Mike Sarne – Come Outside

Bad timing can make the best of us look like fools.

George Melly has the humility to point out his own turn as History's joke, in Revolt Into Style, (1971) his groundbreaking study of popular culture of the fifties and sixties. George quotes himself in an Article for the then-young New Society Magazine in October 1962, as readable as he always was, and making smart, funny and pointed observations, he came a cropper when he saw what he thought was the future of pop music.

He was suitably dismissive of the anodyne pap that filled the charts in the backwash of Rock & Roll and Skiffle: the various clean cut Bobbys (Vee, Vinton, Rydell etc.), Helen Shapiro, and the stuff of Children’s Favourites. The only interesting stuff he saw in the charts were the hard-edged and witty songs about real life from the likes of Bernard Cribbens (Hole in The Ground and Right Said Fred) Anthony Newley (Pop Goes the Weasel) and Mike Sarne (Come Outside), all using an early form of that adapted, adopted Cockney of Youth, later pinned-down as Estuary English or Mockney .

Spare a thought for George: in the 1971 book, he graciously owned up to his mis-prediction. He didn’t try to mitigate his faults at all, although he could have. Yes, he should have spotted the potential of the proto-Beatles playing interval beat sets at then-jazz-club The Cavern when he played there: and the Beat and Blues Booms (led by the Fabs and the Stones) scoured a lot of rubbish out of the British (and international) music charts: but there was a lot of prosaic wit and humour still around in the world of beat music. Ray Davies of the Kinks moved rapidly from ersatz R&B to British barbed whimsy as the sixties progressed. And both Freddie and the Dreamers and Herman’s Hermits developed successful pop-comedy formulas. You might not like me including minnows like Peter Noone and Freddie Garrity in with cultural blue whales like John, Paul, Mick and Keef, but remember, I’m talking about how things looked then, not how they look from here. I will draw a veil over the Barron Knights.

Here’s Mike’s hit Come Outside, with vocal contributions from Wendy “Miss Brahms” Richard. I can’t seem to think of her as “Pauline Fowler” at all. Maybe it’s just my age, or maybe the performance on the record is much more Miss Brahms to Mike’s Mr. Lucas/Trevor Bannister character. And who was Trevor Bannister replaced by on AYBS? Mike Berry—a sixties pop star! It’s all coming together. A bit.

Listen:

Download Mike Sarne – Come Outside MP3 (rapidshare)

What? Not enough about Mike? Well he had a few more minor hits like Just for Kicks, Code of Love (which i can’t find), acted a bit, in The Avengers, Man In A Suitcase, and The Bill: and he directed a few films, most notably Myra Breckinridge.

Oh look: here's Judge Dread's dismally unfunny rude version.

Janie Jones — Witches Brew

Mention Janie Jones, and people about my age think “He’s in love with Rock & Roll whoah...” the song Janie Jones from the first Clash album. If you’re a bit younger, you may be be thinking of the lazy carbon-copy Babyshambles cover version (Look! there’s Janie!). Or if you’re older, you'll perhaps remember the scandal and the vice: court cases accusing her of attempted blackmail (got off) running a brothel (got off), and sex payola (banged up).

But you real old codgers out there might remember this: the nearest thing she got to a hit (Number 46) in her short mid-sixties pop career.

Janie never seems to settle into a consistant vocal style, floating in a grey area somewhere between Terry-lovin’ Twinkle and Commie-lovin’ Eartha Kitt. Backing vocals sound like average sixties beat boys. The music has a relentless, piano-driven simplicity, like a lounge band who’ve been asked to cover a Velvet Underground song. And mixed heavily over the whole thing, a gloopy, burbly, bubbling sound wash, supposedly representing the witch’s, erm, brew, but it sounds more like a malfunctioning cistern to me. Glorious.

Listen:

Download it from rapidshare: Witches Brew.

Jerry Levitan - I Met The Walrus

More lazy shoving-in of stuff other people have found. Here's I Met The Walrus, a short animation based on a conversation with John Lennon taped in 1969 in Toronto by 14-year-old a Jerry Levitan. It's a good example of Lennon's mercurial, infuriating, never boring, constant, rapid shifting between hippie mysticism and political astuteness; wrapped up in animation that refers to both sixties psychedelic surrealism and today's post-everything dada-cynicism.

Directed by Josh Raskin, Pen work by James Braithwaite, digital illustration by Alex Kurina.

Credit where it’s due: I found this on Jack Shedd’s Big Contrarian blog.

Lucy in London

I try to avoid just shoving in stuff I've found elsewhere, but I can't avoid showing you this. After all it's got two iconic "hate-to-love-to-hate" figures of mine: Lucille Ball (of course), and driving her around Swingin' London in his motorbike & sidecar, the great Tony Newley.

All credit to Will Kane's splendid World of Kane blog, and the unhealthily obsessive Lucy in London fan site.

Liver Birds on YouTube

The Liver Birds — Diddley Daddy

No, No, No! Nothing to do with Nerys Hughes, Mollie Sugden, or Lucian’s rabbits. I’m talking about a sixties all-girl beat combo who, like Carla Lane, took the name from the statues on the top of the Liver Building.

Pete Frame’s intricately hand-lettered flow-diagram histories of rock bands and their members are at once an elegantly simple way of communicating complicated information, and beautiful examples of handmade graphic art. I savoured them wherever I found them (his own Zigzag magazine, for instance, and Sounds), and bought and devoured the book collections. They were so good, it was even a pleasure to read about bands i didn’t care much about, or even actively disliked (Journey, Asia, The Eagles). When his third collection The Beatles and Some Other Guys: Rock Family Trees of the Early Sixties came out, I was a little apprehensive to discover that it contained photographs: “Surely a dilution of the purity of his art?” screamed the Raging Aesthetic Puritan within me. But upon flicking through the book, those doubts vanished when I found this picture:

(Click on any picture for a bigger version)

“Wow! An all-girl mersybeat group! Cool!” I thought. Then I found the entry on them in the previous page’s tree:

This looks pomising: although I’d never heard of them before, they had been big enough in Germany to make two albums. And the one recording mentioned by name was a Bo Diddley song: excellent taste in covers, then. I was hooked: I had to hear them. But how?

I asked all my knowledgeable muso mates: they all said “What? the TV series?” Eventually Davie said I should try George. Of course! I should have thought of George earlier. We even worked in the same building at the time. So the next time I spotted him, in the Smoking Room (yes, this is so long ago that not only were there smoking rooms, but I was in them, smoking), I asked. He frowned, and thought for a moment, and said “Yes, I know who you mean. Might have a track or two, on a compilation, somewhere. Not very good, as I remember.”

Well that was hardly encouraging. I basically stopped looking, after that. But then the internet happened, and I found a few MP3s on the sainted audiogalaxy. And George was right. Not unpleasant, adequately performed, typical mid-sixties British lead-&-chorus-vocal/lead/rhythm/bass/drums beat music.

But still, I had the photograph. Do I have to explain what’s so good about it? Maybe the fact that they all look so individual: that even although they’re doing fake goofy pop group gestures for the camera, their smiles seem fairly genuine.Or the badly hand-painted “LIVER BIRDS” on the oil drum. Oh, go on then, I have to admit it to myself: it’s Sylvia Saunders' definitely dykey “pseudo-sideburn” locks of hair in front of her ears. Frankly, they make her look like me when I was fifteen.

Preparing for this post, I thought I’d have another trawl of the internet, in case there was some lost gem of a good record out there. I did find a few more, but more importantly, I found (drum roll…) A colour version of the photograph!

Woohoo! Their’s even a rubbish painting of a bird on the oil drum! But wait! I found another photograph:

Check out that cup on Val Gell’s head!

Make your own mind up: here’s their top 5 hit in Germany:

Listen:

Download The Liver Birds — Diddley Daddy MP3 (rapidshare)

Ron Goodwin and his Orchestra – Miss Marple Theme

Nobody could possibly be a bigger Margaret Rutherford fan than me: she's my magic third granny. So when got the chance to watch all of the old Miss Marple movies recently, thanks to my postal DVD rental service, I was surprised by how, well, boring they were. Pedestrian pacing, ludicrous plots, four-square, dull cinematography and editing. I could hardly believe these were the same films that had kept me glued to the telly as a child. No criticism of Rutherford herself, mind: immune to bad scripts and bad direction, she is never anything but delightful to watch.

And the other factor that has not lost any of its sparkle is, of course, Ron Goodwin's fabulous theme tune.

Here it is: go, on stick it on your iPod and walk down the street in shuffle mode: when it comes on, you'll find the gritty urban desolation around you (I'm absolutely convinced that EVERYONE who reads this blog lives in a sprawling, dangerous, crime-ridden ghetto) will suddenly become a grainy black and white home counties village in 1964: particularly when the harpischord bit comes in. Try it.

Listen:

Download Ron Goodwin and his Orchestra – Miss Marple Theme MP3 (rapidshare)

Earl Vince and The Valiants – Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight

Back in the late seventies, “Fleetwood Mac” was a dirty word (dirty phrase?), at least it was if you were a punk/new-wave/power-pop person like what I was. Alongside Journey, Kansas and Foreigner, they represented all that we hated about smug, comfortable American FM-radio stadium rawk. So how did a groovy plastic (in a good way) punky pop group like the Rezillos get away with doing a Fleetwood Mac cover? After all, they did choose to stop playing the blessed Joe Meek’s Have I The Right when manufactured boy band The Dead End Kids had a minor hit with it.

Well, to begin with, it’s not technically a Fleetwood Mac song . Back in their UK-based, blues-band-fulla-guitarists period in the late sixties, they would goof off by playing pastiches of old rock’n’roll numbers, and calling themselves “Earl Vince and the Valiants”. And one song, this one, managed to get on the B-side of a proper Fleetwood Mac single (Man of the World). The song was also easily the “punkyest” in the Rezillos’ repertoire: with all there other stuff being about science fiction and sculptures and luv, this one was their only song dealing with violence. And it was fast too, at least the way the Rezillos performed it.

So I guess Eugene, Faye and the boys just hoped nobody in the audience had that old Fleetwood Mac single. Or indeed Blues Leftovers, the cheapo Immediate Records compilation where I found it. So here it is, with Jeremy Spencer’s brooding Elvisish (Elvine? Elvistic?) vocal.

Listen:

Download Earl Vince and The Valiants – Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight MP3 (rapidshare)

Ken Dodd – Where's Me Shirt

Ken Dodd wasn't the first or last comedian to have hit records, but his hits were distinctly uncomic. He had parallel careers as a successful comic, notably in kids telly, and as a crooner of unbearably saccharine syrupy ballads. If you listened to "Tears". "Love Is Like A Violin", "Promises", "More Than Love" "Let Me Cry On Your Shoulder" or "Tears Won't Wash Away These Heartaches" looking for a giggle, you'd be sadly, sadly disappointed. For every mind-altering, world-improving hippy anthem that misty-eyed sixties survivors remember, there were ten tin-pan-alley atrocities by Ken and his showbiz chums.

Even when Ken did make "funny" records, they usually concerned his truly awful comic creations, the Diddy Men, from his fantasy version of his real home town, Knotty Ash. Take it from me: i was a kid at the time — funny-peculiar, not funny-ha-ha.

But there was one shining exception that really makes all my analysis bunk. Yes, I've just wasted ten minutes of my life writing this, and twenty seconds of yours reading this. Because Ken did make one comic record in the sixties, that doesn't concern Dicky Mint, Mick the Marmalizer, Little Evan, Hamish McDiddy, Nigel Ponsonby-Smallpiece, Nicky Nugget, Sid Short or Smarty Arty. It's a belter, and here it is:

Listen:

Download Ken Dodd – Where's Me Shirt MP3 (rapidshare)

George Martin – She Said She Said

It’s August 1965: The Beatles, touring America, are resting at 2850 Benedict Canyon Drive, Beverley Hills, where they are trapped by a beseiging army of fans. One day, they're visited by the Byrds and Peter Fonda. Everybody (except one goody-goody Beatle—yes, that one) drops acid. Discussing fear of death with George, Fonda starts talking about his near-fatal self-inflicted childhood gunshot accident, and how his heart stopping three times on the operating table. “I know what it’s like to be dead, man”.

The lysergically enhanced John Lennon finds this deeply disturbing: "Who put all that shit in your head?".

John deals with the trauma in his usual way: by turning it into music. It gets mentally chewed, torn, digested, reassembled, transformed and regurgitated, until it becomes a Beatles song: She Said She Said”, on arguably their best LP, Revolver (1966).

Then Fabs producer and Sixth Fifth Beatle* George Martin further transformed it in to this lush and swoony instrumental: from his 1966 LP of his interpretations of Lennon & McCartney songs: George Martin Instrumentally Salutes The Beatle Girls, using flute, strings, piano and bongos.

*After Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best, Brian Epstein, Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, but before Jimmy Nichol and Billy Preston. Derek who?

Listen:

Download George Martin – She Said She Said MP3 (rapidshare)

Diana Dors – Roller Coaster Blues

She was a pal of the Kray Twins, had terrible taste in husbands, was (cliché alert) Britain’s Blonde Bombshell, famously wore a fur bikini in Venice, hid millions in bank accounts around Britain that have yet to be tracked down, could act well if she got the chance, was one of the few successful pupils at J. Arthur Rank’s Charm School, never quite conquered Hollywood, and had a surprisingly pleasant singing voice: light, tuneful, and an actress’s talent for phrasing.

Diana Dors has always had pop-culture kudos: she’s appeared on LP covers from both the Beatles (Pepper) and the Smiths (“Singles”), in Adam Ant’s “Look-at-me-I’m-so-big-I’m-about-to-loose-it-completely-and-isn’t-Marco-beefing-up-a-bit” video for Prince Charming, and in minor marvellous movies like Deep End, Theatre of Blood, and Steptoe & Son Ride Again.

...tender as the inside of a caterpiller’s thigh...

I first heard this song so far back (How far back was it?) it was so far back, it was on a mix tape a friend sent me (Hi Chunny!). Here she is, Diana Mary “Don’t Forget the L” Fluck, swinging along with Wally Stott’s Orchestra, in a lyrically oddball song from her only album, Swingin’ Dors.

Listen:

Download Diana Dors – Roller Coaster Blues MP3 (rapidshare)

Lord Melody – Mama Look a Booboo

If you’ve heard this song before, chances are it’s Harry Belafonte’s 1957 hit version: that’s the first version I ever heard, anyway. I knew Robert Mitchum had recorded some calypso, but it wasn’t till I managed to borrow a vinyl copy of “Calypso – is Like So…” that I realised he’d covered it too. But I finally chanced upon Lord Melody’s original while in the grip of mento* fever, a few years back. The huge international boom in calypso in the mid to late fifties (like Harry Belafonte’s hits) meant that just about all indigenous Caribbean music, including Jamaican mento, was being sold as “calypso”: so inevitably, in the hunt for mento gold, I necessarily had to listen to a fair bit of calypso pyrites: but no, I got to love calypso too, of course.

Shut you mouth! Go away!

Anyway, Lord Melody (born Fitzroy Alexander in 1928; died 1988) was one of the big Trinidadian stars of the fifties Calypso Boom, with this song being a hit in America: he had another international hit in 1962 with “Shame and Scandal” (a song with too complicated a story for this place: wikipedia covers it well).

Here’s Lord Melody’s original 1955 version.

Listen:

Download Lord Melody – Mama Look a Booboo MP3 (rapidshare)

...and here’s a live version from 1958 (I think):

Listen:

Download Lord Melody – Booboo Man MP3 (rapidshare)

Bob Mitchum’s Trini accent is a bit ropey here, but he has a pleasant voice, and the band are excellent enough to calm the Original Version Purist Demon that snarls within me.

Listen:

Download Robert Mitchum – Mama Looka Booboo MP3 (rapidshare)

...and if you wany to here Belafonte’s version, here he is dueting with Nat “King” Cole, via YouTube.

* I don’t have the mental energy for the long, complicated answer that a seemingly simple question like “What is mento?” deserves. Follow the link to Michael Garnice’s exhaustively researched page if you’re interested.

Lee Hazlewood – Six Feet of Chain

More Lee Hazlewood, here sounding more Johnny Cash than Cash himself, in a strange song which I've always assumed was about a dog.

I found this on a compilation The Many Sides of Lee Hazlewood: I think it originally appeared on his Trouble is a Lonesome Town album in 1963, but since even the CD reissue is going for fifty bucks, and I'm a skinflint, I'll just have to go by the track listing, and assume it did.

Listen:

Download Lee Hazlewood – Six Feet of Chain MP3 (rapidshare)

Drimble Wedge & the Vegetations – Bedazzled

I could only bear to watch a few minutes of the dire Brendan-Fraser-Liz-Hurley remake of Bedazzled before switching off in despair, so I don't know if there's an equivalent of the Ready-Steady-Go-esque scene in the original 1967 version, where Peter Cook, Playing George Spiggott (the Devil Incarnate) effertlessly outcools "cuddly" Dudley Moore, with this eponymous song. The song features a fauning backing chorus ("You drive me wild") and a contrary, indifferent lead vocal ("you fill me with inertia").

“Don't you ever leave off?”

Pete's deadpan vocal is priceless, But we must give Dudley the credit for the writing this track (and indeed the rest music for the film), a fine soaring, moody bit of menacing jazzy pop. The only mainstream pop music anything like this at the time was Brian Auger's Trinity, or maybe Arthur Brown, but really, forget about these comparisons: Drimble Wedge & The Vegetations stand alone. The magic words: “Julie Andrews!”

Listen:

Download Drimble Wedge & the Vegetations – Bedazzled MP3 (rapidshare)

Or watch the song being performed in the film on YouTube.

Les Bel-Air – Cupidon

Leapy Lee’s Little Arrows is a folk song in the vocal tradition as far as I’m concerned. That's because I learned it by repeatedly hearing it sung by a friend (Hi Irene!) years before I eventually heard his recorded version. Most people who know the song wince when they hear it mentioned: people who don't know it wait until they hear it before they start wincing. Maybe the sung-by-a-friend filter helped me get to like the song before the wince factor kicked in.

Here’s another filter: a foreign Language version, by Les Bel-Air, from Quebec. Who They? My translation skills are worse than Google's, but they seem to have operated in Canada from 1965 to 1969, doing original material and covers on English language pop hits, moving from mainstream pop towards country. There's also some sort of Johnny Halliday connection, (supporting? backing?) but my French vocabulary fails me.

Apart from the song itself, the most compelling thing about this recording is singer Eddy Roy's performance. Now that's what I call gusto.

Listen:

Download Les Bel-Air – Cupidon MP3 (rapidshare)

Duane Eddy & Lee Hazlewood – The Girl on Death Row

I've known for a long time that the late Lee Hazlewood produced Duane Eddy's great twangy guitar classics of the late fifties and early sixties. But I didn't know Lee actually sang on one of them. Here it is: The Girl on Death Row, a song with a morbid theme that suits the mood of Duane’s twang and Lee’s echo chamber.

I couldn't find a picture of the two of them together anywhere: if anyone out there has one, I'd love a copy.

Listen:

Download Duane Eddy & Lee Hazlewood – The Girl on Death Row MP3 (rapidshare)

Or watch Duane talking about Lee on YouTube here.

The Springfields - Island of Dreams

The Springfields were the epitome of the clean-cut, button-down, deodourised stuff that stood for folk music in the entertainment world, before the authenticists and the pinkos came in. Christopher Guest's 2003 film A Mighty Wind manages to show how deeply awful most of it was. Like proper showbiz types, siblings Tom & Mary O’Brien had stages names: Tom & Dusty Springfield. Of course, their tidy non-threatening music has been entirely eclipsed by Dusty's outstanding critically and commercially successful solo career.

And yet, I've never been a big fan of Dusty Springfield’s voice. I know, I know, I'm in a tiny minority here, but I do think her voice suits harmony singing much better than solo. I’ll avoid the quagmire of the sibling singers genes-versus-nurture debate here: I just find the voices on this example, Island of Dreams, more moving and sublime than any Dusty Solo stuff I've heard. Yes, I can appreciate her skill, on, say, Son of A Preacher Man or The Look of Love, but my appreciation is intellectual: Island of Dreams, like all great music, transports and transforms me. 

Listen:

Download The Springfields - Island of Dreams MP3 (rapidshare)

Or watch them perform it on YouTube here.

The Karl Denver Trio - Wimoweh

My pal Graham had a Vinyl Party last week (no snickering in the back there; vinyl records, not fetish gear). I brought along my Karl Denver LP and, though it wasn't a competition, Wimoweh was the hit of the evening. In my biased opinion anyway.

Words fail me when I try to describe Karl’s vocal technique: yodelling is part of it, but a tiny part. But you can tell he's from Springburn. 

Of course this is only a tiny moment in the songs winding, complicated life story, going from Solomon Linda’s Mbube in 1939 through Pete Seeger, The Tokens’ The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Tight Fit (spoonerism alert), to Disney’s Lion King movie. See here for the full, extraordinary story.

Annette Funicello - California Sun

I always found sixties beach movies pretty dull: though I love Buster Keaton, his appearances in them were pretty much the nadir of his career, I would say. So I would only really watch them in fast-forward mode, looking for the rare appearances of minor surf and garage bands. That's why I guess I entirely missed this song, from Pajama Party. I always associated the song with the Ramones, although I vaguely knew that it was a cover.

Update: I really should do my research before I post: turns out first hit version of California Sun was by The Rivieras, from South Bend, Indiana, and the original recording was by a guy called (showbiz Alliteration Alert) Joe Jones. Here's an article on the history of this song in, of all places, the Jewish World Review.

Listen:

Download: Annette Funicello - California Sun MP3 (rapidshare)