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Hey Whistler and Thursday! Have you guys abandoned your thread???
C'mon over! Don't be chicken!!!
I just baked up a big batch of your favorite Pepto Cupcakes. I've got some Kaopectate shooters. And, your barf bags are in the back of the seat in front of you.
Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!
(Trivia time: Hurricane Smith's real name was Norman Smith and---before he, too, indulged his thing for ancient vaudeville and music hall styles---he was an engineer at EMI Records who worked on sessions by the Beatles before becoming the second producer [Joe Boyd had done this group's debut single] for Pink Floyd, producing all their albums from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn through Atom Heart Mother . . . )
Quote:
Originally Posted by WhistlerMCMLV
I bet you there are a boatload of people who wouldn't be caught dead admitting they made a hit out of these . . .
Trivia: The New Vaudeville Band was a kind of non-de-plume for songwriter Geoff Stephens, who put the track together and found himself with an unexpected blockbuster hit in 1966---and a need to assemble a real band to tour. His first choice was a group of musical satirists who had a similar taste for vintage vaudeville and British music hall swingers, but that band---except for saxophonist Bob Kerr---declined Stephens's imitation. (Stephens was credited with the vocal on the "Winchester Cathedral" single, but it turned out the actual vocalist was John Carter, who simulated the megaphone vocal sound by singing through his cupped hands. Carter later turned up as the lead vocalist for First Class on their lone hit, "Beach Baby"---another song that could go on this thread!)
The band who mostly spurned the chance to become the touring New Vaudeville Band? The legendary Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band . . .
I loved this next song when I was a wee wench. How could you two have forgotten about it? Yep, I wore out this 45. Sue me.
It hit me while I was posting a song I couldn't stand on the thread for songs we absolutely cannot stand. (Hope nobody holds it against me that my first entry on that one was ZZ Top's "Tush"---sorry, and I'm a ZZ Top fan when they cut the B.S. and play the real hard blues, but "Tush" gives me a craving for a Pepto-Bismol cupcake.) In the spirit of the "See and Raise" thread, oh boy am I going to see and raise that one with . . .
How about we list the dopiest of the dopey records we bought in the days of our misbegotten youths and compile the tally of . . . we made 'em hits . . . and now we wouldn't DARE admit it . . . except, of course, in C-D company where all's fun and nobody really takes it seriously . . . (we think!) . . .
So here goes. Here are three records I helped make hits back in the year . . . and except on C-D I wouldn't dare admit it.
Not. even. at. gunpoint.
The Magistrates, "Here Come the Judge" (Even if you still think Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In was one of the all-time great comedies, for its first three seasons, anyway, you have to be embarrassed by what sounds as much like contempt for one of the show's signature running gags as anything else in these hands . . . )
Johnny Cymbal, "Mr. Bass Man" (Insult added to injury? Ronnie Bright of the Cadillacs did the bass buh-buh-booms on this compost fodder . . . it's a sad fall from "Speedo" to "Mr. Bass Man" . . .)
I'd better explain before I have to duck the first tomato: Years ago, you could buy boxes of singles at Woolworth's for about three bucks. You got ten in the box. I happened to be browsing in Woolworth's one day after school, just wasting time until a friend of mine joined up with me at the Long Beach railroad station across the street, when I saw a display bin full of those boxes. I spotted one that grabbed me right away: the open window on one side showed the single of Buffalo Springfield's "Mr. Soul" (the harder rocking version with the crunchier guitars and Neil Young playing a screaming solo that sounded like he was trying to beat Mike Bloomfield at his own game; an edited version of "Bluebird" was the flip side), and the other showed the Young Rascals' "It's Wonderful." Well, o-kay, then---I was a fan of both the Springfield and the Rascals, so I bought the box.
Then, I took it home.
And, inspected the contents.
There were a couple of lost jewels in there---a single of Gladys Knight and the Pips covering the Temptations' "I Wish It Would Rain" (and they damn near beat the Temptations at their own game with it, too!) . . . a very early single by the Manhattans ("Can I") . . . a posthumous single by Jim Reeves that I thought should have been a hit ("When Two Worlds Collide") . . . and then . . . and then . . .
Well, "Paralyzed" sounded like a classic name for a garage band single. (Maybe that can be explained best by fishing out your old copy of the Sonics' "Strychnine.") "The Legendary Stardust Cowboy" sounded like . . . well, either a B-movie reject or a guy who got thrown out of the Shadows of Knight for betraying a passion for country music. Put the two together and you had to have an unknown classic.
Well, I put the two together.
And, I played the record.
And what I ended up having was a feeling that for the first time in my life I'd heard something that made fingernails on the chalkboard resemble "The Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun."
Either that or somebody at Mercury Records caught Marty Robbins on a heretofore-undetected acid trip and slipped a microphone in his living room to capture the net results.
And I'd bought the damn thing by accident!
OK, I've gone and done it. Let's see who else has the nerve to admit what you'd be embarrassed to admit you helped make hits back in the year . . .
Hey! This would be a good idea for a thread Whistler.
Trivia: The New Vaudeville Band was a kind of non-de-plume for songwriter Geoff Stephens, who put the track together and found himself with an unexpected blockbuster hit in 1966---and a need to assemble a real band to tour. His first choice was a group of musical satirists who had a similar taste for vintage vaudeville and British music hall swingers, but that band---except for saxophonist Bob Kerr---declined Stephens's imitation. (Stephens was credited with the vocal on the "Winchester Cathedral" single, but it turned out the actual vocalist was John Carter, who simulated the megaphone vocal sound by singing through his cupped hands. Carter later turned up as the lead vocalist for First Class on their lone hit, "Beach Baby"---another song that could go on this thread!)
The band who mostly spurned the chance to become the touring New Vaudeville Band? The legendary Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band . . .
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