Digging through my audio files, looking for material I haven’t featured here before, I found these – tracks I snapped up in 2009 from one of the most peculiar albums I had ever encountered and promptly forgot about. Until now, that is.
Issued in 1971, Encounter: Once You Understand is a peculiar moral fable, a mix of hippy, happy-clappy Christian youth camp songs and poorly-recorded, poorly acted-out vignettes featuring parents of teens wringing their hands over their kids’ drug use. Credited to ‘Think’, the album was written and produced by Lou Stallman and Bob Susser. Bob Susser (born Robert Howard Susser, July 18, 1942) is an award winning songwriter, producer and performer, best known for children's music, and has sold over 5 million children's albums. Writer and arranger Stallman’s credits stretch back to the early 1950s (he co-wrote the 1954 single I Was Meant For You by The Four Knights) and has had songs recorded by Dion, Perry Como, Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, the 4 Seasons and dozens of others.
The year after the album appeared the opening track was covered by a Toronto-based act called The Leonard Family, was issued in the US as a single and charted – leading Beacon records in the UK to license it for release too. ‘Now and again a record like this comes along’, the Beacon press release reads . ‘There was Deck of Cards and The Deal to name but two. Both registered.’ Interesting that they should choose to compare this rubbish to two of the worst records ever released!
The Leonard Family cover is pretty much identical, although - for me at least - the original is a little more histrionic and crazed. The opening track has been sampled by a number of rap and hip-hop acts, including Biz Markie and De La Soul.
Here are a brace of tracks from Encounter: Once You Understand, the opening track and the wonderfully loopy Gather, plus both sides of the Leonard Family 45, Once You Understand and It Won’t Happen Again. If you can bear it, the whole album is available at WFMU.
Enjoy!
Apologies, but Divshare is down yet again! I'll update these links as soon as possible.
Sadly, at the ripe old age of 93, the TV legend Patrick Macnee - best known as John Steed in the long-running drama the Avengers - passed away yesterday.
Daniel Patrick Macnee (6 February 1922 – 25 June 2015) was born in London. Descended from the Earls of Huntingdon, his father trained race horses and his mother was a lesbian, whose partner was referred to by Macnee as "Uncle Evelyn". Educated at Eton, where he met the future Goon Show star Michael Bentine, he was one of the honour guard for King George V during the late monarch’s lying in state at St George's Chapel in 1936. Legend has it that he was expelled from Eton for selling pornography and being a bookmaker for his fellow students.
He began acting while at school, appearing in Henry V at the age of 11, with the later Sir Christopher Lee as the Dauphin. Macnee joined the Royal Navy during WWII, becoming a navigator on torpedo boats in the English Channel and North Sea and, after the war ended, he returned to acting, gaining valuable experience onstage in London’s West End before accepting some minor film roles, including that of Young Marley in Alastair Sim’s classic version of A Christmas Carol. But when the call came from David Greene, a director friend at CBC in Toronto, he left England within 48 hours and spent much of his adult life in Canada and the United States. Whilst in America Macnee appeared in supporting roles in a number of films, notably Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), in Gene Kelly’s Les Girls (1957), with Anthony Quayle in the war film The Battle of the River Plate (1956) as well as playing dozens of small parts in American and Canadian television and theatre.
When working in London on the documentary series The Valiant Years (based on the World War II memoirs of Winston Churchill), Macnee was offered a part originally known as Jonathan Steed in a new TV series called The Avengers. Originally conceived as a vehicle for Ian Hendry, who played the lead role of Dr. David Keel, Macnee was to play his assistant, but moved into the lead role after Hendry's departure at the end of the first season.
Macnee's other significant roles include Sir Godfrey Tibbett in the James Bond film A View to a Kill, This Is Spinal Tap and on TV he appeared in Alias Smith and Jones, Hart to Hart, Columbo, Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, Battlestar Galactica, The Love Boat and The Twilight Zone. He made his Broadway debut in Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth in 1972, and has the distinction of playing both Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson – the latter with his old friend Christopher Lee.
Back in 1964 he did something quite extraordinary. At the height of his fame he recorded a brace of duets with co-star Honor Blackman – and it’s these recordings we celebrate today.
Originally issued on Decca in the UK (and on London in the US the following year) and reissued twice – in 1983 (on Cherry Red) and in 1990 on Deram (when it reached the UK Top Five), Kinky Boots is a mad, bad, camp classic – a truly great record and one of my all-time favourites. I hadn’t heard it until the Cherry Red reissue, but fell in love with it then and there and, more than 30 years on, still absolutely adore it. Same goes for the B-side, the excruciating Let’s Keep It Friendly, a stilly song and a silly performance – but utterly beguiling.
At the same time as this 45 was issued Blackman also released her only album, Everything I've Got, although neither side of the single was originally included (the A-side was included on some later reissues). Everything I've Got is a not-terribly-good album on which Pussy Galore attempts a handful of torch songs, a few lounge standards and a cover of the Lennon-McCartney song World Without Love. The album was reissued by Cherry Red in 1983.
Belgian record executive, producer and songwriter Marcel Stellman has worked with hundreds of acts over the years, including repeat WWR offender Jess Conrad, and famously owns the rights to the TV show Countdown. Musical Director Mike Leander (Michael George Farr, 1941 –1996), began his career at Decca in 1963, working with people including David McWilliams, Gary Glitter (he co-wrote many of Glitter’s major hits), the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, Joe Cocker, Billy Fury, Marc Bolan, the Small Faces, Van Morrison, Alan Price, Peter Frampton, Shirley Bassey, Lulu, Roy Orbison, Ben E. King and the Drifters, Gene Pitney and the Beatles, scoring the arrangement for She’s Leaving Home.
Here are both sides of this fabulous 45, plus a track from Honor's album, Men Will Deceive You.
Although hardly known here in the UK, in the US Fabio Lanzoni – known mononymously (a la Cher, Madonna, et al) as Fabio - is, or rather was, a sensation. The Italian model became a huge media star, thanks to his appearance on the covers of countless (some estimate over 400) cheap romance novels and guest roles in TV and film comedies - including Roseanne, Death Becomes Her, Dude Where’s My Car and Zoolander.
Everything about Fabio is larger than life: he owns 222 motorcycles, according to a 2012 interview and, in 1999, when he rode Apollo's Chariot, a roller coaster at Busch Gardens, a goose collided with his face, leaving him covered in blood. The goose was killed and Fabio received a one-inch cut on his nose. No one else on the roller coaster was hurt. He soon had his own fragrance, women’s clothing range and, naturally, for someone so oleaginous, he became the advertising spokesperson for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Fabio and his flowing locks are famous.
A recording contract soon followed. And the world has been asking itself ‘why?’ ever since.
Released in 1993 Fabio After Dark – thankfully – only features the open-shirted one ‘singing’ on one song, a cover of the Colonel Abrams song When Somebody Loves Somebody, which had been a minor US hit in 1992. On the other eight tracks credited to him he simply reads a short, scripted soliloquy over the top of some suitably seductive instrumental music - or sections of the backing track to When Somebody Loves Somebody. Unfortunately his heavily-accented insights into romance, surprises, films and humour only add up to fifteen minutes or so, so the rest of the album is padded out with ‘romantic’ music from Billy Ocean, Barry White, the Stylistics and Dionne Warwick. Luckily the planned follow-up, Fabio Makes Breakfast, Then Promises to Call You But Never Does remains unreleased to this day.
The CD booklet is something else – a softcore wet dream if there ever was one. Here’s Fabio without his shirt on, draped over the bonnet of a Rolls Royce. Now here’s Fabio lounging on satin sheets after his woman has left (presumably to return to her idiot husband). Now here’s Fabio in his skimpy Speedo, fresh from the pool in his luxury Hollywood home, and here we have Fabio looking sultry in a sauna, swathed in terry towelling.
Ugh. Give me Peter Wyngarde any day of the week. Now there’s a man who knows how to seduce a woman!
Her's a brace of cuts from Fabio After Dark - the opening track About Romance and When Somebody Loves Somebody. Enjoy!
Out now - and available from Amazon in the US - is the World's Worst Records CD, an exclusive compilation which features many of the songs discussed in the two World's Worst Records books.
The CD includes rare - and otherwise unavailable - tracks from such bad music legends as Mrs Miller, Leona Anderson, Rodd Keith and 'Little Marcy' Tigner, plus song poem favourites Ralph Lowe, Dick Kent, Bob Storm and many, many more. 23 tracks - more that one whole hour of utterly appalling music.
Tracks:
Florence Foster Jenkins - Adele's Laughing Song/Mrs Miller - Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me/Ralph Lowe – I’m The Cat/Dick Kent - Jenny Beloved/Mme St. Onge - Prends Moi/Larry London - Marniella/The Planets - Moon Crazy/Ken “Nevada” Maines - Phase “1-2-3”/Elmer S Galloway - Your Voice is Like A Song/W L Horning - Rockin and Rollin/Reco - Jolly Jolly Buddy Buddy/Sam Sacks - Yodel Blues/The Romany Sisters - The Space Ship Blues/Mister “G” - Sweet Angelina/Leona Anderson - The Mama Doll Song/Marcy Tigner - Shake Me, I Rattle/Baby Lu-Lu - Jesus Loves Me/Rodd Keith - Pretty Boquet/Michelle Cody - Merry Christmas, Elvis/Ellen Marty - Bobby Died Today/Bob Storm - Bobby/Jack and Mary Kimmel - An Ode To Our Lady/Bert Lowry (with Rod Rogers) - Portland Rose Song
All tracks have been carefully remastered from the original vinyl pressings, with pops, clicks and other surface noise removed to present these tracks in the best possible quality. They have never sounded so good.
Unfortunately the disc is not currently available outside of the US (although you can. of course, order from Amazon.com from anywhere in the world), but I hope to make it available in Europe soon. If you can't wait, why not go grab a copy now?
Also available is a new (rather short) book on the life and career of Florence Foster Jenkins. More a booklet than a book - weighing in at a huge 50 pages! - you can get this in the US and the UK. Florence Foster Jenkins: the Diva Of Din may be brief, but it's very cheap: only £3.99/$6.99!
If you've already read the first book you'll know most of this stuff already, but with a movie based on her life (starring Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant and Simon Helberg) on the way, what better time could there be to learn more about this extraordinary woman?
The world will probably never see another group quite like the Del Rubio Triplets, three swinging ladies who debuted their musical act in the 1950s but who rose to infamy in the 1980s due to their camp style, fun interpretations of standards and current chart songs – and an unforgettable appearance on the hit TV show The Golden Girls.
Edith, Elena and Mildred Boyd were born in August 1921 (their great-aunt was Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson) and grew up in the Panama Canal Zone and in Washington, D.C. Daddy was a lawyer and mother a socialite: "Even though we didn't have any talent," Millie told People magazine in 1988, "we knew we wanted to be in show business."Their father bought them all guitars and financed a move to Hollywood in the mid 1950s. There they changed their name to Del Rubio because, as Millie told People: "Rubio is Spanish for blond," and they were soon were working clubs in Asia, Australia and Europe and appearing on television with Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis amongst others.
The touring left little time for love. "If you really want to get married, take a cruise," Elena once explained. "We never did. We didn't want to break up our act." Eadie agreed: "We're not interested in security. We're artists. We're living on the edge."
When their mother suffered a stroke in 1965, the sisters came home and put their careers on hold. Yet in the mid 80s they were rediscovered by songwriter Allee Willis (who wrote the theme from Friends, as well as hits for Earth Wind and Fire, the Pet Shop Boys and many others). She got them noticed and helped gain them their first recording contract. An album - Three Gals, Three Guitars - soon followed. And it’s a blast!
The Del Rubio’s new-found fame led to a slew of nightclub and theatre bookings and a handful of new TV appearances: Married... with Children, The Golden Girls, Hangin' With Mr. Cooper, the short-lived New Monkees, Ellen and Pee-Wee's Playhouse among them. They also appeared in the film Americathon and even featured in an ad for McDonald's. They usually appeared in short skirts, hot pants or dresses cut to the waist, showing off their shapely legs. Don’t forget: these women were all past retirement age when fame came a-knocking a second time.
The three continued to perform – often in old folks homes ("men at the retirement homes think we're in our 30s," Elena once said) - until Eadie was diagnosed with cancer in 1996; she died that year in Torrance, California. Elena and Milly would never perform again, living together until Elena died – also from cancer - in 2001. Milly joined her sisters in 2011. The triplets are interred in a family plot at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California next to their father.
These tracks -Walk Like an Egyptian and These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ - come from the album Three Gals, Three Guitars.
Warning: today’s pile of sentimental goo may leave you reaching for the nearest insulin pen. For here is Freddie Garrity, the former leader of the 60s hit makers Freddie and the Dreamers, and the sugary, syrupy mess that is I Understand (Just How You Feel).
Written by William ‘Pat’ Best (not the former Beatles drummer Pete Best, as I had hoped when I first picked up the disc), I Understand (confusingly credited throughout its 60-plus year history with or without its subtitle)was originally recorded by Best’s group The Four Tunes in 1954 and had been a sizeable hit in the US.
Garrity's band Freddie and the Dreamers had already released a version of I Understand– a reasonably faithful reinterpretation of the Four Tunes original, with more than a nod to current chart topper You’ll Never Walk Alone - as a single (it was also the title of their second LP) in 1964. However when Freddie revisited the song almost a decade later while trying to launch a solo career on Jonathan King’s UK record label, he (or possibly King, who produced the track) decided to emulate the G Clefs’ 1961 cover of the song instead, which tacked on Auld Lang Syne(and forget to credit Robert Burns as co-author in the process) creating this awful Millennium Prayer-esque abortion.
Freddie even copies the spoken word verse which first surfaced in the G Clefs' version, adding another layer of sickliness to this already over-egged pudding of a production. Happily, this affectation did not appear on the Four Tunes vastly superior original. Back in 1965 Herman’s Hermits also chose to cover the G Clefs’ version, pulling it off with a tad more style and finesse than Freddie manages here.
Freddie and the Dreamers had a number of hit records between 1963 and 1965 in both the UK and the US, the biggest being I’m Telling You Now and You Were Made For Me. Often lumped in with the Mersey Sound (Freddie was actually a former milkman from Manchester), their stage act was enlivened by the comic antics of the diminutive, bespectacled Garrity, who would bounce around the stage with arms and legs flaying – the band even tried to foist Garrity’s ‘dance’ on to the world with the annoying Do The Freddy (covered brilliantly by Mme St Onge). Favourites of kids TV shows, and stars of several mediocre UK pop films of the 60s, Garrity fronted various line-ups of The Dreamers until 2000. That year he was told that, due to suffering from pulmonary hypertension, it was not advisable for him to continue working, and he officially retired in February 2001. He died in Bangor, North Wales (while enjoying a holiday with his family), in May 2006.
Here are both sides of Freddie’s 1973 45, I Understand and its B-side, the inoffensive but dated Garrity-written pop song I Know, You Know, We Know.
Enjoy!
Due to continued problems - and no sign of any resolution - with Divshare I'm trying a new, free, filesharing site, Pleer.com. To download the tracks simply click on the Pleer logo, which will take you to the download page. Click on the download logo on the track you want and (hopefully) away you go. Please let me know if this doesn't work - seems fine in Chrome but I guess other browsers could have problems.
Today’s brace of badness comes from one of those records that is always turning up in lists of terrible LP sleeves but very few people have actually bothered to listen to, Sour Cream and Other Delights by The Frivolous Five. I briefly visited their career way back in 2007, but I knew next to nothing about them then. It’s about time to flesh out their story somewhat.
The cover, a spoof of Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights hides a terrible secret: hidden inside are 12 tracks or dreadful, discordant mariachi band music – many of them covers of Alpert’s own hits. Alpert's sleeve was also spoofed by comedian Pat Cooper for his album Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights in 1967.
Issued in 1966 – the same year that Mrs Miller came to the world’s attention – there can be no doubt that Sour Cream and Other Delights was put out to capitalise on America’s sudden interest in all things off-key. Was it meant to be a comedy record? Of course it was. However, were the members of the Frivolous Five in on the joke or were they – just like Mrs Miller – taken for a ride by the A&R people at RCA? It seems that, unlike the hapless Elva Miller, these ladies knew exactly what they were doing.
Mary Sawyer and Jane Sager – the two women who formed the Frivolous Five – were serious musicians and had been friends since the 1940s, the pair playing together in all-girl orchestras for a number of years and even entertaining the troops at USO shows. Jane Sager had been a soloist with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra and, amazingly, had taught trumpet to both Chet Baker and Herb Alpert. Other members of the Five included Naomi "Pee Wee" Preble (trombone), drummer Jean Lutey and keyboard player Rose Parenti. Sager and Preble had previously played together in Ina Ray Hutton’s band: Rose Parenti went on to become an actress, and is probably best remembered for playing Sister Alma in both Sister Actmovies. Preble also moved into acting, and appeared in several US TV series in the 70s and 80s.
The Frivolous Five must have been having a high old time, and they were soon playing to enthusiastic audiences across the States and made several TV appearances before disbanding sometime around 1968. Sour Cream and Other Delights, their only album, was engineered by Bob Simpson - who also worked with jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Sonny Stitt as well as pop acts including Perry Como and Harry Belafonte - and was arranged by Bob Halley, who would soon go to work with Bobby Darin. Producer Paul Robinson would later work with composer Hugo Montenegro and produce a series of zodiac-related easy listening albums under the 'Astromusical House'banner.
Anyway, have a listen to a couple of tracks from this wonderfully bonkers record. First up is Tijuana Taxi, andwhat starts as a pretty faithful re-reading of the Herb Alpert hit all starts to go wrong about 35 seconds in, when the first blatantly flat notes assault your ears. From then on in it’s an audio abortion, with bum notes flying in all directions from the horn players and their piano and vibraphone accompaniment. The ‘band’ follow Alpert’s arrangement of the classic A Taste of Honey to the letter: unfortunately it still sounds diabolical.
Born in August 1939 in Fairfield, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, Cleveland Josephus Eaton II is an American jazz double bassist. A genuine prodigy, he was playing piano at the age of five, saxophone by the time he was eight and trumpet two years later. When he reached 15 he was introduced him to the tuba and string bass.
Best known for his work with the Ramsey Lewis Trio and the 17 years he spent with the Count Basie Orchestra, Cleveland Eaton has played with both jazz and pop artists during his long career: Ike Cole, Minnie Riperton, George Benson, Henry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstein, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and many more big names have benefited from having the man dubbed “the Count’s Bassist” play on their sessions. Eaton has also performed live with Nancy Wilson, Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis, Jr., Julie London, Brook Benton, Lou Rawls, Herbie Hancock, The Platters, The Temptations and The Miracles among others.
In 1974, he began performing and touring with his own group, Cleve Eaton and Co., the following year releasing Plenty Good Eaton, now considered a funk classic. In 2004 his group became known as Cleve Eaton and the Alabama All Stars.
The two tracks on this 45 – Bama Boogie Woogie and The Funky Cello – originally appeared on Eaton’s 1976 album Instant Hip. Pete Waterman (yes, thatPete Waterman) heard the album, sniffed a disco hit and placed the tracks with the short-lived Gull Records here in the UK (home to Judas Priest and Typically Tropical). Issued as a single in 1978, the release was followed by an album, also called Bama Boogie Woogie, which compiled tracks from Instant Hip and Plenty Good Eaton. Waterman cheekily bagged himself a credit (for A&R Co-ordination) for doing little more than posessing a pair of ears.
The ‘lyrics’ to Bama Boogie Woogie (composed by Eaton himself) are
Get yourself together – yeah!
Do it any way you wanna do it
Do it any way you wanna
Do it any way you wanna
Bama Boogie
Bama Boogie Woogie
Do the Bama
The Bama Boogie Woogie
And that’s it (or variations of that) for the song’s entire length. The words to The Funky Celloare even better:
Hey hey hey!
This dance is called the Funky Chell-oh-ho…
Again, that’s the entire lyric. Utter tripe.
His official website states that ‘Eaton’s version of Bama Boogie Woogie became a phenomenal best seller in the United Kingdom’. It didn’t: it entered the UK singles charts at 64, rose the following week to 35 and then started to spiral downwards. Even the addition of a blue vinyl 12” version couldn’t arrest its descent. It’s an awful record. There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with the instrumentation, but the vocals are a classic example of everything that is wrong with disco music: insipid, pointless lyrics that should have been erased from the master tape before the tracks ever saw the light of day. and they're noxious, burrowing away at your brain like an earworm. Try as hard as you will to do otherwise, you'll find yourself suddenly singing 'This dance is called the funky chell-ohh-hoh'at the most inopportune moments.
According to The Birmingham Weekly (May 2009), Eaton was diagnosed with oral cancer. In January 2011 his official website reported that was is cancer free. I hope he continues to enjoy good health, but sincerely wish that the great man never attempts disco again.
If you go visit The Clash’s official website, you’ll discover a homepage littered with images of 45 and LP releases – discs issued both during their career and post mortem. If you click on the ‘albums’ tab at the top of the page you’ll be taken to another page that lists and reviews all of their LP releases.
Well, not exactly all of them. For there’s no mention whatsoever of Cut the Crap, the final album issued under the band’s name, which was released in 1985 – just a few months before the band folded. Cut the Crap has been expunged from the band’s history. And that’s not surprising, because it is unmitigated drivel.
The Clash have always managed to bury elements of their history: did you know, for example, that John Graham Mellor (aka the late Joe Strummer) - feted as a working class hero and all-round punk icon – was the son of a British diplomat? Did you know that although the Mellors were of Jewish descent Joe’s brother joined the British Nazi party the National Front? Of course you didn’t. It’s not really important: what family doesn’t have skeletons in their closets? But it is indicative of the band’s (and their management’s) wishes to distance themselves from less savoury truths.
By the Time Cut The Crapcame out The Clash was reduced to just two original members - Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon. Mick Jones (who wrote most of the band’s music) had been fired by Strummer and manager Bernie Rhodes, and drummer Topper Headon had been ousted from the band at the start of their 1983 tour because of his heroin addiction. Jones’ involvement in the band had been instrumental in their rise, but Strummer and Rhodes were determined to push on without him. The Clash had already replaced Headon with Pete Howard (who would later become a member of Eat) and would add two new guitarists to the line up to replace Jones; Nick Sheppard (of the Cortinas) and Greg ‘Vince’ White. This new five piece headed into the studio for what would be the Clash’s final outing.
Cut the Crap is diabolical. The songs are sluggish and vacant, and Strummer’s attempts at agit-prop politics are an embarrassment. Slathered with synths, football chants, hired-hand musicians and just about everything Rhodes (who ‘produced’ the album under a pseudonym) could lay his hands on including the kitchen sink, it’s a real stinker. Opening track Dictatoris frenetic and dizzying, with horns, synth sounds and a barrage of effects. Used in more skilful hands these additions could have worked: here it’s just an abortion. Rhodes is no Trevor Horn, that’s for sure.
We Are the Clash should have been a call to arms for a newly-invigorated band, but it ends up as a thin, punk-by-numbers mess. Even Sham 69 would have done a better job of this garbage. Apparently the song was written after Jones and Headon threatened to go on tour together as the Real Clash. The less said about Fingerpoppin’, the third track I offer you today, the better. First single This Is England is probably the only redeeming feature (it's the one track that Strummer himself rated): Joe's voice is pretty good, but the kiddie overdubs and 80's synthesiser stabs don't help.
Strummer was a mess. He lost both of his parents in 1984 and was heading into depression. The sessions should have been abandoned: it seems that several tracks on Cut The Crap were unfinished, with Rhodes adding his mark to them in an effort to get the record out. Most of the blame for Cut The Crap has been laid at Rhodes’ door. He gets co-writer credit on every track on the album and even came up with the title for the collection, rejecting the band’s preferred Out of Control without even consulting them.
Mick Jones picked himself up, formed Big Audio Dynamite and enjoyed immediate chart success. Although he and Strummer managed to rekindle their friendship there was no saving The Clash. Strummer decided to break up the band, but Rhodes refused to Let it Be, holding auditions for a new singer and trying to convince the remaining members to keep going. Luckily the rest of the band decide not to be involved and the auditions were abandoned. In hindsight, this album should have been abandoned too. But if it had been, I could not present a handful of tracks from it for you today.
Further evidence – as if it were needed – that TV sop stars should never, ever enter a recording studio (well, not unless your name is Kylie, obviously): ladies and gentlemen, today we present Tom ‘Lofty from EastEnders’ Watt and his 1986 single Subterranean Homesick Blues backed with Guess I Had Too Much To Drink Last Night.
Thomas Erickson "Tom" Watt (born 14 February 1956 in Wanstead, London) is a radio presenter, sports writer and actor who rose to fame playing the role of the gormless and put-upon Lofty Holloway in the long-running BBC soap opera EastEnders. He studied drama at Manchester University where he directed several stage productions – and made a number of friends in the local music scene. One of his first television roles was in the dire ITV comedy series Never the Twainin 1981, but his big break came in 1985 when he was cast as Lofty Holloway, the asthmatic barman of The Queen Vic. He stayed with the show until 1988.
Other acting credits have included roles in the BBC drama South of the Border, the role of Norman in the 1990 ITV film And the Nightingale Sang, Boon (with Michael Elphick, who would later also star in EastEnders), Gerry Anderson’s Space Precinct, the 2002 TV comedy tlc, Doctors and New Tricksas well as roles on the big screen in Patriot Games and Sherlock Holmes. He hasalso appeared in many theatre productions, starring in the one-man show Fever Pitch, based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name.
Since leaving EastEnders he has become better known as a sports journalist, writing regularly for the Guardian and presenting shows about football on Channel 4, Radio 1, Radio 3, Radio 5 Live, BBC London Radio and others. He also hosts Arsenal TV's Monday night Fan’s Forum, has authored two books about football, The End and A Passion for the Game and was the ghost-writer for David Beckham’s autobiography My Side.
So why in God’s name did he – in the midst of his fame as Lofty Holloway – record this abomination? The A-side, a vile electropop retread of the Bob Dylan classic (which, I have to admit, I have played and sung on stage as part of the short-lived three man band Murder Inc.) is just horrible. Due to the fact that the original video features several of Watt’s Manchester mates – including Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Josie Lawrence – it’s often erroneously reported that members of New Order and The Fall appear on the disc. They don’t. The B-side was written by John Scott, of the group Bet Lynch's Legs and the author, broadcaster and lecturer Chris ‘C P’ Lee, who fronted Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias before joining Scott in Bet Lynch's Legs. As far as I can ascertain, Watt, Scott and Lee are the only performers on the disc.
Recorded at Paul "Machiavelli" Roberts’ Drone Studio in Manchester, Subterranean Homesick Blues was released on his own Watt The Duck label (the only record issued by the company), in 1986. The single entered the UK singles chart at number 67 before disappearing completely the following week.
“That was just a good laugh really,” Watt told EastEnders fan site the Walford Gazette. “Most people in soap operas have more money than sense, and I was no exception. I had these mates in Manchester who had a band and I worked them ages ago just messing about doing comedy routines and theatre stuff. They had this idea for a record and this idea that I might like to pay for the studio time. Yeah that went to number sixty-seven with a bullet, that one.
"You can't get one in a music shop; I think they might be up in my mum's attic. It was a good record… New Order (were in) the video. The only time they were ever seen smiling. It was just a good crack, you know what I mean? It wasn't the kind of record that people in soap operas are supposed to put out, a money-making exercise.” Big thanks to WWR reader Stephen Green for suggesting this week's post.
The youngest son of Grace and Robert Wauhob Sr., Ted Wauhob was taught how to play banjo by his father, a guitarist who also served as a minister at the World of Gospel Temple in Sioux City, Iowa.
There were a lot of Wauhobs: Grace and Robert had six sons and a daughter. Sadly their baby girl and one brother, Daniel, died in infancy. With the addition of Ted’s brother Thomas (on drums) and, occasional, their older brother Robert Jr. (who fancied himself as a vocalist), the Wauhobs began performing primitive, almost Shaggs-like gospel music at the World of Gospel Temple: it’s still there, on South Irene Street.
Ted’s big dream was to make the Wauhob's music available to the world. So, in the early 1980s the group - Ted, Thomas, momma Grace (also a singer) and their father (nicknamed ‘Pop’) – started rehearsals in the basement recording studio of local music store Flood Music.
"At a time when everybody was playing big hair music, the Wauhobs were playing music that would have even been out of step 50 years before, yet alone in the 1980s,"Tom Kingsbury, longtime owner of Flood Music, told Earl Horlyk of the Sioux City Journal in 2012.
"They were just dripping in kindness," he recalled. In no time at all the Wauhob Family recorded enough material for four self-produced albums of gospel standards, although only one appears to have seen the light of day. In 1984 the family issued Country Style Revival; Bob Darden, the gospel music editor for Billboard magazine, reviewed the album for the satirical Christian magazine Wittenburg Door.Here’s that review in full:
‘Once in a generation, an artist or band comes along that totally disrupts the fabric of the popular music universe: a band confident enough, gutsy enough to shatter preconceptions, artificial restraints and arbitrary rules. Such a group is, thus, able to extend harmonic boundaries for all time. Beethoven was such an artist; Stockhausen was another; Coltrane and Charlie Parker two more.
In the contemporary Christian music constellation, let me add one more such star, the Wauhob family of Sioux City, Iowa (apparently an undiscovered hotbed of avant garde music and free-form jazz). What makes the Wauhobs so amazing - so revolutionary - is that they work in a previously unmined context for serious jazz explorations: Southern Gospel music. Using, as a starting point, a startling array of old-fashioned, almost over-familiar Gospel tunes, the Wauhobs turn the melodies inside out, distort the tempos, and sometimes abandon the melody line altogether. This is adventuresome, cutting edge stuff: discordant, abrasive, and absolutely brilliant in application.
The heart of the band is vocalist/banjo player Ted Wauhob. Ted fiercely makes every song his own, reducing even the most difficult melody line to a monotone, setting up a hypnotic drone not unlike a Hindu mantra. Ted slurs the words and sometimes, as is the case on Put Your Hand In The Hand,improvises the lyrics altogether - thereby freeing himself from the tyranny of conventional rhyme, meter, and iambic pentameter.
Ted is a master of the rare, one-chord banjo, methodically strumming the instrument at the same tempo, generally on the same chord, during every song. It's an instinctive feat of audacious minimalism, recalling the droning electronic pulses of Robert Wilson, John Cage and Brian Eno. Pay particular attention to the inspired modal improvisations on Put Your Hand In The Hand.
The solos for the Wauhobs are, generally, provided by the patriarch of this awesome musical aggregation - Robert Wauhob, Sr. The elder Wauhob plays a variety of electric guitars in a bewildering array of obscure tunings and keys - sometimes on the same song. Robert listens intently to music he hears only in his head and, generally, ranges freely across the musical spectrum with every tune. His thick, oblique chords are closer to tape loops than recognizable progressions; he uses them for emphasis against the lighter banjo chords of son Ted. On something like One More River, he fights a snarling one-man duel with the rest of the band. This is dangerous stuff. Be sure to listen for the wickedly inventive chords on their anthemic version of Andre Crouch's Through It All.
The band is centered around the expressive drumming of Thomas Wauhob, a wildly original percussionist in the mode of an Elvin Jones, a Billy Cobham or a John Candy. Thomas thumps along at a deceptively slow beat, alternating between the snare drum and the floor tom-tom until you think he's lost the beat altogether. Then, suddenly, in a burst of spastic, unchanneled energy he forges ahead, catches the beat, and makes up for lost time by double-timing the tempo. All of this in a space of a single bar, no less. Incredible! Be sure and listen to his urgent stop and start rhythms on One More River, as he uses the flashy ploy of dropping a drumstick and fearlessly starting over (seemingly oblivious to the beat).
That brings us to the soul of the Wauhob family, mother Grace Wauhob. Mrs. Wauhob's influences are obvious throughout Country Style Revival. Here's a snatch of Yoko Ono and other Primal Scream therapists; there's a snippet from the Bee Gee School of Heavenly Castrati. She launches her high-pitched, harmony vocals into the stratosphere on many cho-ruses, setting up an unearthly keening that owes much to the ritual Wailing Wall tradition of certain Jewish widows. Her tour-de-force and, indeed, the entire album's highlight, is a boldly expressive version of Build My Mansion Next Door To Jesus, wherein the entire band tears into a magnificent array of varying tempos, keys, pitches and chord changes - soloing all at the same time. It's a powerful cathartic moment, unlike anything in recent memory from Christian music.
The Wauhob Family's Country Style Revial. It's music you've never heard before - nor are you likely to hear again.’
Darden originally thought that Country Style Revial was a joke. "I assumed it was someone's idea of being ironic," he said. "Then I came to realise no, this was a real family who may have been naively confident in their abilities but were true believers in their music. As a gospel music critic, I'd receive dozens of recording that I didn't want to listen to once. But with the Wauhobs, I actually wanted to listen to them over and over again."
The Wauhobs embarked on a concert tour which included bookings at Disneyland, but success proved short-lived and the family returned home to Sioux City. "The Wauhob Family didn't record music to become stars," Kingsbury told Earl Horlyk. "They recorded to share their faith and preserve their music."
Robert Wauhob Sr. died in 1996 and Grace joined him on December 29, 1998 after a long illness. The brothers continued to perform music sporadically, with Ted juggling his stage career with his day job: he spent 44 years working as a hospital dishwasher, retiring in 2012.
Here are a couple of tracks from the brilliant Country Style Revival: He Looked Beyond My Fault, and The Baptism of Jesse Taylor. If you like this, the whole album is available at Mr Weird and Wacky
In 1920 one of the most iconic masterpieces in cinema history, Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, shook filmgoers worldwide. This expressionist, minimalist horror film introduced the world to Conrad Veidt, playing the terrifying Cesare a somnambulist that can seemingly predict the future, and his ‘keeper’, the awful Doctor Caligari… and changed the direction of movies forever.
Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was born in Tieckstrasse, Berlin in January 1893 (many biographies incorrectly state that he was born in Potsdam). he was a poor student, leaving school in 1912 without his diploma, yet within a year he was appearing on stage - in Shaw's The Doctor at the prestigious Deutsches Theatre. In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, he was conscripted into the German Army and sent to the Eastern Front as a non-commissioned officer, where he took part in the Battle of Warsaw. Contracting jaundice and pneumonia, Veidt was evacuated to a hospital; while recuperating, the army allowed him to join another thetaer troupe, this time entertaining the troops at the front.
Deemed unfit for service, he was given a full discharge in January 1917 and returned to Berlin to pursue his acting career. Although he rejoined the Deutsches Theatre he soon moved in to movies, attracted by the larger salaries paid to film actors. Signing first with Deutsch Bioscop, and later moving to the more famous Universum Film Ag (or Ufa), he would go on to appear in more than 100 films, including The Hands of Orlac (1924) and The Man Who Laughs (1928), based on Victor Hugo's novel in which the son of a lord is punished for his father's disrespect to the king by having his face carved into a permanent grin (providing the inspiration for The Joker. Veidt also appeared in the pioneering gay rights film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919) which was a huge influence on the Dirk Bogarde film Victim.
He had a leading role in Germany's first talking picture, Das Land ohne Frauen (Land Without Women, 1929), but an early attempt to break Hollywood failed due to his thick, almost impenetrable accent. Then, in 1932 he starred in F.P 1 Does Not Answer, a bizarre science fiction epic about a future trans-Atlantic air service where planes land and refuel on a series of mid-ocean Floating Platforms. Like many talking pictures of the time, multi-lingual versions of F.P 1 were made (several Laurel and Hardy films were made in Spanish, French and German). The German version starred Hans Albers, the French version Charles Boyer and the British starred Veidt - all of whom were compelled to 'sing' a singularly inappropriate ballad about lost love in a lighthouse - When The Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay.
Soon after the Nazi Party took power in Germany Joseph Goebbels purged the film industry of liberals and Jews, and copies of Anders als die Andern were destroyed (it only exists now in fragments). In 1933, a week after Veidt married Illona Prager, a Jew, the couple emigrated to Britain. He improved his English and starred in the title role of the original version of Jew Süss(1934). Fervently opposed the Nazi regime, he donated most of his personal fortune to Britain to assist in the war effort and became a British citizen in 1938. While in England he made three of his best-known films - The Spy in Black (1939), the Powell and Pressburger film Contraband and The Thief of Baghdad (both 1940).
In 1941, he and Ilona moved to Hollywood, principally to assist in the British effort in making films that might help persuade the US to come to Britain's aid against the Nazis. Realising that Hollywood would most likely typecast him in Nazi roles, he had it written in to his contract that if he were to play Nazis then they must always be villains. He starred in a few films, most notably A Woman's Face(1941) with Joan Crawford and Casablanca (1942), but in 1943, at the age of fifty, he died of a massive heart attack while playing golf. 55 years later, in 1998, his ashes were interred at the Golders Green Crematorium in London.
But back to Conrad Veidt’s one stab at musical greatness... for it is his version of When The Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay, originally issued on a 10” 78 in the UK in 1933 (backed with The Airman's Song, not performed by Veidt) I present for you today.
Veidt's song seems to have been cut from the British release of the movie, but was put out on an HMV 78, and subsequently reissued – not once, but twice - in 1980 after it had been unearthed by disc jockey Terry Wogan. Veidt's sinister delivery of Donovan Parson's awkward lyrics is one of the most unsettling things I have ever heard.
Unfortunately I have been unable to track down a recording of The Airman’s Song, but here’s Conrad Veidt in all his glory, plus the two tracks that appeared on the two separate 7” reissues (both confusingly given the same catalogue number): I Liked His Little Black Moustache by Binnie Barnes, and Me And My Dog by Frances Day.
Brian Wilson – 100% certified genius. The man behind some of the most beautiful pop music of all time. He wrote God Only Knows, easily one of the greatest songs of all time. His reputation should be unassailable.
But he also wrote Smart Girls… a song I would have all but forgotten about if I hadn’t been recording a podcast with The Squire recently.
Brian is a troubled soul; his mid-60s meltdown caused the abandonment of the Beach Boys’ Smile project (an approximation of this missing album finally surfaced in 2011 as part of the essential Smile Sessions box set), signalled the end of the Beach Boys as a major chart act and would lead to decades of pain for him and his family, years of substance abuse, and periods of virtual house arrest from his controversial therapist Eugene Landy before he finally re-emerged in 1988 with the rather wonderful Brian Wilson album an its’ hit single Love and Mercy. He’s since toured the world – both solo and with the band he founded – to great acclaim and released several albums of new and re-worked material.
Following the release of Brian Wilson he set to work on a second solo alum, originally to be titled Brian. He has said that the master tapes from the project – later titled Sweet Insanity - were stolen, although the songs were prepared for release (cassette promos exist) and have since appeared on numerous bootlegs. Five of the songs from the sessions were rerecorded and released on his 2004 album Gettin' in Over My Head, and one - The Spirit of Rock and Roll - which featured Bob Dylan on vocals, eventually turned up on the hard-to-find 2006 Beach Boys album Songs from Here & Back. However several of the songs remain officially unreleased to this day including the track I present for you here, Brian’s misjudged attempt at rap, Smart Girls. I’m breaking with tradition slightly by bringing you a recording that hasn’t officially seen the light of day, but I thought you’d enjoy it anyway.
Smart Girls– with a co-writer credit to Landy - was produced by Matt Dike, the co-founder of Delicious Vinyl and part of the production team behind hits by Tone Loc and Young MC, who chose to sample bits of earlier Beach Boys hits and sprinkle them liberally throughout the song. Wilson played the song on the air during an interview on Dr. Demento's show in 1992.
"Sweet Insanitywas never really released,” Wilson said in an interview earlier this year. “You’ve got bootlegs, but it was never released. And I thought some of the stuff was pretty good. It wasn’t the best album I ever wrote. We just didn’t think it was good enough. They were just like demos. We recorded about 10-12 songs, and we decided not to put it because we thought that maybe people wouldn’t like it, so we junked it."
Good choice, Brian. The interviewer, Dave Herrera of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, asked Brian about Smart Girls: “Was that just you fooling around and having a good time?”
“Yeah, we were just having a good time,” Brian answered. “It was fun. We were just kidding. I felt like I was going in the right direction. I thought if I added a little bit more harmony, that people would like (that). Harmony is something that people love.”
Ahh, the early 70s; a more simple time when our pop stars were not paedophiles and when the disc jockeys on the nation’s number one radio station were not scared that the next person to knock on the front door would be a policeman.
Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart – born Edward Mainwaring in 1941 - is a British DJ and television presenter, best known for his years working for BBC Radio 1 between 1967 and 1980 (particularly Junior Choice) and BBC Radio 2 (1980-1983 and 1991-2006) and as one of the many presenters of Top of the Pops and Crackerjack on BBC Television. For many years he was also associated with the children’s TV magazine Look-In.
Although he began his broadcasting career with radio Hong Kong in 1961, he’s most closely associated with the BBC. Ed has had an often tempestuous relationship with them: in 1983, he was ousted – along with other old favourites including Pete Murray – by the controller of Radio 2 Bryan Marriott with the rather vicious remark: ‘I am not prepared to let the network stagnate. It is time to inject new blood into our programming, and there is no room for Ed Stewart.’ Ed was ‘shocked and disappointed’ at the sacking. ‘I don’t think I’m any more old hat than anyone else in the network’, he said. His replacement was Gloria Hunniford… 54 weeks older than him.
He had a rather outré private life, meeting his wife to be - ‘I arrived (at her parents) at 7pm and was greeted at the door by what I can only describe as a 13 year old apparition! She was simply stunning’ - when she was barely a teenager (and starting to date her at that age, according to his own autobiography, even though he was 30 at the time) and continuing to live with her after they divorced and she moved her lover in to their house.
But anyway, back to the music. Today’s cuts come from a prime slice of ham entitled Stewpot’s Pop Party, one of a number of albums released under Ed’s name during the 70s. As he was most closely associated with radio and TV shows aimed at children, most of Ed’s recordings feature him narrating (or attempting to sing) kid’s songs and nursery rhymes – his debut was the 1968 45 I Like My Toys, performed with the Save The Children Fund Choir, a cover version of the Jeff Lynne/Idle Race song.
Stewpot’s Pop Party is a kind of precursor to the awful Mini-Pops: in other words the album mostly consists of children singing pop songs of the day in the hope of appealing to other children and failing miserably. Pulled together as a kind of instant kids party - the album is awash with the background noise of laughing, squealing children; the gatefold cover features recipes and games and there’s even an insert with pre-printed party invitation. The record includes four tracks by TRex and one by the Move alongside several songs performed by ‘The Children’ and Stewart’s own inane narration…which, as you’ll hear, includes several references to well-known child molester Gary Glitter.
It’s a period piece from a more innocent age. And it’s truly rotten.
I’ve been reading about – and listening to a lot of – R.E.M recently; reacquainting myself with one of the finest bands this world has ever seen. It doesn’t really matter if you like them or not, but take my word for it: even if you never got on with their records they were – quite simply – one of the best live acts I’ve ever been fortunate enough to see. I cannot count the number of times I saw that band live, from a pub in London (when they used the pseudonym Bingo Hand Job) to a TV studio in Paris: from a rugby stadium in Wales to the Hammersmith Odeon and a Victorian theatre in Dublin. When R.E.M played live it was a magical, cathartic experience. And I miss them. Although in my humble opinion they should have called it quits a few years before they did, and Around the SunHigh Speed Train aside) is bollocks.
Anyway…to the point.
Issued in 1988 on his own Dog Gone Records label, the five track 12” EP Come On In Here If You Want To may be credited to Vibrating Egg but is actually a vanity project from former R.E.M manager Jefferson Holt.
Holt, who was with the band from its earliest days, was dismissed as manager of the world’s biggest act in 1996 – around the same time that they signed with Warners for what was one of the largest deals in recording history at the time: reportedly $80 million for five albums. Both camps have resolutely refused to talk about why he went – in fact the terms of the financial package means that they cannot legally discuss why he was booted out after 15 years’ service, but according to the Los Angeles Times (June 1996) ‘Holt was asked to leave after members of the group investigated allegations that he sexually harassed a female employee at [their] tiny Athens, Ga., office.
The 42-year-old manager officially left the R.E.M. organization last week after receiving a hefty severance package, sources said. In a phone interview, Holt denied he had ever sexually harassed anyone and said that the decision to part ways with R.E.M. was mutual.
"I've agreed to keep the terms of my agreement with R.E.M. confidential," Holt said. "However, 15 years is a long time, and as time passed, our friendships have changed. I think we found as time passed that we have less and less in common. I've become more interested in other things in life and wanted to spend more time pursuing those interests. I'm happier than I have been in a long time."
Representatives for R.E.M. refused to comment, but released a statement Thursday that said the band and Holt terminated their relationship by mutual agreement. According to the statement, "the reasons for this decision and terms of the termination are private and confidential, and no further discussion of these matters will be made by any of the parties."
Band members were "shocked" when a female employee complained four months ago about Holt's alleged behaviour, one source said. The employee did not file a lawsuit nor register a claim with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, but complained to the band that Holt had harassed her with lewd remarks and demanded sexual favours, sources said.
Band members questioned Holt and then spent about three months investigating the allegations, sources said. In May, the band called a meeting and asked Holt to leave the organization, sources said.’ This same story has been repeated in other media, including the New York Times, but Peter Buck, R.E.M’s guitarist, strongly denied that anyone connected with R.E.M had planted the sexual harassment story. Whatever happened, Holt was quickly erased from R.E.M history. Two songs mention him – Little America and Can’t Get There From Here – however whenever they performed Little America live after his departure they changed the lyrics to avoid referencing him.
Reviewed by Trouser Press in 1988, Ira Robbins had this to say about Come On In Here If You Want To: ‘A 12-inch of five cool covers by an unknown band on an indie label would normally rate little notice, but Georgia's Vibrating Egg has more than just the good sense to dedicate its record to Leonard Cohen and Viv Stanshall. Raoul Duplott, the unsteady vocalist on these amiable renditions of Procol Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale, Roky Erickson's Bermuda, an old spiritual and two of Alice Cooper's finest, is none other than Jefferson Holt, then-manager of R.E.M. and founder of the Dog Gone label, surrounded by a host of pseudonymous players. (Hmm...) Good fun, but Holt had best keep his day job.’
‘Amiable renditions’? A Whiter Shade of Pale is eight and a half minutes of torture, with Holt’s pointless, artless prose followed by Keith Reid’s equally pointless and tortuous lyrics. Bermuda later turned up on the same Roky Ericksontribute album (Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye) that featured R.E.M’s version of I Walked With a Zombie. The two Alice Cooper covers - Be My Lover andUnder My Wheels – even with their rewritten lyrics are plain awful. As far as I am aware, the only member of R.E.M who plays (and adds backing vocals) on the disc is bassist Mike Mills. Holt used the pseudonym Raoul Duplott for the project; Mills appears as William B Carr.
Long out of print, here are all five tracks from Come On In Here If You Want To – the aforementioned A Whiter Shade of Pale, Bermuda, Be My Lover and Under My Wheels, plus Particularly Zeke, a spiritual previously covered by Elvis Presley as Swing Down Sweet Chariot on his gospel album His Hand In Mine.
No Post next week – I’m taking a well-deserved week off – so here’s a bumper bundle of badness to tide you over until I return.
I love 60s French pop music – the freakbeat stylings of Jacques Dutronc, the genius pop of France Gall’s Poupee du Cire and the nutso pairing of Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg for example – but why on earth would the world need a French Screaming Lord Sutch (or Screaming Jay Hawkins for that matter)?
Yet that’s exactly what it got in 1963 when Jean-Pierre Kalfon, better known under his stage name Hector, released a handful of records via Philips France.
Not to be confused with the French actor of the same birth name (that particular Monsieur Kalfon is eight years older than our Hector and would launch his own singing career later) our Jean-Pierre was born in 1946 and was only 15 years’ old when he became Hector, the flamboyant singer of the beat combo Les Mediators (which translates as The Picks). Stealing liberally from both Hawkins and Sutch – he used to emerge on stage from a coffin just as Hawkins (and later Sutch) had done – Hector would appear in white tie, tails and cape (as Sutch often did) accompanied (in a nod to James Brown) by his faithful valet Jerome. He was also known to emulate Sutch’s caveman look from time to time. His incredibly (for the time) long, bushy hair earned him the nickname The Chopin of Twist.
Hector et Les Mediators released one 45 single and two EPs (the preferred medium in France at the time) in 1963, including covers of such rock ‘n roll standards as Peggy Sue, Whole Lotta Shaking Going On and Something Else alongside material written specifically for him, including the diabolically awful Hawkins rip-off Je Vous Déteste (I Hate You). During his wild stage show, when he wasn’t imitating Sutch (who would later be photographed with Hector, holding his famous fake axe to the Frenchman’s neck) he would take off other stars of the day… including the Singing Nun! Like Sutch he was publicity-hungry, even going so far as to try and fry an egg on the flame at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
After a heated disagreement with Philips over the reissue of a brace of his old 50s covers on a then-current EP he left the company, and Les Mediators - Marc Schleck (lead guitar), Serge Mosiniak (bass), Gilbert Krantz (rhythm guitar) and William ‘Atomic Bill’ Roudil (drums) - behind him. Hector continued as a solo act for a couple of years, issuing EPs in 1964 for Ducaret Thompson (via Pathé Marconi) - Alligator/Mon Copain Johny//La Femme De Ma Vie/Hong Kong - and Polydor (Abab L’Arab[a cover of the Ray Stevens/Jimmy Savile novelty hit Ahab the Arab]/Il Faut Seulement Une Petite Fille//Le Gamin Couché [a cover of the Monkees-related US hit The Gamma Goochee]/A La Fin De La Semelle [a dire French language version of Otis Redding’s I've Been Loving You Too Long]).
After recording an (unreleased) cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ The Whammy he left France in 1967 and moved to Canada, where he dabbled in artist management and rubbed shoulders with Tony Roman, the man behind Mme St Onge, before returning to Paris and re-emerging in 1970 as part of the trio Hector, Tom et Jerry with the one-off 45 Un P’tit Beaujolais/La Societie. Tom et Jerry had previously recorded as a duo for RCA.
And that was that. No more releases. He became artistic director at Barclay Records and at Pathé Marconi before becoming an actor, appearing in Gomina (1973) and Marriage (The Wedding) (1975) with Jeane Manson. In 1983 Hector bought a packaging machine manufacturing plant in Seine-et-Marne, which he sold on four years later; the following year Philips issued Je Vous Déteste, a mini-album compilation of the six sides he recorded for the company. In more recent years he has made a living out of touring the French r’n’r revival scene.
Last year (2014) Hector resurfaced with several members of Les Mediators at the unveiling of a plaque to mark the Golf Drouot – a club where many of France’s top performers (including Hector et les Mediators) performed between 1955 and 1981.
Anyway, here’s a handful of Hector’s finest. Enjoy!
The GTOs (not to be confused with the male group who recorded for Parkway and scored a hit with a cover of the Beach Boys’ Girl From New York City) were a six or seven-piece girl ‘group’ consisting of Miss Pamela (Pamela Ann Miller, later to become better known as supergroupie Pamela Des Barres and author of the memoir I'm with the Band), Miss Sparky (Linda Sue Parker who, in 1976, would sing on Zappa’s Zoot Allures album), Miss Christine (Christine Frka, who would appear on the cover of Zappa’s Hot Rats album, was Moon Unit Zappa’s babysitter, helped boyfriend Vince Furnier become Alice Cooper and who died tragically young after overdosing on prescription painkillers), Miss Sandra (Sandra Lynn Rowe, later Sandra Leano, who died of cancer in 1991), Miss Mercy (Judy Peters), Miss Lucy (Lucy Offerall, later Lucy McLaren), and Miss Cynderella (Cynthia Wells, later Cynthia Cale-Binion, at one point married to the Velvet Undrground’s John Cale and who died in 1997). Legend has it that the ladies were given their nicknames by Tiny Tim, who had a penchant for addressing all of the women he met (and the three he wed) as Miss something-or-other.
Although it is usually claimed that their acronym stands for Girls Together Outrageously (and indeed, that’s how it appears on the cover of their one and only album), according to Sid Hochman’s 1972 book Readings in Psychology, (which discusses the girls’ bisexual community and quotes several members of the commune), the GTOs began as ‘a community of seven girls between 18 and 21’ called Girls Together Only, living together in Frank Zappa’s Laurel Canyon log cabin. Miss Lucy (who does not perform on the album but who appeared in Zappa’s movie 200 Motels and sadly died in 1991 of an AIDS-related illness) stated in a filmed interview that Girls Together Only was their correct name.
Originally calling themselves the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company (and, for a short time, adopting the name of the legendarily awful, turn of the century vaudeville act The Cherry Sisters) the girls signed a contract with Zappa, who kept them on a retainer of $35 a week each. The GTOs toured with Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, appearing on stage as dancers and performing covers of songs as perverse as Getting to Know You from The King and I. According to Des Barres they ‘only played a few gigs, maybe four or five’, however, as well as appearing with Zappa and the Mothers they also performed with other Zappa-related acts including Alice Cooper and Wild Man Fisher.
Their only album, the Zappa-produced Permanent Damage, was released in 1969. And what a record it is.
Featuring contributions from Frank Zappa, Nicky Hopkins, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, Lowell George, Russ Titleman, Ry Cooder and Monkee Davy Jones (who co-wrote the album’s closing track I'm In Love With The Ooo-Ooo Man and the Beefheart–inspired The Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes), Permanent Damage is in parts naïve, charming and thoroughly horrible. Songs are mixed in with conversations between the members of the group, their friends, and other ‘stars’ including the infamous Cynthia Plaster Caster and Rodney Bingenheimer, known as the Mayor of the Sunset Strip and one of Davy Jones’ stand-ins on The Monkees.
Some of you will love this, some will hate it. Personally although I can see the charm, I find the voices grating and the humour stilted. I’m not a Zappa fan, although I have a lot of time for many of the projects and acts he was involved with. I appreciate him for his boundary pushing and for challenging censorship, but I’ve always found him a bit too clever for his own good. Does humour belong in music? You be the judge.
It’s telling that Frank famously eschewed drugs (apart from caffeine, nicotine and a moderate amount of alcohol), yet members of the GTO’s – and other musicians involved in Permanent Damage - have freely admitted that they were often out of their heads, and this album screams acid trip. “We only lasted a short time because of the drug use,” Miss Mercy told interviewer Steve Olsen of Juice magazine in 2008. “Frank was very anti-drugs, and because of our drug use, he had to get rid of the GTOs.” Miss Pamela has claimed that Lowell George was fired by Zappa for smoking marijuana (on leaving the Mothers of Invention George formed Little Feat: he died of a heroin overdose in 1979). Zappa himself died of prostate cancer in 1993; he dismissed the idea that it was in any way linked to his smoking. “To me, a cigarette is food,” He observed. “Tobacco is my favourite vegetable.” Frank’s wife, Gail, died earlier this week after a long battle with lung cancer.
Here are three of the songs from Permanent Damage: the album's opener The Eureka Springs Garbage Lady, its closing track I'm In Love With The Ooo-Ooo Man and the ode to Captain Beefheart, The Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes.
Big thanks to WWR reader Graham Clayton for suggesting today’s horror.
Born March 31, 1948 in Melbourne, Vietnam veteran (he served with the 7th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment) Graham Studley Cornes is a former Australian rules footballer, coach, and sports presenter.
Luckily for us, he also fancies himself as a bit of a musician, fronting Cornesy's Allstars, playing guitar and taking on some of the vocal duties. A surprise really, as his vocal prowess – or distinct lack thereof – had already been showcased on his appalling 1977 45 I Gotta Girl, with its glam rock (some might say Status Quo rip-off) pomp,and the equally atrocious B-side Untying the Laces – whichdrops every football-related metaphor and simile in to the lyrics you can imagine in under three minutes.
Cornes played for Glenelg Football Club in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL) between 1967 and 1982. In 317 games for Glenelg he kicked 339 goals. Graham represented South Australia 21 times, including as captain in 1978. He was selected in the All-Australian team in 1979 and 1980, winning the Tassie Medal in 1980 and the Simpson Medal in 1979.
He went on to become coach of the Adelaide Football Club, and played 47 games with them in 1983-1984. After leaving South Adelaide he returned to Glenelg in 1985 as coach, winning premierships in 1985 and 1986 and also taking them to three Grand Finals in 1987, 1988 and 1990. He was the All-Australian coach in 1987 and 1988, and in 1991 was appointed the inaugural coach of the Adelaide Football Club in their first year in the AFL. Cornes is now a football media personality, hosting televised football matches since the 1990s and writing regular sports commentaries News Limited.
Both sides of this turkey were written by Evan Jones, another Vietnam veteran, who was co-author of The Pushbike Song, an international hit for The Mixtures in 1970.He really should have known better.
Two Sides of the Moon,Keith Moon's 1975 solo album, has been described as "the most expensive karaoke album in history". It’s a horrible album made by an inspired drummer who – bizarrely – decided not to play drums (he jumps behind the kit on just three tracks) but to sing instead, even though Keith was not known for his vocal prowess. He had recorded a few lead vocals for The Who, most notably Bucket T (from the Ready Steady WhoEP) and Bellboy from Quadrophenia(he would go on to sing Fiddle About on 1975’s Tommy soundtrack; the original 1969 version was sung by the song’s author, John Entwistle), and had recently appeared on the misfiring Beatles tribute All This And World War II singing When I’m 64, but the man known as Moon The Loon would cheerfully - and honestly - admit that he was completely tone deaf.
Inspired by the fact that all of the other members of the Who had been indulging in solo projects (with distinctly different levels of success), Two Sides of the Moon should have been Keith’s moment to shine. However even bringing in a bunch of his superstar friends - including Spencer Davis, Bobby Keys, Rick Nelson, Harry Nilsson, John Sebastian, Ringo Starr, Joe Walsh and Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan from the Turtles/the Mothers of Invention) failed to raise the LA recording sessions above carnage, and the resulting album is a travesty. The bastard cousin of other mid-70’s studio excesses – Nilsson’s Pussycats, the Lennon/Spector sessions that resulted in Roots/Rock ‘n’ Roll and the bloated, brandy and cocaine-fuelled Goodnight Vienna sessions - Two Sides of the Moon shines as a beacon of the unrestrained generosity of the music industry. Who today would fork out $200,000 (well over $1million today) for such an exercise in vanity?
Preceded by a single, a cover of the Beach Boys’ Don't Worry Baby (re-recorded for the album with Keith singing in a lower register: both versions are horrible), the album consists of cover versions – he revisits the Who's The Kids Are Alright, massacres the Beatles'In My Life" beyond all recognition – and new material provided by his pals, including Ringo (who ‘duets’ with Keith on Together), Harry Nilsson and John Lennon, who provided Move Over Ms L. Lennon would later re-record the track as the B-side to his hit cover of Stand By Me.
One school of though has it that Two Sides of the Moon was supposed to be messy: how can anyone take this seriously? The reversible inner cover for the LP, which shows Keith’s naked bottom doing a ‘moonie’ out of his car window, should have been sign enough that this project was meant to be a joke. Why then did he begin sessions for a follow up, shelved after the appalling sales of Two Sides of the Moon?
Recent reissues have added a slew of bonus cuts, including tracks recorded for the aborted second solo album. Would it have been any better? We’ll never know. Moon died three years after this sole solo project came out.
So, to save you the pain of having to listen to the entire album, here are three wholly representative cuts from Two Sides of the Moon, the aforementioned Don't Worry Baby, In My Life and Together.
You’ll have all heard about L Ron Hubbard, the mediocre pulp sci-fi writer, bigamist, inveterate liar, convicted felon and racist who founded the cult of scientology… a ‘church’ populated by crazies who believe that anyone can attain immortality so long as they have the money.
I don’t need to go in to details here, but unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll be more than aware of the controversies that surround this so-called religion; the numerous court cases, the allegations of human trafficking, of holding people against their will and the exploitation and blackmail of stupid rich people. As Hubbard once noted: “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."
I’m not here to poo-poo their bizarre beliefs, to argue about people being dropped down volcanoes millions of years ago, to talk of Xenu or Thetans, to discuss Hubbard’s battle with mental illness (he was diagnosed with schizophrenia: a recent documentary, Going Clear, produced letters Hubbard wrote begging for help with his illness) or even about why Shelly Miscavige, the wife of cult leader David Miscavige, has not been seen in public for eight years – for all we’re interested in today is the godawful ‘music’ made over the years by L Ron Hubbard (usually referred to as LRH).
For Hubbard was not only a writer of fiction, he also fancied himself a musician, writing, producing and helming several ridiculous musical projects in an effort elicit funds from his faithful followers.
Alongside endless albums of lectures, readings and interpretations of Hubbard’s personal philosophy, there are at least four records that fans of bad music need to be aware of: Space Jazz, Mission Earth, the Road to Freedom and the Joy Of Creating.
Space Jazz, conceived as the soundtrack to the book Battlefield Earth, was released in 1982. There were plans too to turn the book into a movie, with Scientology poster boy John Travolta in the lead as hero Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. However the movie did not appear until 2000, at which point Hubbard was long dead (well, his physical body was, anyway) and Travolta – now far too old to play the hero - was cast as the villain Terl instead. The film was a huge flop. However Space Jazz remains an essential listen.
Overseen by Jazz great Chick Corea, the album features dull piano pieces, snippets of comic-book dialogue and childish sound effects. It uses the then-new digital sampling synthesizer the Fairlight CMI throughout – most notably in the utterly ridiculous Windsplitter– an instrumental track that sounds like it was recorded for a ZX Spectrum game and is peppered throughout with neighing horses.
Mission Earth is an altogether different animal, issued as a solo album by guitar great Edgar Winter in 1986. The words and music were written by Hubbard, with the album produced and arranged by Winter. Sessions began in 1985, but were not completed until after Hubbard’s death in January 1986. Apparently Hubbard left detailed instructions and audio tapes for the musicians and producers to follow when making this album, which Winter has described as "both a return to rock’s primal roots and yet highly experimental". It isn’t: it’s perfectly dreadful. Mission Earth was published by Revenimus Music Publishing, the music publishing division of the Church of Scientology, which also published The Road to Freedomthe same year.
Credited to L. Ron Hubbard & Friends, The Road to Freedom features John Travolta, Chick Corea, Leif Garrett, Frank Stallone, and Karen Black amongst others. According to the Church of Scientology, the album achieved gold record status within four months of release, although to the best of y knowledge it has jet to be awarded anything like a framed disc from the RIAA.
A March 20, 1986 press release put out by the Church of Scientology announced a series of tribute events in honour of LRH’s birthday, and stated, "Crowds applauded the surprise release of an album of popular music composed by Hubbard entitled The Road to Freedom, featuring leading artists John Travolta, Chick Corea, Karen Black, opera star Julia Migenes-Johnson, Leif Garrett, Frank Stallone, and more than two dozen other recording artists and entertainers."According to Wikipedia, The Church of Scientology directed its’ members to order multiple copies of the album to give to associates as a means to introduce people to the concepts of Scientology. The advertising calls this album "the perfect dissemination tool". Jonathan Leggett of The Guardian wrote that "the lyrics are rotten. At one stage Travolta croons: "Reality is me, reality is you. Yeah, yeah, yeah..." Although praised on websites as 'a musical masterpiece' it actually sounds like the kind of jazz noodle that they used to demonstrate CD players in Dixons in the 1980s."Luckily for us, The Road to Freedom features a performance from LRH himself – the preposterous L’envoi, Thank You for Listening.
And so to The Joy of Creating. Subtitled The Golden Era Musicians And Friends Play L Ron Hubbard, this pile of dross features Isaac Hayes, famously ousted from his role as Chef on South Park after refusing to poke fun at Scientology on the programme – although he was happy to take their dollar when producers Matt Stone and Trey Parker extracted the Michael from other belief systems. Other artists include Doug E. Fresh and our old friends Chick Corea and Edgar Winter.
Cobbled together from Hubbard’s writings and released 15 years after his death, The Joy of Creating(according to the CD booklet) “reminds us that a being causes his own feelings, and this truth alone has revitalized many artists and professionals the world over.” What it actually does is reinterpret the same piece of shabby writing six times, slathering LRH’s words with fake smiles and forced bonhomie. It’s nasty, dated, unnecessary nonsense and sounds like a Cosby Show soundtrack. Just awful.
Anyway, here we have a track from each of these four albums: Windsplitter from Space Jazz,Joy City fromMission Earth, L’envoi, Thank You for Listening, from The Road to Freedom and Doug E Fresh’s The Joy of Creating from the album of the same name.
Enjoy!
Thanks to The Squire for inspiring this week's blog post!
