco
I’m Henry VII, I Am Herman’s Hermits
Sometimes When We Touch Dan Hill

Once I Understood

2009-04-03T21:33:00.003-06:00

So I was driving through northern New Mexico today and noticed a sign alerting the population of I-25 that Foreigner was making an upcoming appearance at an Indian casino, as well as the fact that opening for Foreigner would be the band Think. You may remember Think as the studio concoction that perpetrated "Once You Understand" on this great nation of ours back in 1972. That was the half-spoken-word hit that featured arguing between teenagers and their parents, with a chorus going "Things'll get a little easier once you understand" all the while. Then there was an ending that was most chilling, although probably not in the way the producers intended:

Mister Cook (yes)
You have a son named Robert
Robert Cook, age seventeen (yes)
I'm sorry, Mister Cook
You better come down
To the station house
Your son is dead (dead, how)
He died of an overdose (oh, God)

Now, even I'm not dumb enough to think that that Think is going to be sullying the good name of Foreigner at an Indian casino in New Mexico. There must be some new band that was so enamored with "Once You Understand" that they decided to cop the name.

But why would anyone in their right mind name themselves after a band that was famous for being horrible? If you were starting a band would you call it Milli Vanilli? Or Johnny Hates Jazz? Or the Doors?

No Foolin'

2009-04-01T20:14:00.003-06:00

You may have noticed that all of the April 1st posts here at OPC were undeniably true. We believe that so-called April Fools' jokes primarily consist of someone telling a lie, then insisting that the lie is true over and over again until the listener finally agrees that it's true. At that point, the liar announces that the listener has, by believing the lie, done something wrong.

We don't find that funny.

On and On

2009-04-01T18:30:00.002-06:00

I always thought it strange that two of Marvin Gaye's biggest hits, and arguably his two signature hits, both end with that little dangling preposition "on." How many song titles even end with "on"?

In fact, there are only three songs that have gotten to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 that ended that way. They are:

"You Keep Me Hangin' On," by the Supremes
"Let's Get It On," by Marvin Gaye
"My Heart Will Go On," by Celine Dion

And "What's Going On"? It got stuck at Number Two for three weeks, but never ascended into the top spot, depriving Marvin Gaye of the honor of having fully half the Number One hits that end in "on."

Ladies and Gentlemen, "Death Cab for Cutie"

2009-03-31T08:04:00.003-06:00

It seems that many of us have not seen Magical Mystery Tour, so I thank poster Kip W. for providing the following clip from the film, featuring the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The Bonzos were one of those bands that always got a favorable writeup in the Rolling Stone Record Guide that nevertheless left you with no idea what they actually sounded like. Now you can find out.

The Beatles were early fans of the band, which eventually ended up playing on a British kids' TV show called Do Not Adjust Your Set, which featured Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle. Bonzo Neil Innes befriended those guys, and went on to be the sort of musical director for Monty Python, as well as a horrifically bad musical guest on NBC's Saturday Night.

The Bonzos' one hit was 1968's "I'm the Urban Spaceman," written by Innes and produced by future Elton John helmsman Gus Dudgeon and future "Ebony and Ivory" duettist Paul McCartney under the collective pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth. That's not their most recognizable title these days, though. According to the person who posted this video on YouTube, this song is "probably" the source for the name of the band Death Cab for Cutie. Or maybe it's just all a coincidence:

England Dan, 1948-2009

2009-03-27T19:16:00.002-06:00

Dan Seals, purveyor along with John Ford Coley of some of the blandest pop of the 1970s, dead at the age of 61. Seals was from Texas, but got stuck with the nickname "England Dan" for his impersonation of the Beatles' accents. His older brother, Jim, supposedly was in the Champs, of "Tequila" fame, for a while, though frankly I have my doubts, then paired up with Dash Crofts in Seals and Crofts.

And England Dan and John Ford Coley somehow managed to come up with an even more vanilla variation on the Seals and Crofts style, hitting it big with the ultrasmooth "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight," which went to Number Two in the summer of '76. Like a lot of second-tier acts, Dan and Coley had a hard time making their lyrics fit their melodies, so that in the line "I'm not talkin' 'bout movin' in," the "-vin'" got overstressed, and they managed to break a line right in the middle of the word "blowin.'"

Not that it hurt their career much. They hit throughout the late Seventies with "Nights Are Forever Without You," "It's Sad to Belong," and "We'll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again." Their final Top Forty hit, 1979's "Love Is the Answer," was written by none other than Todd Rundgren. In all, they had four Number One hits on the Adult Contemporary chart.

After ED&JFC split up, in 1980, Dan went solo. He cut two albums as England Dan, both of which stiffed, then put out a country album, Rebel Heart, in 1983. That one was a hit, and Seals would go on to have three Number One country hits, including "Bop" and "Meet Me in Montana," a duet with now-divorced Mormon Marie Osmond.

Dan Seals ran for Congress as a Democrat in the 10th District of Illinois in 2006 and 2008, losing both times. However, this was a different Dan Seals, unrelated to the singer.

Dan Seals' last words were "Michael Johnson lives on, but he's bluer than blue."

Having the Time of Your Life

2009-03-26T21:23:00.003-06:00

In the film version of Mamma Mia!, in contravention of all that Hollywood holds dear, Meryl Streep, 59 at the time of the movie's release, romances Pierce Brosnan, who was 55. Not only that, she also sort of romances Stellan Skarsgard, 57, and Colin Firth, a mere pup of 48.

The music is real good, too, even though at first you start to think that Pierce Brosnan is going for a kind of counterintuitive rough-hewn anti-Abba non-gloss on his vocals, and then you realize he just can't sing.

You'll Be Dead Before Your Time Is Through

2009-03-26T14:14:00.001-06:00

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I have already outlived Natalie Wood, John Candy and Django Reinhardt. I don't find this comforting in the least; in fact, I find it strangely disquieting. I had better get to work - surely there's an Uncle Buck in me somewhere.

These facts come to you courtesy of DeadAtYourAge.com. Go ahead and give it a spin.

My Kind of Town

2009-03-25T17:11:00.002-06:00

"They have the time, the time of their life," Frank Sinatra sings in "Chicago." "I saw a man, he danced with his wife, in Chicago, my hometown."

Now, Chicago is my hometown too, so I am not as familiar with many other American metropolises as I am with that toddlin' town. I can say that in Chicago, when you see a man dance with his wife, it is generally not worthy of note. Are there places where this is not the case, such that coming to Chicago and seeing a husband and wife cutting a rug, one might see fit to include that detail in a song?

Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Working Day, If We're Lucky

2009-03-25T10:35:00.002-06:00

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

It's dangerous to read too much autobiography in a songwriter's words, but if even Paul Simon, who travels in some pretty fast company, can't find a friend whose dreams are still alive, we're in deep trouble. It's true, Paulie wrote that song back in 1973, but it's no less true today.

Here's Simon singing it on the Dick Cavett show from 1974:

They're Gonna Put Me in the Movies

2009-03-23T21:20:00.002-06:00

As I've said before, when the requests for appearances by the Beatles started coming in fast and furious, the boys responded by making short movies to accompany their songs, or what we know as videos. They sent the first of these, for the "Rain"/"Paperback Writer" single, to Ed Sullivan, but I get the sense that eventually they'd just send them anywhere.

They ended up making a lot of these videos, more than most people would assume, especially for songs that were just singles and didn't land on an album. You would think the Beatles Anthology TV show and (especially) DVD would have been a good place to park them, but many of them didn't even end up there. They've just been kind of lost in the ether, or what we know as YouTube.

I find these videos incredibly valuable, especially from the later years, since we never got to see the Beatles perform "Revolution" or "Hello Goodbye" live. It rather astonishes me that they haven't been packaged for sale (if they have, I haven't been able to find them). I've tried to do the next best thing, which is to assemble them all for your enjoyment. This isn't clips from Ed Sullivan or footage from Shea Stadium; these are simply, as best as I can suss out, the Beatles' videos:

Paperback Writer
Paperback Writer (Ed Sullivan version)
Rain
Rain (Ed Sullivan version)
We Can Work It Out
Day Tripper
Strawberry Fields Forever
Help!
Ticket to Ride
Penny Lane
All You Need Is Love
Hello Goodbye
I Am the Walrus
Revolution
Hey Jude
Hey Bulldog (!)
Let It Be
Two of Us
Something

I tried not to include clips from the boys' movies, although certainly many of those scenes work wonderfully as videos. Let me know if I missed anything else.

A Day in the Life of the Hits

2009-03-22T20:40:00.003-06:00

Here's something that happened exactly 40 years ago, but which I just learned today:

The Broadway musical Billy, with songs co-written by bubblegum music master Ron Dante, closes after one performance.

That's from the blog The Hits Just Keep On Comin', and I'm sure the blogger knew, but just chose not to mention, that Ron Dante was more or less the entirety of the Archies. (He also chose not to mention that his blog was named after a Michael Nesmith solo album.) Today's entry is simply a compendium of stuff that happened on March 22, 1969, which I find very useful. It roots you in history to know the Lew Alcindor's last college game for UCLA was on the same day as John and Yoko's first bed-in for peace, in Amsterdam.

The Hits is written by a DJ named Jim Bartlett, the sort of guy who's been from town to town, up and down the dial. He also points out things like the fact that Dusty Springfeld's marvelous "Breakfast in Bed" was a Top Ten hit in Louisville, where Alcindor was playing in the NCAA tourney, although it was barely a hit at all nationwide. I wouldn't even know how you'd find that stuff out.

I found the Hits via the blogroll at Scraps' site. If you like OPC, you'll probably like it too.

Garage Band

2009-03-21T16:01:00.000-06:00

Until the Rainbow Burns the Stars Out in the Sky

2009-03-20T14:01:00.000-06:00

One more thing to note before I get off of this Stevie Wonder kick: Stevie had a Number One hit in August 1963, with "Fingertips Pt. 2," as well as a Number One hit in November 1985 with "Part-Time Lover." (There were seven others in between as well.) That's more than 22 years between Number One hits. If you credit Stevie for "That's What Friends Are For," which was credited to Dionne & Friends and went to Number One on January 18, 1986, you can stretch those 22 years out a little further, although for my money, it's Gladys Knight, batting cleanup, who owns that song.

But that's not quite the record. The Beach Boys' first Number One record was "I Get Around," which hit the top spot on the Fourth of July, 1964, and their last was the inexplicable "Kokomo," which went to Number One in November 1988. That's 24-plus years between Number One hits. By the way, how unjust is it that "Kokomo" went to Number One, while the great "Good Timin'," from 1979, spent one measly week at Number Forty?

You didn't believe me when I said Gladys Knight owns "That's What Friends Are For," did you? Listen:

Maybe It's the Time of the Year, or Maybe It's the Time of Man, but It's Definitely Not "Time Is on My Side"

2009-03-19T20:40:00.003-06:00

Back when the roster of acts at Woodstock was being assembled, the organizers considered very seriously whether they should invite the Rolling Stones. In the end, they decided not to, although probably not for the reasons you might be thinking.

Much of the planning for the festival was predicated on the idea of keeping mayhem and violence to a minimum. "Their hit song at that time was 'Street Fighting Man,'" said concert organizer Joel Rosenman a couple decades after the fact. "And we just didn't want street fighting in our festival."

Well, in reality, "Street Fighting Man" was a hit in the summer of '68, not '69; its release coincided with the Democratic convention. (In the summer of '69, "Honky Tonk Women" was the Stones' big hit.) And it wasn't even a hit, really, peaking at Number Forty-Eight. But given what happened at Altamont, Rosenman may have been right anyway.

Bad Hit

2009-03-18T22:02:00.003-06:00

A while back, friend of OPC Gavin suggested we have a discussion here about this question: What's the worst song that appears on an indisputably great album? I considered throwing it open to the audience, but I didn't really have anything of my own to add, mostly because I just don't trust in my skills as a rock critic all that much.

I would be just fine with never again hearing "Within You, Without You," from the Greatest Album of All Time, but a lot of people like it. (Ringo, for one, thought it was fantastic.) I've always thought "Lovers Rock," from London Calling, was very weak. I don't think anyone ever listens to "Exit" from The Joshua Tree. But are those songs really that bad in most people's eyes? I don't know.

But there's a different way to spin that question that I feel suited to answer: What's the worst hit song by a legitimately great artist? I was thinking about this question while listening to Stevie Wonder, as I have been doing lately. But one song I have not been listening to is "I Just Called to Say I Love You," Stevie's Number One hit from 1984. It's cloying and obvious, bursting with cheesy synthesizers that sound only like something's that been synthesized, sung in a voice that sounds like Stevie is addressing a six-year-old who isn't even particularly perceptive for a six-year-old. I just called to say I hate it.

Stevie still maintained most of his powers at this point; the gorgeous "Overjoyed" came out two years later, so Wonder certainly knew his way around a quiet-storm ballad in 1984. And what the heck, he knew his way around a hit, too, since "I Just Called" went to Number One.

It's not the worst hit ever - it's no "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" - but Stevie Wonder is an all-time great, and it may be the worst big hit by an all-time great. It's as if the Rolling Stones' cover of "My Girl" went to the top of the charts. I'm sure glad it didn't.

Pass It On

2009-03-17T21:50:00.003-06:00

If, like me, you've been traveling the last two weeks, you've seen a lot of signs in airports saying things like "Super man" next to a picture of Christopher Reeve, over a note reading "Strength: Pass It On," sponsored by the Foundation for a Better Life. If you've been in a middle school lately, you've seen plenty of these signs there as well. Now, this sounds to me an awful lot like the Human Fund, the charity George Costanza once pretended to support. How exactly does the Foundation for a Better Life propose to make my life better?

It turns out that its strategy consists solely of exhorting me to have the courage of Jackie Robinson or the tenacity of some 88-year-old college graduate. That's their entire mission.

But one thing it's definitely not is a Human Fund-style scam. The Foundation for a Better Life neither solicits nor accepts donations from taxpaying citizens. It is wholly funded by Phil Anschutz, the billionaire from out here in Colorado. He could do a lot worse things with all that money.

Mercer's Last Theorem

2009-03-17T14:05:00.001-06:00

In the Shins' "Gone for Good," head Shin James Mercer sings, "I found a fatal flaw in the logic of love," but he never tells us what exactly that fatal flaw is. Don't you think it would be nice if he let the rest of us in on the secret? Just a hint?

The 21-Year-Old Genius

2009-03-16T09:54:00.004-06:00

Although he was signed to Motown as an eleven-year-old, and all of his hits (save the duets) were on Motown or a Motown-affiliated label such as Tamla, Stevie Wonder hasn't always been a member of Berry Gordy's stable. Stevie's kiddie contract with Motown expired on his 21st birthday, May 13, 1971, just after his album Where I'm Coming From was released and his cover of "We Can Work It Out" peaked at Number Thirteen, and it was on that date that Stevie officially left the Motown fold.

A free agent, Stevie decamped to New York and worked in the studio for almost a year, without a record deal of any kind. When he had completed the material for his next album, Music of My Mind, he shopped it around to several labels, eventually deciding to sign with ... Motown.

In the interim, toward the end of 1971, Motown released a collection of Wonder material called Stevie Wonder's Greatest Hits Vol. 2. Think about that: Even before "Superstition" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and "Living for the City," even before he turned twenty-one, Stevie Wonder had already produced enough music to fill two volumes of greatest hits.

My favorite Stevie stories revolve around the pranks he used to pull. When he was just a kid hanging around the Motown studios, he'd ask one of the secretaries in the morning what kind of tie Mr. Gordy was wearing that day. Then when he finally "saw" the boss that day, he'd say, "Oh, Mr. Gordy, I love the tie you're wearing, with the green stripes on that electric blue background."

Happy Pi Day!

2009-03-14T14:30:00.002-06:00

OPC wishes a very happy Pi Day to all our readers. Of course, the big blowout will come on Pi Day 2015, which promises to do for pi what December 31, 1999, did for millenia.

The Last Shall Be First

2009-03-12T13:15:00.003-06:00

When she was born, Etta James was given the name Jamesetta. Jamesetta Hawkins.

It sounds better the other way around, doesn't it?

Scraps Lives

2009-03-12T13:06:00.003-06:00

Several months ago, you'll recall, legendary OPC commenter Scraps (also known as Soren DeSelby) suffered a stroke, and he was touch and go for a while there. I am happy to report that Scraps is back among us, making the occasional post to his own blog, Parlando, although he notes, frighteningly, that it took him three hours and ten minutes to compose his latest post, and probably not for the same reasons it sometimes takes us three hours and ten minutes to compose a post, which mostly have to do with a really cool game coming on the MLB Network or a frightening lack of salty snacks in the kitchen, occasioning an hour-long search through every shelf on every pantry.

So I don't expect Scraps to be back at OPC for a while, but that's OK. It's just nice to have him back in the world.

Louise Lasser, Louise Lasser

2009-03-11T21:35:00.003-06:00

On the other hand, the Louise Lasser show toward the end of the first season is probably the worst show of those first four magical years. Lasser was famous as a nutcase, and for a while, the showed played off that smartly, having her lose her place in the monologue and eventually break down, leave the stage and hide out in her dressing room, until Chevy Chase came and talked her out again. But it was real: She supposedly insisted that she'd appear with no other cast member aside from Chevy (which meant she did one scene talking to a dog), and she filmed a baffling yet boring scene in a diner, about a couple breaking up and occasionally asking the waitstaff for their next line, acting alongside Alan Zweibel (!), that she demanded be put on the air.

It was structured much like the later Milton Berle show, opening with a long monologue (Lasser's was much better than Berle's) and closing with a maudlin, mawkish, self-pitying monologue complete with poorly sung song. (Both shows were never rerun, so I hadn't seen either one until the DVDs came out.) Lasser's was about the trials of getting "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" on the air.

The question is, who let them do this? Lorne must have been very excited about having Lasser host - Elliott Gould announced it onstage at the end of the prior show, which I had never seen before or since - and was afraid to lose her if he put too many constraints on her. But really, the show would have been better off if she had walked.

There's a weird context to all this: The Louise Lasser show aired on July 24, 1976, nearly two months after the previous show on May 29. They did one more show the following week, with Kris Kristofferson hosting, then that was the end of the first season. The second season started September 18, so that little island of shows was actually closer to the second season than the first. They threw together two shows in the middle of the summer, with long breaks on either side. (The Kristofferson show wasn't all that good either.) The bottom line is: No one wanted to be there.

The summer-show experiment wasn't tried again.

Davis Rules

2009-03-08T21:17:00.003-06:00

The comedy writer Tom Davis has published an autobiography, 39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss; I guess someone figured Senator Franken would be good for sales. In it, Davis says that the best show in the history of Saturday Night Live was the Steve Martin-hosted outing in the third season that I discussed here. I wouldn't argue with that. I don't necessarily think he's right, but I wouldn't argue with him either.

I wanted to like Davis' book, but it was a bit disappointing (although, to be fair, I didn't really read the whole thing, just about an hour and a half's worth while I was sitting in a bookstore). I like to learn things from books, and there just wasn't that much to learn. Although I did find out that Saturday Night photographer Edie Baskin and her pianist brother Richard Baskin are the children of half the founders of Baskin-Robbins. And Edie is like six feet tall.

It Was a Very Good Year

2009-03-07T10:34:00.004-07:00

Friend of OPC Rob sends over the dirt on a blog from Scott Miller, formerly of the Eighties band Game Theory (which I don't recall, but Rob says they were good, and I believe him), wherein he takes alook at the best songs from a certain year. The first thing to note is that having a real musician do this kind of thing is extraordinarily valuable, with his assessments of the kind of technical details that would easily pass me by but that I'm oh so glad to have: "The extent of the twist is the big deal here: 'All the young dudes carry the...' is the set-up, then the minor on 'news' is cool enough, but then 'boogaloo dudes' seems to take up a new descent, then 'carry the news' is a radical, unexpected resolution—he has to cheat back up to the fundamental key in the turnaround." I can't do that kind of thing.

By sorting these songs according to year, Miller achieves a few important things, like bringing a context to them that you might otherwise miss. The year 1978, for instance, encompasses "Shattered" and This Year's Model and "Comes a Time" and "Candy's Room" (far from the best song on Darkness, says I, but whatever). The fact that they all seem to be beginnings and ends of different things makes you less likely to put them all together temporally.

You can also see that the 1960s and 1970s are filled with memorable pop songs, whereas the 1980s and beyond tend to be filled with stuff by Guadalcanal Diary and Let's Active and Thin White Rope. Hey, I like Guadalcanal Diary as much as the next guy, once you factor in the fact that the next guy has never even heard Guadalcanal Diary. This has more to do with Miller moving from getting songs off AM radio to getting songs off college radio and in clubs than it has to do with snobbery. As far as I know, Miller is the only person besides me who likes the Sandpipers' "Come Saturday Morning," or at least is willing to admit it.

And you can also see what a thundering earthquake 1965 was as far as pop music goes. It marked the debut of "Help!" and "Tracks of My Tears" and "My Generation" and "My Girl" and "King of the Road" and "In the Midnight Hour" (and me). And that's before you get to "Satisfaction" and "Yesterday" and "Like a Rolling Stone," each of which has, at some point, been declared the greatest record ever. It's nice to be reminded of that.

You Must Tell Me, Baby, How Your Head Feels Under Something Like That

2009-03-06T21:36:00.004-07:00

Maybe the most impressive thing about the movie Changeling is the hat wrapped around Angelina Jolie's head for much of the film. Now, I don't know anything about fashion - in fact, you could probably say I have negative fashion sense, since if I think some article of clothing looks good, it's probably a good bet that it doesn't - but that hat is off the hizzy. It fits Angie perfectly; since it swallows up the head, I'm sure it helps to have strong features, and if there's one thing Angelina has, it's a lot of face.

It probably plays havoc with your hair, which is probably why they went out of style. You can't put that thing on a beehive, or on a bouffant. But believe me, ladies, those hats are worth the occasional bad hair day.