[Updated with some links. I just can't believe what's out there.]
“Who will remember what I know?” is a favorite line from a
John McCutcheon song. McCutcheon
is a favorite folksinger, a Rounder Records artist, whose CDs accompanied a
certain percentage of Ben’s childhood.
I always liked this line, and so I am using it to title a blog that
memorializes things I know about but almost no one else does. In no particular order, I will list ten
45 RPM singles that I always play whenever I find myself sifting through my
singles box, which has to be retrieved from Remote Storage (a.k.a. the laundry
room), then riff upon them. Some of these are good, some are just
weird, all are noteworthy to me for autobiographical reasons…and probably to no
one else. You will almost
certainly never be able to hear more than one or two of these, yet I needs must
bear witness to them, even though I be yea verily screaming into the void.
Because They Matter To Me (God spare my twisted soul). Happy New Year, if I can’t manage
anything before then.
1. “The Martian
Hop” by the Newcomers. This is not
the more famous original version by the Ran-Dells (“We have just discovered an
important note from space/The Martians plan to throw a dance for all the human
race”), made famous by Dr. Demento.
No, this is an inexplicably straight-faced soul version by the Newcomers. My brother worked at a couple of different radio stations,
and radio stations always received free promotional copies of oddities, abject
dreck etc. that desperate companies and artists implored them to play. Other masterpieces I remember (but
didn’t save): “Father Mackenzie” (by, of course, the band Eleanor Rigby), songs
titled “Nocturnal Emission” and “My Family Was Gay,” etc. You’d stare at these singles—whether
you heard them or not—the way you’d stare at a car wreck. I was told later that an entire batch
of these grim testaments to doomed human endeavor were sold at the local swap
meet for $10. The young buyer was
assured they were “unreleased hits.”
2. “Overture to the Sun” (A theme from the
film Clockwork Orange [sic]) by Terry Tuckers [sic] Orange Clockwork. There is an isolated little track by
this name, a pseudo-Renaissance dance, by Terry Tucker that was used for the
soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange. I think
this was playing when lead character Alex has first been “cured” and is being
publicly tormented to demonstrate how his violent impulses have now been
curbed. Anyway, I found this in a
singles bin when I was in England in 1975–76: Not For Sale—Promotional Use
Only. The little dance has now
become an exceedingly boring synthesized round-and-round-and-round over both
sides of the single. (It is not this version, by the way.) I used to use
a variety of versions of this tune for a ballet exercise, and so the sheer
weirdness of Tucker’s long-shot at wider play appeals to me. I may be the only person on earth who
knows or remembers this version.
3. “Girls,
Girls, Girls” by Sailor (I think 1976).
Sailor was a Dutch band who had a couple of hits when I was in England,
and who I saw on Top of the Pops. This one is a tribute/send-up of a
movie-musical showstopper, and its words are clever and the music well put
together. I have another song of
theirs called “Glass of Champagne” as well.
4. “Arms of
Mary.” Sutherland Brothers and
Quiver, also 1976. Live version here.
Not sure why I
like this; it’s sort of a bland pop ballad. Possible reasons:
1) the subject matter is about all I was thinking about at the time; and
2) so many other things on the English pop charts were so appallingly bad that
certain mediocre things sounded great.
You don’t believe me? Fine:
look up the bands Showaddywaddy, the Bay City Rollers, the song “The Last
Farewell” by Roger Whittaker, the song “Back in the New York Groove” by Hello,
“Goodbyee” by I can’t remember who, “Don’t Play Your Rock and Roll to Me” by I
can’t remember who…
GOD. YOU’VE
JUST NO IDEA HOW BAD IT WAS.
5. Bev Bevan,
“Let There Be Drums,” 1976.
This is a cover of a Sandy Nelson song. Remember Sandy Nelson?
Very “Sing Sing
Sing”—interesting clips of him, discussing drumming history and theory, can be found on youtube. This is Rock spun down to
its DNA: a bass line (played on a lead guitar) alternating with solos. Bev Bevan was the drummer of the Move
and E.L.O., two of my favorite-to-the-point-of-idolatry bands, and so I snapped
up this solo effort the second I found it. For no real reason, he double-tracked the drum part. I did meet him and the rest of ELO
backstage at the Portsmouth Guildhall, the night of (I think) June 19, 1976…
6. “Washington
Square” by the Village Stompers.
Mid-1960s, folk revival, Dixieland meets Klezmer, this song is so great
it’s like a drug. It was also used
as the soundtrack for a black-and-white documentary about Greenwich Village
that my family saw as an added feature (they did that then) in Lake Arrowhead
in, perhaps, 1966 or ’67. This
song and “Love is Blue” obsessed me—something about the chord changes—when I
was ten or so.
7. “River
Bayou” by the Beckies (mid-1970s); co-composer and pianist is Michael Brown of
the late-1960s, New York-based Art Rock ensemble the Left Banke (“Pretty
Ballerina,” “Walk Away Renee”), though he was not a member of the band
proper. Brown’s was one of the
approaches to what I then called “Classical Rock” that I liked far more than
(say) Yes, Genesis, Focus etc. who I found to be impossibly ponderous. I also liked piano-based bands rather
than “keyboard”-based bands. Still
do.
8. “You Can
Run” by the Shake Shakes. I know
nothing about them except that they were a band based near Pomona, California
(where I lived for seven years, and next door to Claremont). Great song (late 1970s, I think, though
it has a 1960s pop feel), fine performance, Eddy Cochrane recording ambiance,
sank without a ripple.
9. “Call My
Name,” by Jimmy McCullough, maybe 1975.
A solo effort by the boy guitar genius of Thunderclap Newman (“Something
in the Air,” “Hollywood,” “Accidents”—staples of the Los Angeles underground
radio playlists) and later of Paul McCartney’s band Wings. He had issues (N.B. understatement)
with substance abuse, and died at age 26 (maybe 1976?) from heart failure. A superb track, later reissued with
odds and sods (including two other versions of the song) on a CD devoted to
him.
10. “Ship of
Time,” by Jaim. The keyboard
player in this UCSB-based band (Late 1960s, I’m guessing), was Paul R. Bishop,
who was later my piano teacher in high school, the first non-old-lady teacher I
ever had. (I believe he now on the
music faculty of Scripps College, in Claremont, CA, my hometown). I envied Paul his sightreading ability
(his everything ability, really—he was also an organist and harpsichordist and
composer…AND he had been in a rock band, damn it!), his car (a gold Mercury
Capri), and his utter coolness. So
when my brother later ran across both this single and another by the same band,
I snapped them up.
Thus this installment of absurdity. Certain of these numbers might better have been categorized under "Music and Torture," but there it is. Wishing all and sum a warm, safe, and
loving holiday season.