The Homely Boy: Neil Reid: "Mother of Mine"

Just as there is a gulf between nostalgias between the US and UK, so there are gulfs between the general levels of what could best be called, borrowing from the gardening world, hardy perennials.  These are types of musicians or performers that will always do well, in part because they make the audience feel ‘at home’ and somehow reassured that things may be a bit crazy outside, but here, here is proof that life goes on as it should.  In the US this can be everything from gospel to country to Christian music – the sort of solid and reliable stuff that made (and makes) the nation what it is, the sort of music that little kids are taught to sing at school.  (When I was about eight I learned to sing “Battle Hymn of the Republic” up in Canada, a song that could qualify as all three of the above.)  In the UK this area seems to be represented by choirs and in particular by choirboys, or rather the type of young man who could be accurately summed up by the phrase “aw wee choirboy” – one that has no American equivalent, unless you count the young Michael Jackson doing songs like “Ben.”* He is “aw” because he is cute, “wee” because he is young, and the last word is self-descriptive.

I am not sure why this perennial is one, but it is borne out time and again on music-based reality shows; a young man, cute, sweet, the sort a granny in oh say Arbroath would vote for, wins.  Whether he succeeds after his crowning is another matter (does anyone remember Leon Jackson?), as the “aw wee choirboy” type is not exactly cut out for making club bangers or making landfill indie or pursuing a career in electronica.  He is too pure and exalted in a way to do much else but sing whatever his producers have in mind, depending on how amenable he is.  Songs that uplift and inspire are his, love songs and (going back to the roots of the thing) songs of worship suit him best. 

Neil Reid was the original “aw wee choirboy” of modern times, who came to fame on – you can see him here – tv, and this was his big hit.  Looking uncannily like a young Gordon Brown – with a bit, I can’t help it, of Danny Bonaduce from the Partridge Family as well – he sings in his own accent (Motherwellian, if I can put it that way; so many “aw wee choirboys are from Scotland or the north of England) and wears his little suit (complete with a tie!) and in his smiling little man way grabbed a hold of many hearts.  The appeal of the song is absolute and just the sort of thing you’d expect; a song of thankfulness and a raining of blessings.  I can well imagine that this is a song that would make grown men weep, and I know that it must be played at funeral services to this day, but – you guessed it – as far as radio is concerned now, Neil Reid is for chart shows and nothing else.  Perhaps that’s not because he’s so young (twelve at the time) but that the song (like Connie Francis’ “Mama” which I wrote about here) expresses something that is universal and yet private, really beyond words almost, the bond between generations that even when sung about (as Reid sings) is too powerful and immediate for a song.  So many songs are about loves that could be or once were, but the mother-child bond is one that just is, and it is a mark of the time that such a song could do so well.  He not only had a hit single, but a number one album, a remarkable one, and still the only one so far achieved by someone yet to reach their teens.  I cannot ignore the fact that the man who produced this song and his later album was one Ivor Raymonde, father of Simon, who led the Cocteau Twins and was no doubt aware of the odd purity of Reid's voice, that piercing sharpness and beauty and (am I imagining this?  I know I get a bit farfetched at times) found in Elizabeth Fraser that same kind of voice, more or less...

The perennial figure of the choirboy is also - inevitably in this case - one that can only last for so long.  Reid did what he could until his voice broke; Joe McElderry, the latest choirboy, was lucky enough to be almost out of his teens when he won the X Factor two years ago (and he was also lucky to win yet another tv show musical competition, this time for classical singing).  I doubt if someone Reid's age would even make it to the finals of any show now; he would be deemed too young, and I can well imagine the producers wanting someone who could have a career in music and not finance (as Reid has)**.

This song takes this blog back to the beginnings of pop; it is practically Victorian in a time when things all around it are starting to look anything but.  He made people feel cozy and comforted, and he won the talent show at the time - Opportunity Knocks - easily. This song is a pause, a prayer, before 1972 really gets going - a look backward, to better appreciate the battle that is yet to come.

Next up:  correct spelling not required.

 

*Except it's hard to imagine a choirboy singing a song of love and acceptance to a rat.

**All things considered, Reid did very well; Leon Jackson is still out there making music, but has yet to make a comeback, as such.       

Olympian Yelp: Andy Williams: "Can't Help Falling In Love"

And now we shift from the still grieving Beatles fans to a different segment of fans altogether - those who watched tv, and bought singles by those who had their own tv shows. As the 70s go on the power of television - both shows and commercials - grows stronger, and as you would expect, helps to mould what gets in the charts.

If you have your very own tv show of course you don't need commercials, you just have to perform the song and it will sell, depending on how your audience reacts to it; the whole thing is a neat circle, and since kids watch tv as much as adults do, anything that appeals to both generations - as this song surely did - will really work. Commercially, at least; but is this a good version of the Hugo & Luigi song?

Williams' best work - as noted here - is not where he has to shout to be heard, but where he can be more varied in his responses, from joyous to near-godlike. I say godlike as in absolute; Williams is not a man for holding back if it's not necessary, and his Olympian voice in this song strains the delicacy the melody and seductiveness of the lyrics. It is a hard song to sing with much emphasis or whooping joy, because it is at root a chanson, dozy and suggestive, slightly sinister and retrospectively overwhelming.

"Take my whole life too" is a big statement and Williams here is virtually throwing himself at his Other, with what sounds like the Love Affair in the background doing a variation on "Everlasting Love." He is going up and up when the whole song is about that river gently flowing into the sea, about inevitability, about fate itself. Perhaps Williams is taking his cue from the "fools rush in" part, but he doesn't sound as if his whole life is in someone else's hands, which is really the point of the song. He cannot help himself, he is vulnerable, but made strong by his love - strong enough to sing, at least. However, Williams seems to be proclaiming this helplessness as so the whole town can hear, shouting it from the rooftop - it's all at cross purposes, and feels like someone using a blowtorch to light a birthday candle.

This is what happens, though, when a song (an NME #2 by the way) is done in a style that will appeal to 'the kids' as well as the adults; the subtleties are lost in a new glossy finish that sounds 'hip' while still appealing to his main fans (Williams' show was at its peak in popularity at this time). It worked, clearly, but I can't say it's a good version of the song, just one that fits in with the general confusion of 1970, where the old and the new are beginning to get mixed up, and all kinds of strange things, as you dear readers will see, start to pop up, songs that come from all angles and places, some already laid-back, others (like this one) definitely not.

Next up: Back to Eurovision.

Pink Fluff: Lulu: "Boom Bang a Bang"

And now we return to the baffling and consternating (to this American, anyway) Eurovision Song Contest. The UK entry was this song, chosen by the UK public from several, and sung by a rather unwilling Lulu (she didn't like the song, but if the public wanted it...).

My general puzzlement with Eurovision is simply that so many of the songs chosen as entries aren't very good; Alan Moorhouse's oom-pah-pah was the same as every UK entry from this time, and Peter Warne's lyrics are so silly they were satirized almost immediately by Monty Python. But the UK public got it right, and this song won the contest...along with three other songs. Yes, there was a four-way tie, a situation that led several countries to boycott the 1970 contest as it was evident that the voting system was screwed up. I will pause here to give you, my dear readers, the other songs - "Vivo Cantando" by Salome (Spain, host country*), "De Troubadour" by Lennie Kuhr (Netherlands), "Un Jour, Un Enfant" by Frida Boccara (France). All of these songs are typical of Eurovision, but they all seem to be about something a little more meaningful than just cuddling; poor Lulu is stuck with a song that seems desperate, in comparison, to be called 'young' and 'pop' and 'fresh' while it's really just more of the same - drivel given to the UK's best singers at this time wasn't just for the men (Englebert, Tom) but evident here as well, sadly. (Even the great Sandie Shaw couldn't escape this: she hated "Monsieur Dupont" but it was a hit at the same time as Lulu.)

Whose fault is all this? (I mean song quality, not Eurovision.) Ultimately it is the public's I'm afraid; if these songs had not been hits, the producers/songwriters would not have been encouraged to do more of the same (and for everyone I've mentioned from the UK, worse). It's 1969 now but "the industry" (as Sir Cliff refers to it) still seems to think it's the swinging 60s when cheery bits of fluff were all the public wanted, and unfortunately, they were right.

As for Lulu, she followed Dusty Springfield to the US to make music; Sandie Shaw's attempts to do tougher stuff went nowhere** and she sensibly retired to raise her family. With songs like "Boom Bang A Bang" the UK had a hit across Europe, so I suppose it was a success commercially; but there is no punctum in it and it is all sugar without much substance. (I wonder how many people voted because it was Lulu, ignoring the song altogether.)

Next up: another young woman in a privileged position who has better luck with her songwriter.




*I should mention here that Austria boycotted this year's contest as it was being held in Franco's Spain. Isn't Eurovision supposed to be about the music? You can see why this American gets consternated.

**Reviewing The Situation has to be one of the great 'lost' covers albums; I say lost as the whopping majority of folks who know vaguely of her have no idea about it.

How We Used To Live: Des O'Connor: "One Two Three O'Leary"

And now we return to the NME number twos for a song that was written by Barry Mason and Michael Carr, and performed by all-round entertainer (comedian, singer, tv chat show host) Des O'Connor. That something so utterly and completely sedate could jostle its way to the top amongst The Scaffold, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Love Sculpture just shows how fragmented the pop audience was, and how well a song like this could do.

It is a quiet song, a song about innocence and first love, harpsichord-led and gently going down memory lane, and it has nothing to do with liberation or freedom and everything to do with recalling a different time; a time when they were both young but also when the "wildwood" was theirs and everything seemed magical*.

To some this might seem a bit soppy, and O'Connor himself didn't think much of his singing, but pure, 100% proof nostalgia like this always does well in the holiday season, when thoughts turn to loved ones, and Mary here clearly is loved, even if it is so long ago that the narrator (if pressed - he isn't, here) doesn't know where she is now. Now is just a vantage point to then, and then is what is fixed in the narrator's mind. This song could appeal to anyone, I guess, but it is the generation just before the Housewives of Valium Court that it hits directly - those who remember life before & during WWII, those who suffered through it and take refuge in utterly peaceful and genteel music and find most rock too ugly and loud. (The harpsichord is what makes this a 'modern' sounding song, as baroque meets old guard pop.) As songs about love from this year go, this is thankfully free of death; an oasis of calm, even if it is a cul-de-sac.

From the rock vantage point O'Connor seems out of place; however, I should mention a much more 'hip' song that O'Connor did that he himself could stand: "Dick-A-Dum-Dum" is total London silliness as interpreted by Jim Dale, but shows more signs of life from O'Connor because of its humor. (And yes, whenever I hear 'the Buckingham beat' I think of Fleetwood Mac. I'm predictable that way.)

As '68 closes, we have more girl trouble ahead; beyond that, 1969 looms, the final year, as the 60s turns to look at itself.


*The game played in question is fully described here.

Sophisticated Misery: Englebert Humperdinck: "A Man Without Love"

It is easy to see that on the same block as Marriott and his bothersome neighbors, the Housewives of Valium Court have their own method of escape; not just through doctor-approved medication but through daydreams. There he is, unable to leave the house as he is crying (and real men don't cry in public) over his lost love. It was, perhaps, a Mediterranean romance - Spain, Italy, somewhere where (the Housewives think) Romance is constantly in the air and a broken heart is seen not as a mere scratch or bruise but as a near-fatal condition that must be treated with respect.

Crying is a funny thing in songs; it's an easy enough thing to sing about, but if you have the wrong voice for it, it renders the emotional outpouring as something more or less as emotionally involving as trimming the hedge or kneading dough*. It requires a big voice to handle those big emotions, and if Englebert here sounds less than believable (compared to say, Roy Orbison) he at least has the appropriate voice for the song and its Italian origins. (The song was originally written by Roberto Livraghi, Daniele Pace & Mario Panzeri as "Quando M'innamoro" for the Sanremo Festival, an Italian song competition that was the inspiration for Eurovision; Barry Mason wrote English lyrics.) Part of the reason this works is simply that so many I'm-going-to-stay-right-here-and-mope songs** were Englebert's territory already, but there is a languorous smoothness here as well, and the Housewives could easily imagine him wearing his silk dressing gown and eating his eggs Benedict and being as elegant as hell, and still suffering.

Loneliness is indeed a cloak he wears, as a more avant-MOR balladeer would sing, and if he can't go outside he is in a way just as imprisoned as his intended audience; what may look like more fromage to some was more than likely reality for many. That it has a slightly too-sweet aura about it - like a kind of glaze - adds to the sealed-for-your-protection feeling of immobility he's felt since she went away, after that Mediterranean romance.

Still, this immobility is cozy in way - there is a reassuring gentleness and suaveness in the music that guarantees that once the narrator (who recognizes himself as one of many lonely men, a member of a tribe if you will) gets over his loss and goes outside, he is bound to meet another woman and Romance will bloom again. For now he cries and can't go outside, though, and while that seems harsh at least his suffering isn't as acute as the one in this song, a song that brings romantic agony's endless and near-morbid condition only too close to home***. (That it didn't get into the Top 40 in the UK could in part be because of its intensity; it could also be because Motown music wasn't as of yet being pushed that much by certain DJs and music folk.) The Housewives of Valium Court are comforted in their way by this shared misery, thinking and feeling the common "He's too beautiful to suffer!" as they pause after housework or during the baby's nap; that maybe in a few years they might think that way about themselves is possible, but at this point marginal. For now they sit and imagine the Mediterranean breezes, exotic romance, meeting a lovelorn man while strolling by the sea...

Next up: a song that lives, like other things, in infamy.


*Witness the completely emotionally non-involving Jason Derulo single "Fight For You" where when he sings about crying he sounds like a robot. The overuse of Toto's "Africa" doesn't help much either.

**As opposed to Tom Jones, who is forever trying to get home and never really managing it.

***Roger Penzabene, the lyricist, wrote the song about his marital troubles; he killed himself on New Year's Eve, 1967. The Summer of Love had many victims, and the heaviness of '67 was beginning to crush many in '68.

Death Becomes Him: Tom Jones: "Delilah"

There are many benefits of being a singer/songwriter, and one of them is that you don't look at the lyrics someone has given you and think to yourself, this is a joke, right?

But Les Reed and Barry Mason weren't kidding, so Jones dutifully sang it, and the public loved it and still do (particularly the Welsh Rugby Union and Stoke City fans). I am not sure if anyone concerned knew the word "camp" (as it had been recently specifically defined by Susan Sontag) but even your average mailman could sense in the oom-pah-pah rhythm and male-hysterical lyrics ("I was lost like a slave that no man could free") that this was, even for Jones, not a normal song. It is almost a Punch-and-Judy show-level song about insane jealousy, and the narrator's murderousness is caused by her "laughing" (I will leave it up to you to figure out why she is laughing). And so he stands at the end, the other man having of course already left, singing to her corpse, rehearsing his story for the police and thence the judge*...

That some members of the jury might be women is conveniently overlooked here, but not by this man, who knows full well what the song is about. It's about a man who is obsessed, a stalker; a man who considers the woman to be his even though she is no good for him (and he knows it). Alex Harvey digs into what Jones couldn't at the time - the unnerving self-justifications that make his begging for forgiveness hollow, the horror behind the drama, the flat face of a man who is not temporarily nuts but is deliberate, who would have killed her even if she hadn't been laughing.

But this is how things were in 1968 - an at heart grisly tale is done as a sing-a-long, grotesque and dramatic as a soap opera, while real deranged killers (Dr. King was assassinated while this was #2) were on the loose. Perhaps this song was one of the truer fruits of the Summer of Love, but I tend to think it is one that has gone sour, a twisted pleading yelp. As a song it is cheesy and I'm sure that Reed & Mason wrote it knowing the public would respond to its outrageous pantomime heart. (It also has, in the band and chorus, all of what would soon become Led Zeppelin, not to mention one Reg Dwight, aka Elton John, on piano.) In a way it is an oppositional #2 as well, sitting just under "Lady Madonna," a song where the only anger evident is in the sax solo, a precursor to another song I'll get to by McCartney about an ordinary woman's travails. But all is Drama with Jones as ever, and by now this is what his audience expects from him.

1968 was a year of violence, and in some way this song reflects that; it has lasted because it is easy for the terraces to sing on one part, and on another Jones himself does it in a jokey way now, as if to say, that era is gone. That may be true, but then it was another piece of the lurid and irrational end of the 60s, as idealism was giving way to despair and the decade was already being disowned by some as not being all it was cracked up to be (certainly the hippie scene of California was getting ugly). This song waltzes and and trots by it all, as if to say, in part, what do you expect? (The musical Cabaret had just started in London a month before; the uneasiness of that show reminds me of this song.)

Next up: the counterpart to all this madness, available at your local corner store.



*Jones was in prison waiting to be executed in a previous song, and here he is again, about to go through the whole rigmarole again. I can only assume a young Nick Cave was absorbing the sort-of song cycle at the time...

The Same Old Song: Tom Jones: "I'm Coming Home"

As Christmas approaches, certain kinds of songs tend to get released; in '67 (as you'd expect) Tom Jones released a big ballad in full expectancy of getting to number one, as he had the previous Christmas.

As a song, it is about as close to what he wanted to do - be on Stax or Motown - but he can never really cut loose here and dig into the emotions of the song, due to the predictability of the music (it sounds just like you'd imagine it does). This catches Jones in his Las Vegas phase - big emotions, open shirts, otherwise sensible women throwing their underwear onstage, etc. That it's a song about a man who has done his woman wrong who is coming home - whether she wants him back or not - seems to get lost in the soaring voice and sense of familiarity the song has - hearing it for the first time, I already have felt like I've heard it before. That must have been the appeal he had - a handsome bad boy/man who wore his heart on his sleeve, who would repent and show his vulnerability, all the better to maintain his sex appeal...begging forgiveness, claiming his life is nothing without her...(this song may seem like it's translated from another language, but I believe it's Les Reed & Barry Mason, yet again)*...

...all that is fine, but something got in the way of this plea in getting to number one, which in this time of big sobbing ballads must have seemed like a sure thing. Unfortunately for Jones, those pesky Beatles had a hit single - far-out enough for psych fans but chirpy enough for those who thought they had perhaps forgotten how to do something uptempo. The Beatles were literally saying "Hello!" to a whole new crop of fans as well as their old ones, and no amount of manly confessing was able to get past that.

I would like - for a moment however - to look at the U.S. charts and see what was happening there, as a reminder of what else was going on. In the Cashbox chart's Top 40 for around this time are these songs: "Summer Rain" by Johnny Rivers, "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" by Donovan, "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" by The Cowsills and "Chain of Fools" by Aretha Franklin. So there definitely was something up at this time, reflective or active, but for whatever reason - again I am guessing the radio playlists - but there are hardly any sob story songs there, besides the Old Guard of Bobby Vinton and such.

So what is going to happen next? Can anything break through this Housewives of Valium Court drear? Has there been something lurking for months in the corner, something revolutionary that will once again make people look at their stereos in confusion and delight?

Well, YES. Did someone say, out of death comes new life?


*I feel it necessary to note that Scott Walker also has a single out for Christmas - the avant-MOR "Jackie." I wonder if Tom ever wanted to sing something like this? (The lines about having a bordello and a number one single may have cut a bit too close...)

In Public: Dave Clark Five: "Everybody Knows"

For some reason, in late '67 the charts start to go retrograde; there is hardly anything that could be called "forward" actually making much headway, and there are songs from the 40s creeping in, such as "Careless Hands" and "There Must Be A Way." Meanwhile, songs that pointed to the future, such as The Who's "I Can See For Miles" and Simon Dupree's "Kites" - songs that I should be writing about - didn't do nearly as well as songs like "Let The Heartaches Begin" by Long John Baldry (not a song he wanted to record), or "If The Whole World Stopped Loving" by Val Doonican.

In part this is due to hardly any competition from pirate radio; and radio thrives on variety. The charts at this time were like amber, with lively butterflies stuck in them, all the more obvious for their brilliant differences. Into this morass appear The Dave Clark Five, who needed a hit; they went to Les Reed & Barry Mason, reliable purveyors of songs to Englebert and Tom Jones and got a song from them, and hey presto, it was indeed a hit. The DC5 were not known for sitting down in frilly shirts and singing ballads about how they were crying and everyone could see; their usual singer, Mike Smith, was unsuited to this sob story, and thus Lenny Davidson does the job here.

The dilemma here for the group was that, unlike other groups who could adapt, psychedelia was just not meant for them; there was no way they could harness that big stompy beat of theirs to bucolic wanderings in parks or tales of fantastic happenings. And so they were reduced, as such, to this; they needed and got a hit. (They had not been in the top 10 since '65.) Thus the DC5 add, unhappily, to the ongoing sense of torpor in the chart - the summer is over, the nation is hunkering down for a ballad-heavy winter of stupor. I can see the empty bottles wine, the flickering candles, the exhaustion; it is as if the party is nearly over and hearts, oh hearts have been broken all over the place, and people are weeping in the streets.

The grooviness and enlightenment which '67 promised has nearly evaporated, though it still exists, waiting to spring up with just one ray of light. I can only shake my head at these charts; but then the radio situation was as such that the easy way out was almost always the one taken. And maybe a breather was necessary, after such excitement. But does it have to be so uniformly old-fashioned, dowdy even? What happened to rock 'n' roll, to anything silly or outrageous or gloriously weird? It's gone underground...for now...

What Is Too Silly To Be Said Must Be Sung: Harry Secombe: "This Is My Song"

What to make of a song that no one wanted to sing? "This Is My Song" was written by Charlie Chaplin to be included in his movie A Countess From Hong Kong, a throwback to the shipboard romance movies of the 30s. He wanted Al Jolson to sing it, but, convinced that Jolson was dead only by being shown his tombstone, he decided he wanted Petula Clark to sing it. She didn't want to sing it in English (she sang it in German, Italian and French first) but she recorded it off-handedly with The Wrecking Crew while in Los Angeles and it was a hit. (She didn't want to sing "My Love" either, for that matter.)

It is hard to know just why Harry Secombe did the song; perhaps because it suited his noble Welsh tenor. The fact that another version was released so soon is itself a throwback to the 50s, when two or three versions of a song would crowd the charts. (Chaplin's "Terry's Theme" from Limelight was #2 in 1953, as you'll recall.) Secombe had trouble keeping a straight face while recording the song (he found the lyrics to be "risible" just as Clark thought them quaint and not for her), breaking out laughing at the line "I care not what the world may say." (No wonder Petula sang it in other languages first; no wonder it went on to be a hit for various European singers.)

It is a measure of how much things had changed in popular culture that two people - not counterculture types but those totally part of the mainstream UK all-around-entertainment world - didn't want to record this song, as it was so hokey. The 60s were supposed to be where the UK public sprang from the sappiness of the 50s, after all - that sweet, cloying string section-with-backing-singers aura had been around long enough, and any vestige of it was...passe. But not to a large segment of the public, who obviously were perfectly happy with a stolid song of love, perhaps as a reminder of a past they cherished, or as an old-fashioned SONG that may be a bit kitschy but has a TUNE they can whistle, just like in the old days.

That Secombe was part of the transition from post-WWII culture - with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan - as part of The Goon Show makes this record more of a straight-faced song from that show than anything else. The show rose out of the group's experiences - awful and absurd - during WWII, helping to bridge that traumatic time so that a fresh start could be made in the 60s, free of any hang-ups or errant nostalgias*. Thus this is something of an oddity - a man of one generation determinedly bringing something back, and two singers of the next generation complying, out of respect if nothing else. The escape from the past that the 60s in part tried to be was beginning to fray, with almost the entire top ten being Light Programme-friendly tunes that challenged nothing and (some would say) were the real 60s - not the far-out experiments and friendly forbears we have seen so far. Have the 60s run out of steam? What on earth comes next?

(*If there is one historical event the UK psyche cannot seem to escape, it's WWII. In some ways it as if everything that has happened since is a mere footnote...and there seems to be a disconnect between the whole 'vintage' style that is popular now and what was happening when said style was not vintage, but current. But I digress.)

Folk Explosion No. 1: Cher: "Bang Bang"

This is the next in this blog's irregular look at NME-only #2s. The folk rock boom in the mid-60s was a genuine thing for some, for others it was a way in - Sonny Bono was a fast learner in the studio and he wrote and produced Cher's songs before she even went by her own name; they both learned how to do drama from Spector and Cher, in effect, was Sonny's one-woman girl group. (The girl group era, as such, was starting to fade just a bit at this time, at least on the Spectorish side of things.)

There is an uneasiness to this song that comes out of the fact that while it was recorded in dear sunny Los Angeles, it comes straight out of the kitschy Italian folk song tradition, which treads a mighty fine line indeed between letting it all hang out and making the audience feel as if something vaguely sinister is happening, or has happened, and most likely they will never find out what it is. Which is to say if it is sung in another language (and it has been - Italian of course, French too) it might actually sound even better*. There's kids playing; there's young love; there's a frenzied section wherein a wedding happens (least...fun...wedding...ever) and then he dumps her for no apparent reason - I suppose in a folk song there would be some kind of denouement wherein she goes after him in some way, but not here. She's on the ground again, her only consolation being maybe she will now know not to go out with a guy who was mean to her and didn't even play fair in the first place (he always shot her down - wow, what a guy).

This also treads a line - an uneasy one - between being a kind of folk rock and being just plain showbiz, exactly the kind of thing regular radio would play, and exactly what would do well in Las Vegas, too. I can well imagine real folkies scoffing at this, even as their parents enjoyed it. Sonny was betting the army of girls who loved Cher would buy this as well, and they did. Cher was their homegirl, in effect, not perfect but somehow more real because of that, and from this point on they would stay by her, the girl who would suffer much (in real life and in her songs) and somehow survive. This song set her up as tough, vulnerable and her later songs of woe and vengeance start with this one, wherein she dies and dies again, always coming back no matter what.


*Of course there are some people who think everything sounds better in another language; amazingly I don't get to France for a long time and then...well, you'll see, dear readers.

Far From Mechanical: Cliff Richard: "Wind Me Up (Let Me Go)"

And now 1965 draws to a close; a tradition begins here as Cliff performs a song I thought at first was from a pantomime (he and The Shadows did Aladdin in '64), but is actually from his show Cliff Richard's Christmas Cheer. Yes, Richard was at this time so big and established that he could host his own show, cementing his 'all-around-entertainer' status. So far, so normal; but what tugs here is something more profound. (Ah, if only I wrote about superficial songs with no meaning - but songs do not become hits without having some import.)

It is the singing toy, the object that becomes real and has feelings because the boy/girl gives it a life. I am not sure how important this is psychologically as a stage, but whenever anything inanimate is given life, a name, a history, it is alive. (Thus the pathos of the song, which Richard handles very well.)

To others it is a thing, but not to the kid who loves it. And here we have the pathos of an unloved toy, a tin soldier, who would rather be alone than belong to someone who didn't care for him. The leap to a man who loves unrequitedly isn't a big one, so the song applies to adults as well as kids, but it's still a bit odd to think of Richard singing this as an adult (he was 25). In a weird parallel to The Who, this is also a song of someone who wants to be left alone, and is in a way more sympathetic as he is admitting to wanting to cry and obviously as a soldier is being nobly brave through his near-tears. This song is not that far off from this one, save that Richard demands to be let go instead of being forgotten about - which is healthier in a way, though I still feel it strange to be writing about a singing toy. But that is where things stand; Richard sings a ballad for Christmas, it's a hit...but the singing tin soldier angle makes me think something different is going to happen soon, beyond this cozy season. Coming up next: a welcome trip to Canada.

Chop Chop: Brian Poole and Tremeloes, The: "Someone Someone"

The taste of the British public puzzles me at times; I cannot tell, for instance, if this song did well because it is so utterly inoffensive as to have no character at all, or because of the performance here, wherein the singer - a drip of a man, judging by this - is more or less ignored/mocked by his own band. The song - a post-Holly Crickets b-side - is thin gruel to begin with, but some singers have ways of taking inane songs and making them mean something; Mr. Poole doesn't. Perhaps the Tremeloes know something that he doesn't?

In any case, this serves as an inter-band example of the schism happening in UK pop, wherein some people are solid as sides of beef (eventually Poole went back to his original calling, being a butcher*) and others are all about the giddy enjoyment of just being there, like chefs being happy at their work. I am amazed that this song - on evidence a big hit - did better at the time than "My Guy" or "Chapel of Love" - but then time has a way of figuring out what is worth keeping around and separating the temporarily useful (as a last-dance song, for instance) from the ultimately not necessary in the long run. The 60s are heating up to a sizzle and there is no time for warmed-up leftovers like this.



*Instead of being a butcher of songs, some might say, though on evidence he sings songs as if he has already put them in the cooler.

Back To The Future: The Bachelors: "I Believe"

This song represents the growing chasm in the listening experience of, say, an eager 13-year-old listening to the BBC. S/he wants the Dave Clark Five or Manfred Mann or Rolling Stones, but they are only broadcast on just a couple of shows - Brian Matthew's Saturday Club or on Alan Freeman's show, or perhaps wedged into an otherwise uninteresting and not at all funny 'comedy' programme - but this is what the poor teenager gets. It is totally representative of the music that is broadcast by government-approved-and-funded radio, in that the grannies in Arbroath are happy to hear it and buy it.

Who are these grannies? Well, apart from any literal ones, they are anyone who likes good, clean-cut songs sung by good, clean-cut bands and singers; music that is solid and earnest and four-square, music which would make a fine background to a church picnic or family outing. If you think, dear readers, that we are being sucked back into the 50s here, you would be right. The stentorian delivery; the sudden and unwelcome reappearance of the awed choir in the background; the fact that this song in its original version was a huge hit (thebiggest, in fact) from the 50s in the first place - all this hit the grannies quite hard, whether they were young or old. I can imagine young Louis Walsh (proof you don't have to be an actual granny to be one) loving this and even using it as a template of sorts for later Irish boy bands he would manage to come; fellow granny Simon Cowell was too young at the time, but The Bachelors were a big group (they did have that boy band appeal) and even he must have noticed them as a boy.

There is one segment of the audience I have not accounted for yet, however - the large Irish population in Liverpool and Manchester, to whom The Bachelors would appeal on a whole other level - good solid men, to be sure, but Irish and therefore loved, right alongside Jim Reeves. This north-south split will manifest itself in several ways as the decades pass, but let us return to the bored teenager, stuck listening to, in effect, their parents' radio, if not their grandparents'. In the US, s/he thinks, there are stations that play pop music all day! Why can't there be anything like that here?