Second Hand Record Dip Part 65 - Mojams feat. Debbie Currie - You Can Do Magic

- Hola Music Lovers, Music іѕ а form оf art thаt involves organized аnd audible sounds аnd silence. It іѕ nоrmаllу expressed іn terms оf pitch (which includes melody аnd harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo аnd meter), аnd thе quality оf sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, аnd texture). Music mау аlѕо involve complex generative forms іn time thrоugh thе construction оf patterns аnd combinations оf natural stimuli, principally sound. Music mау bе uѕеd fоr artistic оr aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, оr ceremonial purposes. Thе definition оf whаt constitutes music varies ассоrdіng tо culture аnd social context.This Blog tell About , Music is formulated or organized sound. Although it cannot contain emotions, it is sometimes designed to manipulate and transform the emotion of the listener/listeners. Music created for movies is a good example of its use to manipulate emotions. .



Who: Mojams feat. Debbie Currie (actually, Sinitta)
What: You Can Do Magic
Label: Gotham
When: 1997
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street
Cost: 50p

Whilst truth is indeed frequently stranger than fiction in the music industry, sometimes when things seem too absurd to be true, it's because they are.  This single is a supremely odd confirmation of that fact, a scam so subtle in its execution that to this day, you can still see references to it on national newspaper websites as being a bona-fide piece of work.

Debbie Currie, the daughter of "outspoken" Conservative MP Edwina Currie, was attempting a career as a journalist when the team behind the investigative programme the "Cook Report" approached her with an intriguing offer.  The deal was that she would pretend to front a single produced by Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, and they would hire a gang of "hypers" to artificially push its position up the charts.  The aim was to ultimately expose the British charts as being open to abuse despite the BPI's continual assurances that hype was now easily spotted, and a thing of the distant past.

In reality, Sinitta sang the vocals, and all Currie really appears to have done is displayed her stomach on the sleeve (above) and posed for a few publicity shots.  The gossip columns of newspapers also ran a few short pieces about "sexy" Debbie Currie's new pop band which gave the project an air of authenticity, which was eventually blown on prime-time television.

I suspect that the "Cook Report" team would have liked to have seen the single chart within the Top 40, but in reality - despite the production team behind it, and despite the publicity - the single stiffed at number 81.  The end programme appeared to gamely claim that they'd exposed the fact that chart rigging still existed, but it's hard not to conclude that an average pop single produced by Stock and Aitken would have been expected to chart within the lower reaches of the Top 100 at the very least.  Music industry mogul Clive Selwood also dismisses the show's scoop in his biography "All of the Moves But None of the Licks", stating that the single should probably have charted higher on its own merits, and questions should have been asked of the distributors.  All it proved, he concluded, is that people can easily be tricked out of money for non-existent services, which is admittedly fraud, but not exactly headline news.

Perhaps it's due to the failings of the documentary to make a concrete point that to this day, journalists still cite Debbie Currie's "failed pop career" as evidence of the fact that she's "Edwina Currie's rebellious, wild child daughter".  This is an utterly incorrect version of events, and Debbie has gone on record as saying that she would never have seriously considered a career in music, and that her friends assumed that she was having "some sort of breakdown" at the time whilst she kept the pretence up.

As for "You Can Do Magic" itself, it's a passable little single, perfectly pleasant in a quickly recorded Saint Etienne B-side kind of way.  In a quiet week in January it might actually have performed moderately well in its own right, and it's certainly a strange tune to pick to prove a chart hype point.  Perhaps if something noticeably below par had been used, the researchers and producers behind the show might have worried that the authorities would have smelt a rat.

Interestingly, there's also an information service advertised on the sleeve, asking us to write to "Mojams, Freepost 1276, PO BOX 4100, London, SE1 0YW".  One wonders what anybody who scribbled a note to that address got in return - a signed picture of Roger Cook angrily pointing, perhaps.

Who: Mojams feat. Debbie Currie (actually, Sinitta)
What: You Can Do Magic
Label: Gotham
When: 1997
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street
Cost: 50p

Whilst truth is indeed frequently stranger than fiction in the music industry, sometimes when things seem too absurd to be true, it's because they are.  This single is a supremely odd confirmation of that fact, a scam so subtle in its execution that to this day, you can still see references to it on national newspaper websites as being a bona-fide piece of work.

Debbie Currie, the daughter of "outspoken" Conservative MP Edwina Currie, was attempting a career as a journalist when the team behind the investigative programme the "Cook Report" approached her with an intriguing offer.  The deal was that she would pretend to front a single produced by Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, and they would hire a gang of "hypers" to artificially push its position up the charts.  The aim was to ultimately expose the British charts as being open to abuse despite the BPI's continual assurances that hype was now easily spotted, and a thing of the distant past.

In reality, Sinitta sang the vocals, and all Currie really appears to have done is displayed her stomach on the sleeve (above) and posed for a few publicity shots.  The gossip columns of newspapers also ran a few short pieces about "sexy" Debbie Currie's new pop band which gave the project an air of authenticity, which was eventually blown on prime-time television.

I suspect that the "Cook Report" team would have liked to have seen the single chart within the Top 40, but in reality - despite the production team behind it, and despite the publicity - the single stiffed at number 81.  The end programme appeared to gamely claim that they'd exposed the fact that chart rigging still existed, but it's hard not to conclude that an average pop single produced by Stock and Aitken would have been expected to chart within the lower reaches of the Top 100 at the very least.  Music industry mogul Clive Selwood also dismisses the show's scoop in his biography "All of the Moves But None of the Licks", stating that the single should probably have charted higher on its own merits, and questions should have been asked of the distributors.  All it proved, he concluded, is that people can easily be tricked out of money for non-existent services, which is admittedly fraud, but not exactly headline news.

Perhaps it's due to the failings of the documentary to make a concrete point that to this day, journalists still cite Debbie Currie's "failed pop career" as evidence of the fact that she's "Edwina Currie's rebellious, wild child daughter".  This is an utterly incorrect version of events, and Debbie has gone on record as saying that she would never have seriously considered a career in music, and that her friends assumed that she was having "some sort of breakdown" at the time whilst she kept the pretence up.

As for "You Can Do Magic" itself, it's a passable little single, perfectly pleasant in a quickly recorded Saint Etienne B-side kind of way.  In a quiet week in January it might actually have performed moderately well in its own right, and it's certainly a strange tune to pick to prove a chart hype point.  Perhaps if something noticeably below par had been used, the researchers and producers behind the show might have worried that the authorities would have smelt a rat.

Interestingly, there's also an information service advertised on the sleeve, asking us to write to "Mojams, Freepost 1276, PO BOX 4100, London, SE1 0YW".  One wonders what anybody who scribbled a note to that address got in return - a signed picture of Roger Cook angrily pointing, perhaps.

One Hit Wonders #16 - The Second City Sound - Tchaikovsky One

- Hola Music Lovers, Music іѕ а form оf art thаt involves organized аnd audible sounds аnd silence. It іѕ nоrmаllу expressed іn terms оf pitch (which includes melody аnd harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo аnd meter), аnd thе quality оf sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, аnd texture). Music mау аlѕо involve complex generative forms іn time thrоugh thе construction оf patterns аnd combinations оf natural stimuli, principally sound. Music mау bе uѕеd fоr artistic оr aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, оr ceremonial purposes. Thе definition оf whаt constitutes music varies ассоrdіng tо culture аnd social context.This Blog tell About , Music is formulated or organized sound. Although it cannot contain emotions, it is sometimes designed to manipulate and transform the emotion of the listener/listeners. Music created for movies is a good example of its use to manipulate emotions. .



Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1965

Sometimes obscure-sounding vintage-looking records leap out at you from the record racks, and you snap them up cheaply on the off-chance it's some killer little flop which has remained ignored by the wider public.  You get home, you put it on the turntable, conclude that it's quite an interesting little number and that you might be on to something.  Then you check ChartStats, and realise that it's just a minor hit single you've never heard before.

Still, this blog has a "One Hit Wonder" section now, and Brum instrumentalists The Second City Sound certainly fit that particular category.  "Tchaikovsky One" is much what you'd suspect it to be from the title, being a beat driven take on classical music, something I've always found nigh on impossible to listen to without hearing Peter Sellers' character Tommy Iron in my head saying "We'll cover anything that's out of copyright, like".  As wrong as it could potentially be, though, there's a Meek-like care about the record which seems immediately delightful, and the band shared Meek's love for technology.  Keyboard player Ken Freeman wanted to have a Mellotron on the track, but finding himself strapped for cash had to use a Clavioline instead, which gives the track a slightly eerie, dreamy air.

The B-side "Shadows" doesn't appear to be a tribute to the band of the same name, but rather a sinister, edgy piece of instrumental work with occasional bursts into pounding piano boogie.  I actually prefer it to the A-side.

As for The Second City Sound, no further hits were forthcoming after this reached number 22, but at least one of their number went on to have an influence on the music industry. Ken Freeman might not have been able to afford that ultra-desirable Mellotron, but he went on to build and market synths of his own, creating the Freeman String Symphonizer.  He also worked with Mike Oldfield and Jon Anderson, and perhaps most notably of all Jeff Wayne on the "War of the Worlds" album.  It's difficult to hear quite where his career was going to go on the basis of this little single, but for all its chocolate box arrangements, this probably sounded like a startlingly modern piece of work in 1965.  If Joe Meek didn't start hurling objects around his Holloway Road flat after hearing it, then I'm a Dutchman.

Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1965

Sometimes obscure-sounding vintage-looking records leap out at you from the record racks, and you snap them up cheaply on the off-chance it's some killer little flop which has remained ignored by the wider public.  You get home, you put it on the turntable, conclude that it's quite an interesting little number and that you might be on to something.  Then you check ChartStats, and realise that it's just a minor hit single you've never heard before.

Still, this blog has a "One Hit Wonder" section now, and Brum instrumentalists The Second City Sound certainly fit that particular category.  "Tchaikovsky One" is much what you'd suspect it to be from the title, being a beat driven take on classical music, something I've always found nigh on impossible to listen to without hearing Peter Sellers' character Tommy Iron in my head saying "We'll cover anything that's out of copyright, like".  As wrong as it could potentially be, though, there's a Meek-like care about the record which seems immediately delightful, and the band shared Meek's love for technology.  Keyboard player Ken Freeman wanted to have a Mellotron on the track, but finding himself strapped for cash had to use a Clavioline instead, which gives the track a slightly eerie, dreamy air.

The B-side "Shadows" doesn't appear to be a tribute to the band of the same name, but rather a sinister, edgy piece of instrumental work with occasional bursts into pounding piano boogie.  I actually prefer it to the A-side.

As for The Second City Sound, no further hits were forthcoming after this reached number 22, but at least one of their number went on to have an influence on the music industry. Ken Freeman might not have been able to afford that ultra-desirable Mellotron, but he went on to build and market synths of his own, creating the Freeman String Symphonizer.  He also worked with Mike Oldfield and Jon Anderson, and perhaps most notably of all Jeff Wayne on the "War of the Worlds" album.  It's difficult to hear quite where his career was going to go on the basis of this little single, but for all its chocolate box arrangements, this probably sounded like a startlingly modern piece of work in 1965.  If Joe Meek didn't start hurling objects around his Holloway Road flat after hearing it, then I'm a Dutchman.

Techno Twins - Falling In Love Again & Karel Fialka - Armband

- Hola Music Lovers, Music іѕ а form оf art thаt involves organized аnd audible sounds аnd silence. It іѕ nоrmаllу expressed іn terms оf pitch (which includes melody аnd harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo аnd meter), аnd thе quality оf sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, аnd texture). Music mау аlѕо involve complex generative forms іn time thrоugh thе construction оf patterns аnd combinations оf natural stimuli, principally sound. Music mау bе uѕеd fоr artistic оr aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, оr ceremonial purposes. Thе definition оf whаt constitutes music varies ассоrdіng tо culture аnd social context.This Blog tell About , Music is formulated or organized sound. Although it cannot contain emotions, it is sometimes designed to manipulate and transform the emotion of the listener/listeners. Music created for movies is a good example of its use to manipulate emotions. .



Label: PRT
Year of Release: 1981

On the surface, there's no real connection between Karel Fialka and The Techno Twins, who I've lumped together for the benefit of this entry - to the best of my knowledge, they've never been on the same live bill, they probably don't attend each other's dinner parties, and it's entirely possible that they'd be insulted by the mere suggestion they had anything in common.

In my own lazy way, then, the main reason I've lumped them together is that for me, they represent a forgotten aspect of eighties electronic pop.  The Human League, Soft Cell, and even OMD had a tenderness to their work which breathed human life into the electronic squall.  The most timeless work of that period wasn't recently revived by many a Brit school contender and A&R department for no reason (although it's probably going off the boil again as we speak).  Whilst there was a suspicion in some quarters around the late eighties that the earliest synthetic music would quickly become irrelevant, sounding like a decadent pop experiment from another era with no possible connection to the real 21st Century world, it's as strong as ever.  In the same way that Joe Meek's earliest experiments with sound still resonate with a fragile hope, so does the work of most of the more mainstream eighties contenders.

Except... if you dig deep enough in the second hand store racks, oddities crop up all the time which seem to have no connection at all to the present.  They invariably sound like relics, as far from "Open Your Heart" or "Tainted Love" is it's possible to get.  They may as well have not even have been part of the same scene.  The Techno Twins, for example, look strangely out of sorts in the picture above - almost like a fancy dress store approximation of Futurism or New Romanticism, the kind of blurred, misty photo you'd find on a party store package containing some novelty wigs.  Their cover of "Falling in Love Again" is actually sweet enough, but what dates it is the way it uses electronics robotically and rigidly.  It jitters and judders all over the place, sounding custom made for novelty robotic mime artists Tik and Tok.  Instead of integrating the electronics smoothly into the melody and thinking about how the synthesisers might in the very near future be a crucial part of the pop story, it's led by the novelty of them.  The Techno Twins have been credited with inventing the word "techno", but the way they used the instrumentation seemed bound by a "Tomorrow's World" past filled with awkward, jerky machinery.   There is no humanity to be found here at all.

To me, this sounds fascinating purely because I can't think of a single artist making pop music remotely like this now.  Bands like Stereolab may have looked backwards to a Moogy Wonderland past, but nobody at the moment seems to be mimicking the early eighties artists who had watched "Metropolis" rather too keenly.





Label: Blueprint
Year of Release: 1979

And on to Karel Fialka, a man who would later hit the charts with "Hey Matthew", a song which some people have since claimed is a brilliant and perceptive pop song which juxtaposes the way children and adults watch the telly and view the world.  I still find it bloody irritating myself.

Still, way before that he too sounded as if he existed in a futuristic dystopia, making singles like "Armband" which sounds simultaneously emotionally distant and also full of dread.  Dramatic drums pound away from the very beginning, electronic seagulls screech away, and Karel has a good old rant about inflatable life-saving wear (which I think is almost certainly supposed to be a metaphor for the safety cushion of relationships).  It has the same jerkiness and awkwardness as The Techno Twins record, and none of the gentle observations his later work would have.  These days, it actually sounds faintly absurd, which is curious - he actually got on "Top of the Pops" with another single from this era ("The Eyes Have It") which achieved an enormous volume of airplay.

Flip side "Metal Urbane", on the other hand, focusses on the fact that we are all being watched by metal men.  Poor Karel didn't realise that intelligent humanoid robots of the future might be made of silicon.

Beyond the aural evidence, it's worth noting that both these singles have another thing in common - they were flops marketed by the ailing Pye Records company (or Prelude Records and Tapes, to give the organisation its eighties name).  Evidence would not suggest, however, that they had an entire roster filled with artists of this ilk.

Label: PRT
Year of Release: 1981

On the surface, there's no real connection between Karel Fialka and The Techno Twins, who I've lumped together for the benefit of this entry - to the best of my knowledge, they've never been on the same live bill, they probably don't attend each other's dinner parties, and it's entirely possible that they'd be insulted by the mere suggestion they had anything in common.

In my own lazy way, then, the main reason I've lumped them together is that for me, they represent a forgotten aspect of eighties electronic pop.  The Human League, Soft Cell, and even OMD had a tenderness to their work which breathed human life into the electronic squall.  The most timeless work of that period wasn't recently revived by many a Brit school contender and A&R department for no reason (although it's probably going off the boil again as we speak).  Whilst there was a suspicion in some quarters around the late eighties that the earliest synthetic music would quickly become irrelevant, sounding like a decadent pop experiment from another era with no possible connection to the real 21st Century world, it's as strong as ever.  In the same way that Joe Meek's earliest experiments with sound still resonate with a fragile hope, so does the work of most of the more mainstream eighties contenders.

Except... if you dig deep enough in the second hand store racks, oddities crop up all the time which seem to have no connection at all to the present.  They invariably sound like relics, as far from "Open Your Heart" or "Tainted Love" is it's possible to get.  They may as well have not even have been part of the same scene.  The Techno Twins, for example, look strangely out of sorts in the picture above - almost like a fancy dress store approximation of Futurism or New Romanticism, the kind of blurred, misty photo you'd find on a party store package containing some novelty wigs.  Their cover of "Falling in Love Again" is actually sweet enough, but what dates it is the way it uses electronics robotically and rigidly.  It jitters and judders all over the place, sounding custom made for novelty robotic mime artists Tik and Tok.  Instead of integrating the electronics smoothly into the melody and thinking about how the synthesisers might in the very near future be a crucial part of the pop story, it's led by the novelty of them.  The Techno Twins have been credited with inventing the word "techno", but the way they used the instrumentation seemed bound by a "Tomorrow's World" past filled with awkward, jerky machinery.   There is no humanity to be found here at all.

To me, this sounds fascinating purely because I can't think of a single artist making pop music remotely like this now.  Bands like Stereolab may have looked backwards to a Moogy Wonderland past, but nobody at the moment seems to be mimicking the early eighties artists who had watched "Metropolis" rather too keenly.





Label: Blueprint
Year of Release: 1979

And on to Karel Fialka, a man who would later hit the charts with "Hey Matthew", a song which some people have since claimed is a brilliant and perceptive pop song which juxtaposes the way children and adults watch the telly and view the world.  I still find it bloody irritating myself.

Still, way before that he too sounded as if he existed in a futuristic dystopia, making singles like "Armband" which sounds simultaneously emotionally distant and also full of dread.  Dramatic drums pound away from the very beginning, electronic seagulls screech away, and Karel has a good old rant about inflatable life-saving wear (which I think is almost certainly supposed to be a metaphor for the safety cushion of relationships).  It has the same jerkiness and awkwardness as The Techno Twins record, and none of the gentle observations his later work would have.  These days, it actually sounds faintly absurd, which is curious - he actually got on "Top of the Pops" with another single from this era ("The Eyes Have It") which achieved an enormous volume of airplay.

Flip side "Metal Urbane", on the other hand, focusses on the fact that we are all being watched by metal men.  Poor Karel didn't realise that intelligent humanoid robots of the future might be made of silicon.

Beyond the aural evidence, it's worth noting that both these singles have another thing in common - they were flops marketed by the ailing Pye Records company (or Prelude Records and Tapes, to give the organisation its eighties name).  Evidence would not suggest, however, that they had an entire roster filled with artists of this ilk.

One Hit Wonders #15 - Joy Sarney - Naughty Naughty Naughty

- Hola Music Lovers, Music іѕ а form оf art thаt involves organized аnd audible sounds аnd silence. It іѕ nоrmаllу expressed іn terms оf pitch (which includes melody аnd harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo аnd meter), аnd thе quality оf sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, аnd texture). Music mау аlѕо involve complex generative forms іn time thrоugh thе construction оf patterns аnd combinations оf natural stimuli, principally sound. Music mау bе uѕеd fоr artistic оr aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, оr ceremonial purposes. Thе definition оf whаt constitutes music varies ассоrdіng tо culture аnd social context.This Blog tell About , Music is formulated or organized sound. Although it cannot contain emotions, it is sometimes designed to manipulate and transform the emotion of the listener/listeners. Music created for movies is a good example of its use to manipulate emotions. .



Label: Alaska
Year of Release: 1977

So it's like this - John Schroeder's Alaska label spent most of the seventies releasing what could only be considered to be commercially viable (although often gimmicky) material.  Discs with the disco in mind were put out, as were populist ballads, and even football songs.  The public remained unmoved.

Perhaps this record should therefore be taken as proof that winning formulas come in unlikely packages, for this is the only single on the label to succeed in getting one of their artists on "Top of the Pops" - and lo and behold, it's a ballad to Mr Punch out of Punch and Judy sung by sultry ex-session singer-turned-housewife Joy Sarney.  Alaska went to the trouble of actually hiring a professional Punch and Judy man for the session, gave Joy a bunch of extremely peculiar lyrics about her love for the hooked-nose one ("He's been in trouble with the law for Grevious Bodily Harm... I'm his puppet, but he won't pull my strings") mashed the lot together with the kind of bouncy lightweight rhythm frequently reserved for Paul Nicholas singles, and watched as to their delight they enjoyed their only hit.  If you created a computer randomiser to pick up subject matter and style for a record, you'd probably come up with something which seemed less absurd.

It doesn't seem as if anyone else involved with the making of the single thought it would break through.  The then-rookie engineer (and these days well-paid producer) Chris Tsangardies has gone on record as saying "The bloody thing was atrocious... it will haunt me, but it was a break".  Reportedly, Joy herself is good humoured about the record, and is under no illusions about its status in the grand scheme of things.  On top of that, only recently the BBC included it in a list of clips of the worst "Top of the Pops" appearances of all time, largely by dint of the unusual nature of the record rather than as a comment on Joy's performance.

After "Naughty Naughty Naughty" peaked at number 26, it would seem that an attempt was made at pulling Joy back into the music industry full-time, as a follow up "Angling for A Kiss" was released later that year.  However, it failed to chart, and that seems to have been the end of that.  In the meantime, online conversations rage about whether Joy Sarney actually hails from Liverpool or Southend.  I spent my teenage years growing up in Southend, but on the basis of evidence I've been presented with, I'd say it's probably safe to conclude that she lived and worked in both places at one point or another.  Let's not fight about who can rightfully place her on their local walk of fame, eh readers?  We can share the credit.

Please don't ask me who the credited "Friends Of Joy" are on the B-side singing the cod-country track "Letters of Love", either.  I'm sure it was probably an afterthought on the part of everyone concerned.

Label: Alaska
Year of Release: 1977

So it's like this - John Schroeder's Alaska label spent most of the seventies releasing what could only be considered to be commercially viable (although often gimmicky) material.  Discs with the disco in mind were put out, as were populist ballads, and even football songs.  The public remained unmoved.

Perhaps this record should therefore be taken as proof that winning formulas come in unlikely packages, for this is the only single on the label to succeed in getting one of their artists on "Top of the Pops" - and lo and behold, it's a ballad to Mr Punch out of Punch and Judy sung by sultry ex-session singer-turned-housewife Joy Sarney.  Alaska went to the trouble of actually hiring a professional Punch and Judy man for the session, gave Joy a bunch of extremely peculiar lyrics about her love for the hooked-nose one ("He's been in trouble with the law for Grevious Bodily Harm... I'm his puppet, but he won't pull my strings") mashed the lot together with the kind of bouncy lightweight rhythm frequently reserved for Paul Nicholas singles, and watched as to their delight they enjoyed their only hit.  If you created a computer randomiser to pick up subject matter and style for a record, you'd probably come up with something which seemed less absurd.

It doesn't seem as if anyone else involved with the making of the single thought it would break through.  The then-rookie engineer (and these days well-paid producer) Chris Tsangardies has gone on record as saying "The bloody thing was atrocious... it will haunt me, but it was a break".  Reportedly, Joy herself is good humoured about the record, and is under no illusions about its status in the grand scheme of things.  On top of that, only recently the BBC included it in a list of clips of the worst "Top of the Pops" appearances of all time, largely by dint of the unusual nature of the record rather than as a comment on Joy's performance.

After "Naughty Naughty Naughty" peaked at number 26, it would seem that an attempt was made at pulling Joy back into the music industry full-time, as a follow up "Angling for A Kiss" was released later that year.  However, it failed to chart, and that seems to have been the end of that.  In the meantime, online conversations rage about whether Joy Sarney actually hails from Liverpool or Southend.  I spent my teenage years growing up in Southend, but on the basis of evidence I've been presented with, I'd say it's probably safe to conclude that she lived and worked in both places at one point or another.  Let's not fight about who can rightfully place her on their local walk of fame, eh readers?  We can share the credit.

Please don't ask me who the credited "Friends Of Joy" are on the B-side singing the cod-country track "Letters of Love", either.  I'm sure it was probably an afterthought on the part of everyone concerned.

The Frugal Sound - Norwegian Wood

- Hola Music Lovers, Music іѕ а form оf art thаt involves organized аnd audible sounds аnd silence. It іѕ nоrmаllу expressed іn terms оf pitch (which includes melody аnd harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo аnd meter), аnd thе quality оf sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, аnd texture). Music mау аlѕо involve complex generative forms іn time thrоugh thе construction оf patterns аnd combinations оf natural stimuli, principally sound. Music mау bе uѕеd fоr artistic оr aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, оr ceremonial purposes. Thе definition оf whаt constitutes music varies ассоrdіng tо culture аnd social context.This Blog tell About , Music is formulated or organized sound. Although it cannot contain emotions, it is sometimes designed to manipulate and transform the emotion of the listener/listeners. Music created for movies is a good example of its use to manipulate emotions. .



Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1966

It wasn't completely unheard of for English folk artists to cover The Beatles - The Overlanders did just that with "Michelle" and took it all the way to the top spot in the British charts.  In fact, by the time the sixties were up, The Beatles had been covered by all and sundry from soul singers to reggae artists to easy listening superstars, so the existence of some gentle acoustic pondering of their finer moments from musicians of a more traditional style should be no real surprise.

"Norwegian Wood" always did have enough of a vaguely mysterious, pastoral feel to it to be a relatively easy fit for any self-respecting folkie, and so it proves - this version is gentle, whimsical and decidedly Autumnal sounding single (enough for it to end up on the "Autumn Almanac" compilation put out by Sanctuary Records a few years ago).  It doesn't tear the original to pieces, but the vocals are less nasal and slightly warmer, the close harmonies sounding well suited to the song.  It's a record to play whilst lounging around the fireside with a glass of something intoxicating, or perhaps whilst sitting around the three bar fire if you're really stuck.  

The flip "Cruel To Be Kind" gives a better impression of what The Frugal Sound could create when away from the Lennon-McCartney songbook, being a heartfelt ballad with a female vocal lead from Rosalind Rankin which knows exactly where to draw the line.

Sadly, nobody seems to have much information on what happened to the Frugal Sound.  We know that they hailed from Hampstead in North London, and that they had two singles out on Pye of which this was just one (the other, "Just Outside Your Door", failed in a similar manner), followed by three on RCA, but that appears to have been that.  Apparently their other releases showcase a similar stripped down rootsy approach, and at no point do they seem to have gone in a beat or psychedelic direction in search of mainstream sales.  Given the nature of the folk scene and its decidedly non-ageist outlook, it's not at all impossible that the performers responsible are still out there on the circuit somewhere as solo artists.  However, we'll only find out if somebody tells us - I can find no trace of them.

Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1966

It wasn't completely unheard of for English folk artists to cover The Beatles - The Overlanders did just that with "Michelle" and took it all the way to the top spot in the British charts.  In fact, by the time the sixties were up, The Beatles had been covered by all and sundry from soul singers to reggae artists to easy listening superstars, so the existence of some gentle acoustic pondering of their finer moments from musicians of a more traditional style should be no real surprise.

"Norwegian Wood" always did have enough of a vaguely mysterious, pastoral feel to it to be a relatively easy fit for any self-respecting folkie, and so it proves - this version is gentle, whimsical and decidedly Autumnal sounding single (enough for it to end up on the "Autumn Almanac" compilation put out by Sanctuary Records a few years ago).  It doesn't tear the original to pieces, but the vocals are less nasal and slightly warmer, the close harmonies sounding well suited to the song.  It's a record to play whilst lounging around the fireside with a glass of something intoxicating, or perhaps whilst sitting around the three bar fire if you're really stuck.  

The flip "Cruel To Be Kind" gives a better impression of what The Frugal Sound could create when away from the Lennon-McCartney songbook, being a heartfelt ballad with a female vocal lead from Rosalind Rankin which knows exactly where to draw the line.

Sadly, nobody seems to have much information on what happened to the Frugal Sound.  We know that they hailed from Hampstead in North London, and that they had two singles out on Pye of which this was just one (the other, "Just Outside Your Door", failed in a similar manner), followed by three on RCA, but that appears to have been that.  Apparently their other releases showcase a similar stripped down rootsy approach, and at no point do they seem to have gone in a beat or psychedelic direction in search of mainstream sales.  Given the nature of the folk scene and its decidedly non-ageist outlook, it's not at all impossible that the performers responsible are still out there on the circuit somewhere as solo artists.  However, we'll only find out if somebody tells us - I can find no trace of them.

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- Hola Music Lovers, Music іѕ а form оf art thаt involves organized аnd audible sounds аnd silence. It іѕ nоrmаllу expressed іn terms оf pitch (which includes melody аnd harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo аnd meter), аnd thе quality оf sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, аnd texture). Music mау аlѕо involve complex generative forms іn time thrоugh thе construction оf patterns аnd combinations оf natural stimuli, principally sound. Music mау bе uѕеd fоr artistic оr aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, оr ceremonial purposes. Thе definition оf whаt constitutes music varies ассоrdіng tо culture аnd social context.This Blog tell About , Music is formulated or organized sound. Although it cannot contain emotions, it is sometimes designed to manipulate and transform the emotion of the listener/listeners. Music created for movies is a good example of its use to manipulate emotions. .



I'm afraid I'm forgoing the usual weekend update.  Here's the truth, should you want to hear it - I've been very pressed for time over the last fortnight or so, and simply haven't had the time to digitise the teetering pile of vinyl which presently sits over by the old Elizabethan Astronaut record player in my front room.  Also, finding cheap, interesting material over the last month or so has been a massive chore, and rather than upload any old toss, it's probably better to have a brief breather for today.

But while you're here - a mystery has reared its head.  On several blogs, the mp3 you see at the bottom of this page has been credited as being "Oo Chang A Lang" by The Blue Orchids.  It's a brilliant piece of garage punk riffery which seems to predate Riot Grrrl by several decades, and sounds defiantly abrasive.  There's a small problem, though.  It's not "Oo Chang A Lang" by The Blue Orchids.  This is "Oo Chang A Lang" by the Blue Orchids, a piece of cod-Spectorism which is innocent and puppy-eyed, and couldn't sound less like the track I've got in mind.

So, who is the track by, and when was it released?  If a reader is able to put me out of my misery, I'd be a happy man.  It probably will turn out to be an embarrassingly obvious answer I should know already, but I'm prepared to weather that.

I'm afraid I'm forgoing the usual weekend update.  Here's the truth, should you want to hear it - I've been very pressed for time over the last fortnight or so, and simply haven't had the time to digitise the teetering pile of vinyl which presently sits over by the old Elizabethan Astronaut record player in my front room.  Also, finding cheap, interesting material over the last month or so has been a massive chore, and rather than upload any old toss, it's probably better to have a brief breather for today.

But while you're here - a mystery has reared its head.  On several blogs, the mp3 you see at the bottom of this page has been credited as being "Oo Chang A Lang" by The Blue Orchids.  It's a brilliant piece of garage punk riffery which seems to predate Riot Grrrl by several decades, and sounds defiantly abrasive.  There's a small problem, though.  It's not "Oo Chang A Lang" by The Blue Orchids.  This is "Oo Chang A Lang" by the Blue Orchids, a piece of cod-Spectorism which is innocent and puppy-eyed, and couldn't sound less like the track I've got in mind.

So, who is the track by, and when was it released?  If a reader is able to put me out of my misery, I'd be a happy man.  It probably will turn out to be an embarrassingly obvious answer I should know already, but I'm prepared to weather that.

Second Hand Record Dip Part 64 - Topol Sings Israeli Freedom Songs

- Hola Music Lovers, Music іѕ а form оf art thаt involves organized аnd audible sounds аnd silence. It іѕ nоrmаllу expressed іn terms оf pitch (which includes melody аnd harmony), rhythm (which includes tempo аnd meter), аnd thе quality оf sound (which includes timbre, articulation, dynamics, аnd texture). Music mау аlѕо involve complex generative forms іn time thrоugh thе construction оf patterns аnd combinations оf natural stimuli, principally sound. Music mау bе uѕеd fоr artistic оr aesthetic, communicative, entertainment, оr ceremonial purposes. Thе definition оf whаt constitutes music varies ассоrdіng tо culture аnd social context.This Blog tell About , Music is formulated or organized sound. Although it cannot contain emotions, it is sometimes designed to manipulate and transform the emotion of the listener/listeners. Music created for movies is a good example of its use to manipulate emotions. .


Who: Topol
What: Sings Israeli Freedom Songs
Label: Ember
When: 1967
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street
Cost: One pound

If popular culture myths are to be believed, 1967 was the year the world went wonky, LSD fell into the reservoirs, and everyone wigged out.  Nonsense, of course.  Somebody genuinely would have had to spike the water supplies of every major town and city on Earth to have inspired such a seachange, and in reality, life for most people simply rolled on as usual.  The closest my father came to witnessing the psychedelic underground up close was when Peter Starstedt popped into his Peckham local for a pint - and let's be honest, Starstedt wasn't really any underground hero, and apparently came quite close to being given a thorough drubbing.  Wherever his lovely went to, it clearly wasn't pubs off the Old Kent Road.

So then, whereas 1967 to some people may involve Pink Floyd, The Beatles going ker-azy, the UFO club, and all manner of absurdities besides, in reality for other people it might have meant Ken Dodd and Engelbert Humperdinck (saleswise, Eng was something of a runaway victor in that year).  And whilst others dictated peace and love, other recording artists were going quite berserk with other more militant concerns, which finally brings us on to Topol, star of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof".  When the 1967 Israel-Syria conflict came to a head, he decided to down tools as a performer and fight for his country.  Not only that, he produced a concept album of songs about it.

Originally, I was tempted to post the sleeve of this record up for public viewing and leave it at that.  Extra comment seemed somehow superfluous.  This entire album is not in English, so it's impossible to hear exactly what he's telling us, but with song titles like "The Canon Song", "World's End", "One Hundred and Twenty Men" and "We Are Coming To You", it's perfectly possible to fill in some of the blanks yourself.  The accompanying sleeve notes written by Benny Green of The Observer newspaper also give us some background: "...when his homeland was threatened, he stopped fiddling on the roof and returned to what was in effect a beleaguered Nation, fulfilling the first duty of every citizen of that astounding country, which is to die for it before seeing it destroyed... The songs he sings on this album, seen in the context of the national crisis which inspired them are an inspiration not only to Israelis but to everyone who believes that fundamental human rights are worth any sacrifice".

I don't want to get sucked into a debate about the moral rights or wrongs of this record, but I don't think it's remotely unfair to say that in peacetime (if not before) the sleeve image of Topol hollering into a hand grenade instead of a microphone isn't so much of a powerful image as a truly preposterous one.  Even the worst, bargain basement Clash-inspired punk band would have turned down such a sleeve art suggestion.  It doesn't cause one to stop and think, it just immediately suggests that the poor bastard may have had a bit of a funny turn when it came to the photo session.  Nor should it surprise anyone to learn that in Britain at least, this album did not sell, but just you try seeing it in the reduced racks of a second hand record store and looking the other way... It's just a shame I can't find any English translations of the lyrics anywhere.

Sorry for not uploading the whole album, by the way.  I couldn't face it.  If enough people desperately need to hear the rest I may reconsider.

Who: Topol
What: Sings Israeli Freedom Songs
Label: Ember
When: 1967
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street
Cost: One pound

If popular culture myths are to be believed, 1967 was the year the world went wonky, LSD fell into the reservoirs, and everyone wigged out.  Nonsense, of course.  Somebody genuinely would have had to spike the water supplies of every major town and city on Earth to have inspired such a seachange, and in reality, life for most people simply rolled on as usual.  The closest my father came to witnessing the psychedelic underground up close was when Peter Starstedt popped into his Peckham local for a pint - and let's be honest, Starstedt wasn't really any underground hero, and apparently came quite close to being given a thorough drubbing.  Wherever his lovely went to, it clearly wasn't pubs off the Old Kent Road.

So then, whereas 1967 to some people may involve Pink Floyd, The Beatles going ker-azy, the UFO club, and all manner of absurdities besides, in reality for other people it might have meant Ken Dodd and Engelbert Humperdinck (saleswise, Eng was something of a runaway victor in that year).  And whilst others dictated peace and love, other recording artists were going quite berserk with other more militant concerns, which finally brings us on to Topol, star of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof".  When the 1967 Israel-Syria conflict came to a head, he decided to down tools as a performer and fight for his country.  Not only that, he produced a concept album of songs about it.

Originally, I was tempted to post the sleeve of this record up for public viewing and leave it at that.  Extra comment seemed somehow superfluous.  This entire album is not in English, so it's impossible to hear exactly what he's telling us, but with song titles like "The Canon Song", "World's End", "One Hundred and Twenty Men" and "We Are Coming To You", it's perfectly possible to fill in some of the blanks yourself.  The accompanying sleeve notes written by Benny Green of The Observer newspaper also give us some background: "...when his homeland was threatened, he stopped fiddling on the roof and returned to what was in effect a beleaguered Nation, fulfilling the first duty of every citizen of that astounding country, which is to die for it before seeing it destroyed... The songs he sings on this album, seen in the context of the national crisis which inspired them are an inspiration not only to Israelis but to everyone who believes that fundamental human rights are worth any sacrifice".

I don't want to get sucked into a debate about the moral rights or wrongs of this record, but I don't think it's remotely unfair to say that in peacetime (if not before) the sleeve image of Topol hollering into a hand grenade instead of a microphone isn't so much of a powerful image as a truly preposterous one.  Even the worst, bargain basement Clash-inspired punk band would have turned down such a sleeve art suggestion.  It doesn't cause one to stop and think, it just immediately suggests that the poor bastard may have had a bit of a funny turn when it came to the photo session.  Nor should it surprise anyone to learn that in Britain at least, this album did not sell, but just you try seeing it in the reduced racks of a second hand record store and looking the other way... It's just a shame I can't find any English translations of the lyrics anywhere.

Sorry for not uploading the whole album, by the way.  I couldn't face it.  If enough people desperately need to hear the rest I may reconsider.