I guess you had to be there…

There’s a show called  Sounds of the Sixties on BBC Radio 2, or ‘Radio 2, from the BBC’ as all their presenters now have to call the station. (I assume that one was thought up by private marketing consultants – I wonder how much of our license fee was handed over to the authors of that particularly bit of brand re-positioning.
“Oh! Tarquin come and look! There’s a publicly funded organisation in reception – we can all have new Bentleys!”) Anyhow Sounds of the Sixties is presented by Your Old Mate Brian Matthew, and it is a strange beast, to my ear at any rate. I should probably say here that, though I was born in the sixties,  I don’t actually remember them. My first cultural memory is the Apollo 11 moon landing, (December 1969 fact fans,) I’d just turned 5 at the time. Sounds of the Sixties caters to an audience who, by and large, do remember the sixties – and most of them, judging by the requests read out by Your Old Mate Brian Matthew,  are desperate to hear the b-side of a middling hit by Billy Fury or Petula Clark that they grew up with but haven’t heard since their big sister left home in 1967 taking all her 45s with her. And the sixties of memory is a different decade to the sixties as imagined by the likes of me and those younger than me. Sounds of the Sixties  teaches us two important facts. The first is just how rationed pop music was in Britain at that time. Up until 1974  every British household was permitted a maximum of 5 pop singles and one ep - usually Twist and Shout, with the Beatles leaping above a wall on the cover - and the kids in the house had to play both sides of everything they had whenever they switched on the radiogram to make sure the precious records wore out evenly. In those days all records had proper b-sides and none of this ’remix’, ‘accapella’ or ‘bonus beats’ stuff on the flip. 

The Second thing you quickly come to realise is that the British Beat Boom was rubbish, and the Blues Boom was even worse. Seriously, you have to be blinded by nostalgia to give this stuff the time of day.

The other night there was a documentary on about the history of British Motorways – riveting stuff – it included a little newsreel clip of the Rolling Stones from early in their career , the music in the background was their recording of Hitchhike and it was bleeding diabolical – you wouldn’t pay them in washers! I won’t inflict it on you (mostly because I can’t find the clip online – just some stills) but here’s Marvin Gaye:

 

This is not an isolated example, and I may continue on this subject at another time – I have a 70 song playlist to back up my argument. I’m serious here. I’m compiling a third CD of great American songs that were given the highly inferior cover version treatment by a British Invasion era act, and there are remarkably few cases where the Britsh recording adds anything to the original, even when its much more familiar than the original.

Anyway, to put it simply, the British Invasion groups only got any good when they started writing their own songs - ( and the blues in the sixties, as Hip Hop is now, or Reggae was in the seventies,  was the black music genre that white kids just should not have been messing with.)

Exhibit A. The Searchers vs Jackie De Shannon – but I’ll warn you it’s not a fair fight, Jackie kicks seven colours of crap out of those boys.

Four words sum that performance up for me: Chicken in a basket. 
Now the next clip is of dubious quality – the years have not been kind to the video tape, and the performance is pretty jokey stuff  Jackie is lip-syncing to her record although the hand claps are live, and she’s goofing with all the boys on stage.  But if you look past that to her recorded performance of the song…..

In particular  at around 1 minute 55 you get the bridge – key line and emotional heart of the whole song:

“Why can’t I stand up and tell myself I’m strong?”
Silence 
“Because I saw him today…” 

What do the Searchers do in their version ? Fill the silence with a drum roll – and then run through the first verse again - ho hum.

OK, more Jackie,  a very cutesy dance, but a mighty, mighty record.  She’s a young woman singing about her feelings, and they’re strong.  Maybe they got her to mime those shivers so she seemed nice and unthreatening.  
I’m not even going to humilate the Searchers by showing you their weak ass version of this one:

heewwrrrragghhhh

You know that moment. That feeling. The one you get when you think of the perfect reply.  That witty yet cutting rejoinder that puts the other person in their place.  Or those almost poetic words that turn the object of your desire into putty in your hands.  Or that pithy remark that’s bound to impress everyone in the room, to make them look at you anew,  eyes filled with admiration and perhaps even a little envy. You know that moment when the right words are just there, magically.  In your head. At your disposal. The words that can turn any situation to your advantage.
You know that moment.
It happens anywhere between three hours and eighteen months after the time to say those words has been and gone. Lost forever. And you just standing there. Mouth gaping. With spinach stuck to your teeth.  

One afternoon, I was flicking through the TV channels and stopped on an Oprah Winfrey clipshow, featuring highlights from years of celebrity interviews. They showed an amusing moment from sometime in the early 80’s where she introduced her star guest, Sylvester Stallone, with the words: “I’m here with Sly Stone,” The audience laughs, its a genuine slip, but Oprah’s a pro, she quickly corrects herself eliciting yet more laughter. It’s a cute moment between Oprah and her audience and Stallone’s kind of left out of it, with nothing else to do but sit there and chuckle in a good natured fashion.  
Now I may be wrong, but I’d guess that sometime after he left the studio Stallone had one of those:  ”when she said that what I should’ve said was…” thoughts, that we all get from time to time. The only difference is that Stallone is a Hollywood star and he can insist, contractually, that the moment is re-enacted. Only this time he gets the chance to look just as sharp as a tack and as cool as a cucumber, because the next clip they showed was from a few years later, and Oprah is about to interview the stars of Tango & Cash. TV professional that she is, I don’t think she’d have made the same error twice, but sure enough she says: ”I’m here with Kurt Russell & Sly Stone.” The audience laughs, Oprah adopts an ‘Oops! Aren’t I a scatterbrain’ expression, and the camera cuts straight to Stallone who utters the perfect response, the timeless words: “Boom acka lacka lacka! Boom acka lacka!“

Now, if you don’t know why that was just the perfect thing to say run this Youtube clip, and make sure you’re paying attention around the 7:05 mark.

Here’s a unique tribute to the magic of Sly.

And here’s the best quality clip I could find of this summer’s shows – Sly Stone is 64. I advise caution .

a word from our sponsors

My post on Dusty Springfield singing The Six Million Dollar Man Theme got me thinking about Petula Clark doing adverts for Chrysler in the seventies. I couldn’t find any video or even audio evidence of those adverts online, but I did find out that Pet recorded a “Things go better with Coke” radio jingle in the sixties – and apparently so did almost everyone else.  Click here for a link to a page that includes playble jingles by Tom Jones, The Bee Gees, Nancy Sinatra, and one by the Supremes that sounds like it was recorded at Hitsville with the Funk Brothers.

60sgaragebands.com have made quite a study of bands who did endorsements from just within their particular sub-genre.

Below a number of other pop stars take the corporate dollar.  

That’s the real Four Seasons, though they do seem kind of camera shy.

 

Is this why Peter Tork quit? 

Lulu went on to advertise the Freemans catalogue

In Britain, Madness were the inspiration for a number of adverts – the British Meat ones in particular (Wot! No Meat? How about a bit of British Beef?) In Japan they just took the money and advertised the Honda City themselves.

 

did I just dream it? #1

When I was a kid in the 70s I really loved The Six Million Dollar Man.  Never got one of those Steve Austin action figures with the dodgy bionic eye, mind you.
I always had a vague recollection that, before they switched to the “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him” title sequence that everyone remembers, there was a title song. A title song sung by Dusty Springfield no less, but only for a couple of early episodes.
We’ll now, thanks to the magic of Youtube, I know that I didn’t just dream it.