When
Was
On Top
You know those CDs they sell at grocery stores, convenience stores, drug stores, and other places you are not supposed to buy music from? It's usually some sort of spinny rack filled with budget priced greatest hits packages with an asterisk after every other song and a note in the liner notes explaining they are alternate live versions of the songs you thought you were buying. It is the third world of the popular music landscape, an arena no one wants to claim home to, but one with a storied past that involves a Baron, an Australian male model, a gaggle of hot chicks, possibly Elton John, and lots and lots of cover songs.
It is 1926. Two years after the birth of his brother, the poet Michael Hamburger, Paul Bertrand Wolfgang Hamburger is born. By 1965 he goes by Paul Hamlyn, a last name he picked out of a phone book, or Baron Hamlyn of Edgeworth, and has been in the publishing business for 15 years. He has struck a deal with EMI to create Music for Pleasure Records, specializing in low budget repackages of odds and sods by names as big as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Blondie, The Beach Boys, Hendrix and The Animals, cashing in on the dreg leftovers of sellable names. The label also goes on make and market their own original recordings, mostly of showtunes, studio cast recordings of South Pacific, Carousel, and The Sound of Music. Still, not the most reputable name in the music industry, but reputation or no, they sold records. Their Sound of Music sold 250,000 copies. All over the UK, people in grocery stores were drawn in by the idea of listening to someone kind of a little like Julie Andrews singing "Do-Re-Mi" in the background when they cleaned up dishes that night. A new market for music was born.
It is London 1967 and Bill Welling enters the scene. He is a former male model, an Australian and a pioneer in the concept of the covers album. The idea was, make a list of some semi-hit songs on the chart and make soundalike recordings with studio musicians and sell them on the cheap, hope no one notices, sort of like how when Snakes on a Plane was out in theaters they had a movie called Snakes on a Train at Blockbuster, as if there just happened to be two snake disaster pictures made at the same time, with rhyming titles..
Vocalists were cast for songs on a weekly basis, a better living based on the number of hit voices you could pull off. Elton John played as a studio musician on some of the early Music for Pleasure hits collections, and the same is rumored to be true of David Bowie, but all of the MfP covers albums are completely anonymous except for the songwriting credits.
It began with Hits '67, then the hits just kept on coming—Hits '68, Super Hits, Hit Hits, Smash Hits, Hits Again, and finally Hot Hits, volumes 1-20. They were putting albums out rapidfire, every couple of months, using the temp talents of studio musicians, and an arranger who would decipher the songs from recordings. Typically the arranger had ten days from when a song was picked til it was to be recorded, but sometimes, in order to guarantee the inclusion of the most up-to-date hits, and therefore longer shelf life on the checkout counter at Woolworths', they would knock out a song start to finish in a day or two.
By the end of the decade, there were a number of other labels putting out budget knockoffs, from the Marble House Chartbusters series to Fontana's Sounds Like Hits, to Rediffusion's Pick of the Hits, to Deacon's Pick of the Pops, to Pickwick's Top of the Pops. The latter(est) began in 1968 as a knockoff of Wellings' first cover albums, with recording faster and cheaper, but with a slicker sales force smart enough to take on a name that was recognizable to all of England because of the TV show, yet wasn't copyright protected. As another brilliant marketing move, Pickwick put a hot chick on every Top of the Pops cover, yanking images from model agency portfolios of young up and comers. Soon Top of the Pops overtook Music for Pleasure's hits releases in sales, and from that day forth Welling insisted a woman be on every album cover.
Not knowing how Top of the Pops got their cover girls, MfP arranged photo shoots, at first modeling their cover shots after the Pickwick girls, then later settling on a single photographer and crew, and a theme, for continuity. Beginning with Hot Hits 6, their biggest seller, each album cover had a sports theme. The tradition began with a girl in a bikini playing cricket, and led to hot shots of soccer, rugby, boxing, skiing (also bikinied), archery, tennis (or dry humping the net, it's hard to tell), holding the Olympic torch, race car driving and wearing wreaths made of tires, sledding (also bikinied), scuba diving, billiards, motocross, croquet, and finally, for the very unnecessary Hot Hits 20, listless fishing.
While none would match Wellings' greatest cover album success, Lennon & McCartney Tijuana-style, which sold over 340,000 copies, Hot Hits, and the budget cover album concept as a whole, was turning out rather successful. Acknowledging the success, in 1971 Record Retailer created a Budget chart that ran alongside their top albums chart, and was regularly topped by Top of the Pops, with Hot Hits trailing. Then came the day, August 7th, when Record Retailer decided to make the two charts one, letting the budget releases run with the big boys, and Hot Hits 6, with its dream game of hot cricket, became the #1 album in England. Top of the Pops 18 came in sixth.
"[It was] the first time an anonymous covers LP had topped the listing. A fortnight later, Top of the Pops managed it too, as Volume 18 polled number 1 for three weeks, knocked from its perch by Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water on September 11." –Authoritative Top of the Pops website
Top of the Pops hit #1 again around Christmas, with Volume 20, until it was beaten out by Led Zeppelin IV. Wellings followed with Hot Hits 8, which got to #2 but couldn't beat out T-Rex's Electric Warrior. Major labels took notice of the bold chart success these knockoff albums were having and complained about it, so after only a year Record Retailer stopped including budget records in the charts, and sales began to slow.
Wellings' Hot Hits bowed out and went fishing with Hot Hits 20, while Top of the Pops managed an epic 92 volumes, lasting all the way into the future:
See all Top of the Pops covers
"Whilst there is no denying that the use of the female form is a blatant ploy to grab attention, the models themselves were initially represented not as empty visual accessories so much as symbols of a chic lifestyle, the earlier cover stars representative of the 'Chelsea Girl' vogue and revealing little unnecessary flesh. It was not until the end of 1969 that they began to bare a little more, a ploy which developed in 1971 such that they were becoming decidedly saucy. Nonetheless, the mood and imagery is more redolent of Donald McGill's saucy postcards, the models generally employing comical poses, absurdly excessive accessories and, frequently, knowingly ridiculous attire."
-Authoritative Top of the Pops website
Despite the massive amounts of these budget records that were released, they remain largely a mystery. Their selling point now, as when they were first released, has much more to do with the album covers than the covers on the albums, and the images have lived on in the digital world, scattering themselves among dozens of websites dedicated to tacky retro eye candy. Yet, it is nearly impossible to find details about the musicians who played on the albums, which makes sense in a way. Musicians didn't get into the covers game for fame and glory—it was a faceless business, aside from the one on the cover, and many of the albums lack even production credits, listing only the songwriters. The biggest unanswered question is how these labels were able to make these albums to begin with—were song rights that cheap, did these records predate our obsession with intellectual property and copyright profit, or were they just pulling a fast one? All I know of the records, aside from some internet scouring, comes from a pile of 30 or so that I was gifted by a stranger in Coal Country, PA. It is a variety pack of budget releases—mostly of Hot Hits and Top of the Pops, but also some of the lesser names like Chartbusters, Sounds Like Hits, Pick of the Hits, Pick of the Pops, and even a few that never caught on to the hot chicks marketing scheme, all from England, which brings up further questions of whether copyright laws were more lax under the Queen, if the records were really that much cheaper in the States given import costs, and whether I should be using "cheeky" more often in my descriptions.
The only print press I've been able to track down focuses on Pickwick's Top of the Pops, and actually names names. The sadly brief two page spread by Kieron Tyler in the September 2000 issue of Mojo is mostly taken up by pictures of the album covers, but includes some brief interview snippets with session singer Tony Rivers, who stands by the work he did, saying of the cover versions, "nobody would notice the difference at a party", and Bruce Baxter, who headed up production of Volumes 4 through 79. Baxter details the breakneck production, explaining how a committee of label folks picked 12 hits from the charts every Wednesday and sent the songs to him that night, tasking him with writing a score for each track by listening to the original 45s, booking the necessary musicians and studio space, and passing the songs along to the scheduled singers, who had to figure out the lyrics. Recording often began just two days after the songs were chosen. "It wasn't fair to the singers," Baxter says, "they had 15 minutes at most".
The Mojo article resurrected some interest in the Top of the Pops records, and BBC4 followed up later that same year with a half hour radio program on the same subject, again interviewing Baxter and Rivers, and playing snippets of their works, including what is considered to be their crowning achievement, "Bohemian Rhapsody", which they recorded in a single night, compared to the three weeks and 180 overdubs it took Queen to make the original. There is something astounding about what they were able to accomplish, and under what conditions, and something very punk rock as well. They were DIY to the core, taking the piss out of the glorification of rock stardom, the seemingly unique genius and untouchable nature of the huge hits they were counterfeiting. And in their working class efforts and makeshift methods, they were in a strange sense paving the way for the endearingly unremarkable essence of indie rock.
The BBC radio bit was about as big as the resurgence got, and the program is sadly absent from the recesses of the web. The attention must have given Tony Rivers a refreshing ego boost though, as he subsequently made a website about the Mojo article and the BBC show, offering further details on how he came to be involved in the Top of the Pops records, as well as a list of 8 or 9 other studio singers who picked up the mic for the cause. You'll also find Rivers in the comments section of the few other websites that offer their takes on the Top of the Pops era, he the voluntary spokesman, moved by any sign of appreciation for their work, but the records remain of little more than kitsch value, and are more often reviled for crass cash-in they represent. The Hot Hits series, arguably the better quality imitation musically, has far less documentation, and information about some of the more obscure budget records are virtually non-existent, in a day and age when everything exists virtually. In a way, the critical derision these records have faced is a bit misdirected. I mean, sure, the intentions of the whole endeavor is questionable, and the recordings themselves were motivated by profit and not some stroke of creative inspiration, but there is earnestness to many of the recordings that speaks to the true intentions of the performers. They may not have been the famous rock stars they were aping, but they were talented musicians nonetheless, and if things had turned out just a little different, theirs could have been the names everyone knows.
In a way, the cover record phenomenon was before its time. In case you hadn't noticed, 2010 has been the year of the cover. With the accessibility and ease of exchange when it comes to music today, it is not uncommon for artists to be covered by their peers, and those covers, rather than lurking in obscurity on some rare 7 inch or bootleg tape, are often just as accessible as the originals. YouTube is riddled with people you don't know playing songs you know and love, and some acts, such as the heartmeltingly adorable duo Pomplamoose have achieved legitimate fame and success in doing so. Beck has gotten in on the game with his Record Club series, where he invites colleagues to help him record an entire cover album in a day, much in the spirit of Bruce Baxter and company. The Onion AV Club and Budweiser teamed up for the Undercover series, where they invited a string of bands to the Onion office to pick a song off a list and record their own take on it, and Levi's followed suit with their Pioneer Sessions, not to mention the enormous success of Glee and its soundtrack albums, or the horrors of The Squeakquel. If those last two don't make the Hot Pop knockoff era seem relevant, they should at least make them sound good by comparison.
In honor of this lost era of imposterism, and in light of an era that takes lack of artistic originality as a given, I have collected the finest moments from the thirty or so budget records I have, in an effort to show that these recordings should not be written off so quickly as soulless manufacture. However, a sign of my own bias against imitation, I found myself drawn mostly towards songs I didn't know, minor hits abroad that never caught on in the States, where I had no sense of the original works that were being mimicked. So, the collection doubles as an archive of minor Brit hits of the late 60's and early 70's, those artists who may now be as obscure as the anonymous studio folks playing them. And in many cases, I found that the budget versions, while not exactly sounding identical, often sounded better than the originals. So, without further ado, I present:
The Endless Records Bloomsburg
HOT POP PRIMER
Volume 1
Featuring the best cover songs recorded by anonymous musicians for British budget hits compilations
"Sugar Sugar" from
Marble Arch Chartbusters Volume 3
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/sugar-sugar-from-marble-arch-chartbusters-volume-3
Maybe the most amped up version of this song ever recorded. Everything is pushing itself into your ear, the sputtering bass hammering crudely at your attention until the fuzz solo that spits its way into the song just before the two minute mark. The singer only sings half the words, to make you feel like you are failing the song if you do not sing along. The toms are stomping.
It is said to be one of George W. Bush's favorite songs, and it is what inspired Def Leopard to pen "Pour Some Sugar On Me". The original version, the #1 Song of the Year in 1969, was the biggest hit for The Archies, an imaginary cartoon band with music performed and recorded by a bunch of studio musicians likely not paid much more than these Chartbusters folks.
Kurt Russell covered it
for his 1970 debut, Kurt Russell. Wilson Pickett's version
was a top forty hit that same year. But I say even the Wailers' cover pales in comparison to this version by a bunch of Marble Arch anybodies. The miracle of it is that the song hardly sounds like the original at all, which is strange since these people were being paid specifically to mimic. Are these jammy rogues sticking it to the label suits by rocking it out in their own way? No, life's not that good. They were actually covering awesomely-named British band Sakkarin's version. Well, lack of originality is basic physics, and for what it's worth I think the Marble Arch folks make the best "Sugar Sugar".
"Harlem Shuffle" from
Top Hits
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/harlem-shuffle-from-top-hits
You recognize the song from the first horn bleat, but then a different song starts. Sorry, no House of Pain. It is Bob & Earl's "Harlem Shuffle", a minor hit in the US, slightly bigger in the UK, and perhaps the inspiration for Nelly and P. Diddy's "Shake Your Tail Feather". I. The pink suit jacket-era Rolling Stones covered the song godawfully, which inspired this music video featuring animation by John Kricfalusi, who would go on to create Ren & Stimpy, a video which may itself have been the inspiration for the rap career of MC Scat Cat.
French-Moroccan singer Vigon, who made a career of recording popular soul and funk covers, also did the "Harlem Shuffle", but this one's a case where nothing beats the original. I am not sure what it would look like to do the Harlem Shuffle, but I like that it's fine if it takes all night to move to the right.
"I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock & Roll)" from
Hot Hits 14
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/i-didnt-know-i-loved-you-till-i-saw-you-rock-roll-from-hot-hits-14
This version may be better than the original on a technicality, because it is not being sung by a man banned from 19 countries due to child pornography convictions, who fled the UK on his yacht, sailing to Spain, Gibraltar, Cuba, Mexico, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Colombia, Portugal, Brazil, Venezuela, and Thailand, before settling in Cambodia, where he was deported and sent to the Philippines, who did not want him. The knockoff rocks well enough, but watch this video of Gary Glitter's original, and you will see there is something missing. Glitter had 26 hits throughout the glam rock era, including one covered by every high school marching band in the country.
I have previous experience with a singing registered pedophile, and as with Glitter it left me unsure of how I felt, or where to draw the line between performer and performance. It took place at the Good Old Days, a bar in Bloomsburg. The bar with, and I quote "the best head in town". It was karaoke night, because every night is karaoke night at the Good Old Days. A flabby man wearing a stained white T-shirt, balding but with a babyish face, wearing some sort of toy crown on his head, looking like a neglected child just discovered after 20 years under a pile of crumpled Burger King bags and fountain soda cups stuck to the couch by unnamable substances, is handed the microphone. He is a known sex offender and he is heavy drunk. He is singing Elvis, gyrating his hips so that the flab of him echoes back the motion in counter waves. He is putting it all into the performance, the kind of obscene self-embarrassment that karaoke night thrives on. He is singing "Suspicious Minds",
the song sung by Elvis impersonators everywhere. The words, as you already know, go: "We're caught in a trap / and I can't walk out / because I love you too much baby", and I wonder for the first time, just how old is that baby, and how much is too much? The scene suddenly seemed far more disturbing. At least as long as he's singing karaoke, the kids are safe, and, as I mentioned, every night is karaoke night at the Good Old Days. It makes me think, if only we could have kept Gary Glitter up on that stage, the world would be a better place.
"Children of the Revolution" from
Hot Hits 14
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/children-of-the-revolution-from-hot-hits-14
Even the children of the revolution could be fooled by this T Rex impression. If fact, children of the revolution, the first generation born after an overwhelming change, are, according to Wikipedia, "a blank slate on which the values of the revolution are imposed… because the generation has no shared memory of the prior world they cannot compare the new system with the old and will uncritically accept the new system as the natural". In other words, they are gullible suckers, so the chances the children of the revolution will be fooled are actually pretty good.
Well, there were a lot of suckers for T Rex at the height of the glam scene in England. This song made it to #2 on the UK charts, breaking a streak of four consecutive #1 songs. Marc Bolan and Co. even got some attention stateside, bolstered by David Bowie's popularity among young Americans, he a missionary for glam, as well as the crossover success of their song "Bang a Gong (Get It On)". "Children of the Revolution" was actually panned by some fans and critics upon its release, as it slowed the rhythm down from the boogier beat of earlier singles like "Hot Love", "Telegram Sam"
and "Metal Guru", and the song was never included on a T Rex album. A rumor was parented by the silent majority that the song was communist propaganda, based on title alone, but, like the best rock songs, it is about teenage rebellion. For that, the song has remained a popular one to cover, with dozens of recorded versions out there, including those by Soulwax, Bono, Little Miss Sunshine's Mom, Elton John with semi-famous puddle of mess Pete Doherty, and lots and lots and lots and lots of strangers on YouTube.
"Get Together" from
Rediffusion Sounds Like Hits 11
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/get-together-from-rediffusion-sounds-like-hits-11
A mark of my age, I cannot hear this song in any form without thinking of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic's mock cover at the start of "Territorial Pissings". The most well-known version is by The Youngbloods, which, as the Baja Blues Band reminds us, was included on the Forrest Gump soundtrack. The Youngbloods' version is actually a cover of a Dino Valenti song, one which was previously given a try by The Kingston Trio and Jefferson Airplane, and has also been covered by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Skeeter Davis, and The Carpenters. What is it that makes this supposedly generic version of the song the best? Incessant hand claps. And that funked up bass line helps too.
"Rosie" from
Hits '68
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/rosie-from-hits-68
Don Partridge is known in the UK as the "king of the buskers". A street urchin at 15, living on what he could burgle, he began playing guitar on street corners around Europe in the early 60's, and soon found he gained more attention by playing as a one man band, sort of like this, playing guitar, drum, tambourine and kazoo at the same time. "Rosie", his first recording, rose to #4 on the UK charts in 1968, and he had a follow-up hit, "Blue Eyes", which got up to #3. He recorded a full-length album and in 1969 he rented out the Royal Albert Hall for a "Buskers Happening", a way for him to say goodbye to street performance on his way to the big time.
His next single flopped, as did the one after that, and by the 1970's Partridge was back to busking. He's remained active and has released a few other albums, one as recently as 2004, and has popped up occasionally on BBC game shows. He picked up a bit of attention in 2005 when his song "Breakfast on Pluto" was included on the soundtrack to the film of the same name, and is rumored to be living somewhere in East Sussex.
"A Cowboy's Work Is Never Done" from
Plexium Nonstop Top 20 Volume 7
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/a-cowboys-work-is-never-done-from-plexium-nonstop-top-20-volume-7
This one is a song by Sonny and Cher, their last hit before Cher ditched Sonny for a solo career. The cover version speeds the song up a notch, and for me it makes all the difference. It's hard to top
this clip from The Slim Mims Show of a version by Roger & Patti Fay for overall awesomeness, but there is something about the Plexium version that is just better, a sharpness to it that makes it some sort of Bulgarian Ska song if not for the words. I can't find a single bit of information about Plexium, except that they also released a Nonstop Top 20 Christmas Party and, I'm assuming, at least six other volumes of Nonstop Top 20.
The song's lyrics are a strange mishmash of rap-worthy braggadocio ("I
was so handsome women cried / and I got shot but I never died"), what sounds like an S&M allusion with the hint of a Ms clipping ("I
could play, if I'd do everything he'd say / Girls seemed to just get in his way / Those days we weren't considered fun"), and lines that are just sort of confusing ("He'd fight crime all the time / He'd always win / Till his mom would break it up / and call him in"). Perhaps the reason why the Plexium version is better has something to do with the fact that the female singer basically takes the lead, rather than trying to divide the already scattered lyrics into a more formal duet. Sorry Sonny, this time anonymous wins.
"Come Back and Shake Me" from
Top Hits
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/come-back-and-shake-me-from-top-hits
Clodagh Rodgers
took this song to #3 on the UK chart, with the B-side "I Am A Fantasy", in 1969, her first hit, at the age of 22. She had been singing professionally since the age of 13, scoring a contract from Decca before she could drive. Though her first name is more suggestive of a Viking grunt, it is pretty clear Clodagh was going for more of a Mod goddess kind of thing, Northern Ireland's own Lulu. Though this would be her biggest hit, and her fame never made it far out of the UK, Clodagh did manage to be a regular on British TV (which earned her death threats from the IRA), and even had a few film roles. In 2001, she appeared in an episode of a web series called "The Bill". It was rumored to be a recurring role, though she was never called back in for another episode.
The song is cloying as hell, especially with gag-worthy lines like "The sparkle you put in my dolly eyes has gone since that cloudy bye-bye day", but there is something about it, especially leading into the chorus, that makes it sound ripe for She & Him Volume 3.
"Coz I Luv You" from
Top Hits of the Year
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/coz-i-luv-you-from-top-hits-of-the-year
Pioneering text spellers Slade wrote this song
in under a half an hour, which after a listen seems like a fairly manageable feat. The band was enormous in the UK, with 17 Top 20 hits in a row. They were fixtures in the glam scene, yet their biggest hit was Brit seasonal favorite "Merry Xmas Everybody". They did manage to make a name for themselves stateside, but their most recognizable song here, "Cum On Feel the Noize", is most often attributed to Quiet Riot, who also had a hit with another Slade cover, "Mama Weer All Crazee Now", which was also covered by The Runaways.
The Top Hits version skips Slade's signature electric violin without losing much, but otherwise plays straight to the original album cut, right down to the cavernous handclaps.
"Me and My Life" from
Marble Arch Chartbusters Now!
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/me-and-my-life-from-chartbusters-now-marble-arch
The original, by the Tremeloes, has nothing on the Marble Arch cover, especially given the lame dunebuggy bros and brews music video they shot for it. The Tremeloes were, in essence, the Shitty Beatles, having auditioned for Decca the same time the Fab Four did, some Decca exec still rolling in his grave for choosing the Tremeloes over their goldmine counterparts. The Tremeloes had a similar type of multiple singers/songwriters approach, and even released a cover of "Twist and Shout" the same time the Beatles did. What they didn't have was the songwriting, yet they managed a string of hit covers in the UK throughout the 60's, including Roy Orbison's "Candy Man", Dylan's "I Shall Be Released", "Good Lovin'", "I Want Candy", "Do You Love Me", Cat Stevens' "Here Comes My Baby" and even "Good Day Sunshine". By the late 60's, the band began writing their own songs, typically penned by Alan Blakley and Len Hawkes. "Me and My Life", sung by Blakley, was one of the first and last Tremeloes originals to chart, but it only reached #4 in the UK, and failed to make a mark in the States, and nothing the band would do ever matched the success of the band's cover songs.
In 2004, bassist Hawkes formed The Class of '64, with ex-members of The Kinks and The Hollies. They opened for The Animals on their 40th Anniversary tour, then headlined a tour and cut an album of covers, but in 2007 the rest of the band ditched Hawkes and formed a new cover band, called first the Legends of the Sixties, then The Hitmen.
"Samson and Delilah" from
Hot Hits 8
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/samson-and-delilah-from-hot-hits-8
This song was the last UK hit for mediocre Scottish pop act Middle of the Road, a band name that doesn't exactly raise expectations. "Samson and Delilah" peaked at #26 in the UK, paltry compared to their earlier, bigger hits like "Chirpy Chirpy Cheap Cheap", "Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum", and "Soley Soley", and they never even managed to chart in the US, not even with "Sacramento (A Wonderful Town)". While remaining unknown in the States, the band gained enough of a following throughout Europe to float them as a touring act through the 90's. Of their first hit, band member Ken Andrew admitted, "Ok, 'Chirpy' wasn't the most intellectual song in the world but it did turn out to be one of the most popular."
"The Slider" from
Hot Hits 8
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/the-slider-hot-hits-8
Even the original version of this song sounds like a T Rex cover, with a bit of Led Zeppelin tossed in. After abandoning the freak folk of his first incarnation, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Marc Bolan, if not exactly covering himself, at least certainly found a style to stick with, and the T Rex brand of riff rock was a big seller, so much that the MfP folks must have kept their Marc Bolan soundalike on call. "The Slider" is from an album of the same name, one with cover art by Ringo Starr, an arresting B&W shot of Bolan looking a little like a leading lady in some silent film. The album came on the heels of Bolan's biggest success, Electric Warrior, and, as Stephen Thomas Erlewine puts it in The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995:
"The Slider offers nothing new -- it's still the same trashy glam-rock that made Electric Warrior and Tanx sublime -- but that's why it's special. No one else could get away with "Metal Guru," "Baby Boomerang," and "Chariot Choogle" without seeming like a fool. Bolan does it with style and grace, and with a wink."
There is something wonderfully mindless about T Rex. Something questionable too, that evil seed that grew into hair metal. Bolan's delivery is total put on as he sings nonsense like "I have never kissed a car before", but there is something about that blatant sex riff that has you imagining a makeout session in a fast car in a high school parking lot and one thing leads to another, lips miss lips and instead kiss the dashboard and, yeah, it could happen.
On a side note, the band's publicist tried to sell the public on "T-Rextasy" as the next Beatlemania, but it never really stuck. But The Slider did stick, at least in the States, where it outsold even Electric Warrior, but in the UK the album, the first to be released on Bolan's own label, was met with competition in the form of a greatest hits package, Bolan Boogie, released by his former owners. Bolan's own shadow was too much. The Slider couldn't match the band's previous success, marking the start of a slide that would carry through Bolan's Ziggy impression, Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, as well as the electrosoul of Bolan's Zip Gun, on til September 1977 when Bolan and his girlfriend were driving drunk on their way home from a party and drove into a tree less than a mile from home, killing Bolan two weeks before his 30th birthday. He had recorded 13 albums by then.
"Montego Bay" from
Hot Hits 2
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/montego-bay-from-hot-hits-2
Montego Bay is the second largest city in Jamaica, named Golfo de Buen Tiempo by Columbus, which later turned to Montego as a bastardization of the Spanish word for lard, "Manteca", since it was THE port for lard and leather transportation. Bobby Boone instantly whistled a tune from merely being there, penning the song with Jeff Barry, also his songwriting partner for the Archies' "Sunlight". Bloom also co-wrote "Mony Mony" and served as sound engineer for Louis Jordan and Shuggie Otis, among others.
Bloom had a few more hits after "Montego Bay", but suffered from immense depression and apparently killed himself on February 28th, 1974. He was 28 years old. It was with a gun, a derringer found near the body. Jeff Barry, his old songwriting partner, claimed surprise when he found out he was the sole beneficiary of Bobby Bloom's life insurance policy.
"Popcorn" from
Hot Hits 8
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/popcorn-from-hot-hits-8
This instrumental came out of synthpop's earliest days, recorded in 1969 by Gershon Kingsley. The band Hot Butter
made a hit cover version in 1972, which became the first electronic song to reach number one, a top ten hit in six countries. The Hot Butter version remains the 131st best-selling single of all time in France.
The song has since been covered a few dozen times, by the likes of Jean Michel Jarre, Caustic Window (aka Aphex Twin), DJ Crazy Frog, Muse, Faith No More, and the Swedish Chef.
"Mexican Puppeteer" from
Plexium Nonstop Top 20 Volume 7
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/mexican-puppeteer-plexium-nonstop-top-20-volume-7
"The Young New Mexican Puppeteer", a name shortened by Plexiun to no doubt pass the savings on to you, was a minor hit for Tom Jones in 1972, barely cracking the Top 100 in the U.S. but reaching #6 in England. The song, written by a slew of folks, reportedly borrows a melody from Disney's Pinocchio, and "tells the story of a puppeteer from New Mexico, who uses puppets to encourage social and political change".
In what is likely Los Lunas or Rio Rancho, maybe Bernadillo, since there aren't really many towns near Albuquerque, there is this kid who gets to thinking about how down and depressed everybody is and decides that a puppet show is the answer.
With frowns and worries in their faces, they're lost and don't know where to go.
He said "I'll get the people straightened by putting on a puppet show".
The young New Mexican puppeteer, he saw the people all lived in fear.
He thought that maybe they'd listen to a puppet telling them what to do.
So he assembles the Fantastic Four of motivational puppetry: Young Abe Lincoln, MLK, Old Mark Twain, and who else but Jesus. And the crowd went wild.
The song is not among the most covered in the Tom Jones catalog.
"Resurrection Shuffle" from
Hot Hits 4
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/resurrection-shuffle-from-hot-hits-4
A live staple for Tom Jones in the 80's, "Resurrection Shuffle" was the one big hit for the group Ashton, Gardner, & Dyke. Members Tony Ashton and Roy Dyke came from The Remo Four, who worked with George Harrison on the music for the movie Wonderwall, while bassist Kim Gardner previously played in The Birds and The Creation. "Resurrection Shuffle", from the band's 1971 album, The Worst of Ashton, Gardner, & Dyke, got to #3 in the UK and #40 in the States, earning them a one-hit wonder tag. The band petered out through three albums, including What A Bloody Long Day It's Been
and Let It Roll. Their final work was for the soundtrack of a B movie starring Joe Namath, called The Last Rebel.
Tina Turner and Cher made it a duet, and the song has also been covered by the Johnny Eisenhower Blues Band and Cattletruck.
"Double Barrel" from
Hot Hits 5
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/double-barrel-from-hot-hits-5
The song was an early breakthrough for ska worldwide, reaching #1 on the UK singles chart, and #22 stateside. The drummer on the original hit by Dave and Ansell Collins was none other than a 14-year-old Sly of reggae institution Sly & Robbie, playing on his first record. That may be him playing in this clip from the TV show coincidentally named the same as the budget record label selling cover versions of the songs the show plays, Top of the Pops. It's hard to tell because I can't take my eyes off the village witch doctor on bass. The Hot Hits version mostly leaves out the grass skirt, playing up the song's American soul elements.
"Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys" from
Top of the Pops Volume 15
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/black-skin-blue-eyed-boys-from-top-of-the-pops-volume-15
This is a song by The Equals, one of London's first racially integrated pop bands, formed in the 60's by Mr. Electric Avenue himself, Eddy Grant, who according to Rocktober magazine sought out his bandmates after building a guitar for himself in shop class.
"Baby Come Back", their first single, released in 1966, failed to make a mark in the UK initially, but went to #1 in Germany and The Netherlands, and eventually found its way to the top in England, as well as to #32 on the U.S. charts. It would be their biggest hit, and their only song to find play in the States. The psychedelic politi-funk of "Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys" was their last song to chart in the UK, reaching #9 in 1970. Shortly after, Grant suffered a heart attack (at the age of 23) that led to the demise of the band.
A bold anti-war song for its directness, lyrics like "They ain't got no country / They ain't got no creed / People won't be black or white / The world will be half-breed / You see the black skinned blue eyed boys ain't gonna fight in no doggone wars" must have been terrifying at a time when miscegenation was still a popular conversation topic. The Top of the Pops folks were able to match the unrelenting rhythm of the original, while the singer may even put a little more into the performance than Equals singer Lincoln Derv. Maybe if the song were a hit stateside our mixed race president would have us in no wars rather than two.
"Running Away" from
Plexium Nonstop Top 20 Volume 7
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/running-away-from-plexium-nonstop-top-20-volume-7
A classy number for Plexium to pull off, and one they don't shortchange, the song "Runnin' Away" was the final hit for Sly & the Family Stone, off the largely dark and claustrophobic There's A Riot Going On. Though the song itself is warm and refined, a sort of Bacharach knockoff, or twee funk, with a female vocalist almost entirely drowning out Sly's vocals, who otherwise was rumored to have recorded most of the album in isolation. Cocaine addiction and the clamp of fame had been eating away at Sly for some time, and the song's lyrics are of a place far more dark and cynical than the melody:
Running away to get away / Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! / You're wearing out your shoes / Look at you fooling you!
Another day you're farther away / Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! / A longer trip back home
Rather than a return home, Sly followed Riot with further self-alienation, a recluse for decades, struggling with addiction and mental health issues, until he recently returned to the public's view, playing old favorites at shows he at times abandons after only a few songs. In 2009 Sly signed a deal with Cleopatra Records, who in the past have stuck to goth and industrial, including "tribute" cover albums of songs by The Cure, New Order, and Smashing Pumpkins. Sly is supposedly working on new material for a 2010 release. In 2010, Sly gave a well-documented, disastrous performance at Coachella.
"My Way" from
Top Hits
http://soundcloud.com/csmcgaw/my-way-from-top-hits
So it turns out Sinatra's signature song is a forgery. Not only was it first a Paul Anka song, but Paul Anka took all but the words from Claude François' "Comme d'habitude". David Bowie actually had a first crack at it, hired in 1968 to draft some English lyrics for the French hit, but Anka bought the rights and wrote his "My Way" before Bowie's was ever completed.
Anka's is a song about a life lived well, a path less traveled, the uniqueness of one person's life, and is rumored to be the most covered song in popular history, with an incomplete Wikipedia list of 150 artists who have performed it, singers the world over, from Elvis to Jay-Z, to Sid Vicious to Shane McGowan to Nina Hagan and Nina Simone, to French death metal band Mütiilation. The song is played at more British funerals than any other, and in 1987 was used as part of the World Wrestling Federation's tribute sendoff for retiring wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, who was leaving to film the greatest ex-wrestler-starring sci-fi working man action comedy ever. J.K. Rowling said in an interview that it is the song she would want played at Dumbledore's funeral. It is also among the most popular songs for karaoke, leading to murderous violence in the Philippines, where a series of incidents gained the name the "My Way" killings, and bars began banning performance of the song. It is still considered dangerous to sing in the Philippines.
The lyrics of Anka's version say a man is no man if he does not "say the things he truly feels / and not the words of one who kneels", a strange sentiment for a song that was someone else's, and one which so many have done their way in much the same way. Perhaps they should have stuck with François' original, the chorus of which goes "As usual / All day / I will play at pretending / as usual I will smile / As usual I will even laugh / As usual I will live / As usual". The title, unsurprisingly, translates to "as usual".
