b j thomas has some fodder for this here cannon. but i think i picked the winner.
look at that sea of white, christian folk. it’s holiday time, and they have voluntarily gathered together to listen to mr. thomas. all i need is rudolph lighting the way to the exits and i’m in the catbird seat! actually, thomas is well-loved in the christian music circuit. and nothing says happy christmas to the faithful like a song sung by a guy named B J about your girlfriend banging someone else.
he also is big in brazil.
hey! did you have to write a song with a title so G-d damned long it made it impossible for people to actually fit in on a record label? of course, it isn’t as long as the song Guinness has credited as having the longest song title, courtesy of hoagy carmichael:
I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doing Those Beat-o, Beat-o, Flat on my Seat-o Hirohito Blues
but STILL?
okay, so it also was on the country charts (and paved the way for thomas for some more country hits as well), but the ROCK chart? what about this sound actually rocks? the chair he’s sitting in while he’s strumming his GE-tar and crying into his coffee? how the hell did the american public go from philadelphia freedom one week to this masterwork? gahhhhh.
i know what you’re thinking: she doesn’t like country, and it’s coloring her choices. damn right.
wait til you see the earmworm i unleash tomorrow. it’s part of my family lore, even.
::smacking head into wall to try and remove the thought::
don’t get your panties in a twist. i’m not talking about the 1967 masterpiece. i’m talking about the 1978 film, sgt. peppers lonely hearts club band starring the bee gees and peter frampton. a movie the bee gees begged to not be in. a movie i actually could not bear to watch with a soundtrack of beatles covers i could never stomach (save for aerosmith and earth wind and fire.)
a movie my cousin — rock critic, rock biographer, and all-around amazing writer — wrote.
using beatles songs to tell a story is an idea that gets revived every so often. there is the nearly-forgotten 1976 film all this and world war II (which is only available to collectors these days but which has a lovely version of strawberry fields forever done by peter gabriel). and of course, there’s 2007’s across the universe, a movie you’d expect me to like, as i’m a huge beatles fan — and which i loathe.
and there’s this mama-jama.
in 1978, i was 13 years old and at the height of my will-the-beatles-ever-get-back-together mania. i even bought magazines dedicated to that very topic. (no lie.) i would read anything and everything beatle-related. in fact, when the $64,000 question was revived on television as the $128,000 question, my brother suggested i try out, as i probably knew the length of ringo starr’s eyelashes. (i don’t.) in short, i liked EVERYTHING BEATLES. plus i had glasses. AND i was a smart girl. (yes, intermediate school was not fun for me.)
so you can imagine i was extremely excited to see this picture, especially since i knew the person who had written the movie. (i still have the paperback he autographed for me 🙂 i wanted desperately to go to the premiere, to which my cousin had invited me. i wanted to see peter frampton (the hell with the bee gees, i thought.) but my mother refused to let me go (probably afraid i’d be hanging around with coked-up grownups with no one probably looking after me. a few years later, when we visited my cousin henry in venice, ca, she also wouldn’t let me meet my cousin’s friend timothy for fear i’d end up running away to some far-flung place. like insanity-land, f’rinstance. sigh. moms can be such killjoys.)
so i saw the picture like everyone else did: at the theater. it was excruciating. the movie was filled with people i didn’t know in a story that leapt around in ways my little teen-aged brain couldn’t follow. and the music? i have written aplenty about how picky-picky i am about people covering other artists’ music. my idea of a great cover does not involve george burns. i also had the album (i think my brother larry has it now), but it didn’t get much airplay in my house beyond earth wind and fire’s cover of got to get you into my life (which i actually thought was catchy and interesting) and aerosmith, whose cover of come together still gets airplay even today on classic rock stations everywhere.
i always wish i could sit down and talk with my cousin about this whole era, not to mention his entire career. i think it would be fascinating. but i have not yet had that opportunity, and i’m not sure i ever will. he’s really a fantastic person; and while he may never know this, he is the person who inspired me — at age 13 — to be a writer. his advice: write every day. doesn’t matter what it is about, if you’re a writer, you simply need to write. it’s some of the most meaningful advice i ever got.
i don’t know for certain, but i imagine when this project was brought to his attention, my cousin was told: hey you, take this album, and a few songs from the other albums, and try to string a story together. considering the psychedelic nature of the material it couldn’t have been an easy task. the story of tommy is fairly improbable (and the movie is bizarre), but that story was woven as the songs were written. doing it in reverse, well, that’s got to be a nightmare.
everyone is entitled to have an off-year. not everyone has the opportunity to have their off-year so very publicly visible, i imagine.
in 1975, jessi colter, wife of waylon jennings, had her breakout hit (and only crossover pop hit) with i’m not lisa. i always misheard her singing the name in the song: she was singing: i’m not lisa. my name is julie.
why a country singer would be singing that she, in fact, was a character from a fluffy, frothy (and fun!) british novel for kids, i never understood. at least, i didn’t get it when i was 10.
i’m older now, of course; and i understand the lyrics a whole lot better than i did back then. nevertheless, i continue to wonder: why does the song’s subject even stay with a guy who calls her a name other than her own? i want to smack her silly and scream at her to develop a bit of a backbone.
while she’s at it, why didn’t colter try something else, something more country-ish and appropriate. something like:
singing cowboy michael martin murphy sings wildfire, a song about a dead girl, a dead horse, and the man who should be quivering in fear at the knowledge that they’re comin’ for me i know. sounds like some westernized stephen king, if you ask me. and yet people in 1975 found this a terribly romantic song, and voila! it became a hit.
in 1975, i was 10 years old and at the height of every young girl’s favorite pasttime: horses. i read all about misty of chincoteage and every single solitary follow-up book marguerite henry wrote about those damn ponies. i oohed and aahed every time i had the opportunity to go horseback riding at camp; i especially loved it when i could get my horse to canter or even gallop. you’d think i was a solid audience for a song about a pony.
you’d be wrong. dead ponies don’t go off well with 10 year old girls.
it took me awhile to figure out that the pony AND the girl were dead. but then, i couldn’t understand why the singer was sounding glad that the dead things were coming for him. run, mister, RUN! hadn’t he seen horror movies? did he not value his life? did he want to wander the earth, zombie-like, terrorizing the masses in the countryside?
sheesh. grownups can be sooooooo dumb.
and musically, though i enjoyed the piano in the very beginning of the song, it seldom got any airplay on my favorite music radio WABC. the music is sleep-inducing; the lyrics are horrifying. i didn’t know whether to snooze or become a serial killer.
how wildfire caught on like, well, you know what, i will never understand.
there’s an age-old showbiz activity that goes on to this day: let’s make the actors SING! disney now does it in spades with all the teen kings and queens featured on the disney channel shows and movies. and in the 1970s, television seemed to be teeming with variety hours where actors would guest star and end up in a musical number or two. f’rinstance, milton berle singing on the donny and marie show. danny thomas singing on the tony orlando and dawn show. i guess funnymen from the old world of vaudeville were used to having to be able to do it all.
fast forward to the younger folks of the 1970s, specifically david soul. (was he starsky or hutch?) to capitalize on his fame in starsky and hutch, the blonde guy in the duo cut a single. a treacle-y mess of a single. a single so nauseatingly sweet, i have never ever figured out it’s redeeming qualities.it was his only US hit. he has since gone on to become a british citizen, probably realizing that they are the only folks who appreciate his unique, uhm, talent. i don’t wish him ill; i just don’t wish him to do another single in the US.
and yes. i really did sing it as don’t throw up on the gravy as a girl. still do.
when you think vegas, you think elvis. you think wayne newton. you also might think clint holmes.
ah, vegas – the bastion of people who probably had their better days before them. anytime americans go off on britons for allowing mull of kintyre — perhaps the sappiest song ever put forth by my beloved secret boyfriend paul mccartney (and which, admittedly, i’ve grown fond of in my addle-brained old age) — to chart at the top for weeks and weeks, i merely have to point out our dirty little american secret: playground in my mind.
in 1973, bastion-of-vegas clint holmes struck it big with this nursery crime rhyme of a song, in which he duetted with the young son of his producer (a little boy who is now about the same age as i am.) to put things in perspective, 1973 produced a bumper crop of unadulterated musical crap (some of which you’ll read about soon); it also managed to produce such amazing classics as my love, you are the sunshine of my life, crocodile rock, stuck in the middle with you, let’s get it on, and one of my guiltiest of pleasures, will it go round in circles.
but perhaps the creme de la creme de la crap from that year would be this song. even then, as an eight year old, i knew this song was awful; and i recall making up awful words to it. probably not as awful as i do now, of course, thanks to years of maturity. things involving michael, who had a nickel… bag. and cringing at cindy, whose highest aspiration in life is to get married, have a baby or two, and let them visit their grandma.
yes, cindy said, sighing, you kids go visit your grandma. keep her away from her crack pipe, willya?
somehow, holmes parlayed this song into a las vegas career, including a room named for him at one of the hotels.
(no, i am not making this up.)
on the bright side, what went to vegas stayed in vegas and never bothered the rest of us again.
many of cher’s ’70s hits touch upon the fact that she’s living in some darker world. there’s gypsies, tramps and thieves – she’s a member of the out crowd, involved in sex, gambling, and Dog knows what else, and it’s all because of her parents. there’s dark lady, where she’s somehow fighting against the forces of supernatural evil (which are handily beaten by a smith and wesson.) half breed tells the sorry tale of a woman caught between the white and the native american worlds.
who am i kidding? all three songs bite. i think i’d rather be tied to a chair and forced to listen to i got you, babe 100 times then listen to most of these, and i can barely stand the sonny bono’s froggy croak. at least sonny’s prince valiant hair and cher’s hippie garb (is she wearing a dog?) could make me laugh at least for the first 10 go-rounds.
don’t get me wrong: i was that little kid who watched the sonny and cher comedy hour religiously each week. i loved their nasty spousal banter. and for reasons i do not understand to this day, i always looked forward to the weekly sketch V A M P: Vamp. but i always loathed when she opened her mouth and sang seriously. it’s probably unfair of me, but i always thought she was a much better comedian (and actress) than she was a singer. (moonstruck is still one of my all-time favorite movies.)
so yep – nothing half-good about any of her hits. throw them in your peace pipe and smoke ’em.
what would i say? how about what the fuck, for starters?
please dear Lord above, i do not mean to be unkind to the dead, as we lost norman hurricane smith only this year. but please, explain to me how a man who engineered nearly 100 Beatles songs, produced early Pink Floyd; and even produced one of the first rock concept albums by the Pretty Things, tell me: how did he also produce this saccharine piece of shit?
better yet — how on EARTH did it hit the Billboard Top 5?
i used to think this was Buddy Hackett on a dare. it wasn’t. apparently, the british mr. smith wrote this for another artist and ended up singing it himself. lucky for us, it was a major transatlantic hit.
luckier for us, the rest of his hits never made it across the pond.
G-d help anyone who rocks us like a hurricane. at least, like this one, who mostly rocks us to sleep.
in 1973, the magical kingdom of spain hit second place in the annual crappiest song in the world contest eurovision contest with basque group mocedades and the song eres tu. (apologies; i haven’t yet figured out how to type accents. somewhere, my spanish-speaking college roommate is wagging her finger at me. somewhere, my old AOL localization folks are throwing dung my way.)
what the hell is the song about? some brilliant english scholars translated this as touch the wind, which mystifies little old, literal me. i may have muddled my way through the Zayres near Little Havana circa 1984 looking for a flea bomb (thanks to a girl in my dorm who brought in a stray cat), only to be greeted by employees who only spoke spanish (and to whom i only became understood once i said, and i quote: por matar los insectos — insectos, which may not even be a spanish word, i suspect) and who didn’t understand my initial query: como se dice Raid?;my daughter, a product of three years at a spanish immersion elementary school, may still be wildly embarrased by my american accent when i attempt to pronounce terms. but !caramba! i know eres tu is not about wind, unless someone is pointing a finger and implicating someone who recently tooted.
i especially loved learning about other translations of the song:
The song was re-released in English as “Touch The Wind” in later years. It was subsequently released in German: Das bist Du (“You are that…”), French: C’est pour toi (“It is for you…”), Italian: Viva noi (“Long live us”), and Basque: Zu zara (“You are…”).
silver convention, originally a male german duo, hit the charts when they added three women who assumed all the singing and shiny costume-wearing duties. i suspect they were not very good english speakers: fly robin fly consists of exactly six words. hearing it as a child made me think of steve allen and the time he punctured vacant pop lyrics on his show. boy, what would he do with THIS one!
musically, the song is a never-ending loop of violins punctuated by heavily-accented women urging robin to fly up, up to the sky. (was it a bird? a plane? a gibb brother?) it could still be playing somewhere, nearly 25 years later, winning a Guinness Book of World records for most never-ending, incredibly banal song. so how on EARTH could this aural wonder be topped?
oh, ye of little faith.
get up and boogie is a musical twin to fly robin fly. it, too, is a loop of violins that could permanently worm its way into your ears for a lifetime, it, too, consists of six words. four of them are sung by the shiny german ladies. but two of those words, two of them, shouted at the end of each musical thought, interrupt that groovy disco lull, upping the nuisance factor: that’s right!
i was not a disco fan when this came out in the mid-1970s. in fact, i was a snarky tween girl; and i probably was rapping before it was cool. whenever i heard this song, i would start my patter, just after the ladies stopped singing get up and boogie for the second time, and then, over the little musical bed, i’d begin to talk. i’d say things like:
my brother is such an incredible jerk. we should have kept the cat and given him away. he must be the most annoying person in the whole wide world.
and i’d stop, just in time for the guys to scream: that’s right!
(yeah, i was a card. i know.)
sadly, i don’t recall any other hits from this bunch. it’s time for their comeback: succinct memoirs are definitely in vogue. here’s theirs:
