CHART ATTACK!: 2/23/74

The man attackin’ this week’s chart needs no introduction. He’s the Grand Poobah of Popdose, the man who makes it all happen (and gets very little sleep while doing so). Please welcome the Balki to my Cousin Larry, Jeff Giles!

Howdy, people! Are you ready to go chart attackin’, ’70s style?

This week, we’re going way back. Wayyyyyyy back, back when yours truly was still steeping in his mama’s womb. I was about six months along when these songs made up the Top 10, which means I must have heard them pulsating through the amniotic fluid. It sort of explains a lot, actually — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Without further ado, here’s your Billboard countdown for the week of February 23, 1974!

10. Let Me Be There – Olivia Newton-John Amazon
9. You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine) – Ringo Starr Amazon iTunes
8. Rock On – David Essex Amazon iTunes
7. Boogie Down – Eddie Kendricks Amazon iTunes
6. Jungle Boogie – Kool & The Gang Amazon iTunes
5. Love’s Theme – Love Unlimited Orchestra Amazon iTunes
4. Spiders & Snakes – Jim Stafford Amazon iTunes
3. Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do) – Aretha Franklin Amazon iTunes
2. Seasons In The Sun – Terry Jacks Amazon iTunes
1. The Way We Were – Barbara Streisand Amazon iTunes

10. Let Me Be There – Olivia Newton-John

Ah, 1974. When women were women and men were men. Olivia wasn’t messing around with any of that “women’s lib” shit — no sir, all she wanted was to “be there,” and she wasn’t too proud to beg. Be where? Well, she doesn’t ever really come out and say, exactly, although she’s pretty clear about wanting to “be there” during both the morning and evening hours of the day. There’s something about being a “friend” in the lyrics, but c’mon. Everyone knew what she really meant. She’s on all fours on the album cover, for Chrissakes. (Not really. But it seems like she might be, and that’s enough for me.)

As for the music, hey, dig those strings! Producer John Farrar — the former member of the Shadows who would eventually parlay his long-standing association with O. Newt into a cutout-laden solo career — poured the orchestra like Mrs. Butterworth all over the arrangement; its only other truly notable feature is the deep-voiced dude who keeps parroting Olivia in the background. (Said dude was either Mike Sammes or Richard Sterban, depending on where you check. I don’t care enough to find out for sure. Fight amongst yourselves.)

“Let Me Be There” was Olivia’s first American Top 10, and kicked off a decade of basically uninterrupted chart dominance for the hyphenated Aussie starlet. Oldie but goodie, or harbinger of doom? Your call.

9. You’re Sixteen (You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine) – Ringo Starr

How much did people love the Beatles in 1974? How desperate was our nation to reclaim a bit of its lost innocence? This much, and this desperate — we sent a piss-taking cover of a 14-year-old Johnny Burnette single, performed by Ringo fricking Starr, all the way to Number One.

Pervy odes to underage girls are a proud rock & roll tradition, of course, and Ringo wouldn’t have been doing anything new even if he’d bothered to write his own song rather than covering one almost as old as the girl in the lyrics. Still, I’ve always found Ringo’s “You’re Sixteen” particularly icky. Here he is, ogling Carrie Fisher in the video. Doesn’t he look like he just woke up at a bus stop?

I could go into further detail, but I’m sure you feel the same sudden, desperate need to take a shower that I do, so we’ll just move on.

8. Rock On – David Essex

For a song that doesn’t really have much to it, “Rock On” is actually sort of interesting. Listening to David Essex’s version now, it’s hard to believe it was a hit — the tempo is kind of sleepy and hard to pin down, and the arrangement is all over the place, wandering from a thudding drumbeat to the quasi-atonal strings in the middle, with muffled pieces of this and that everywhere you step. It’s really sort of cool, and it makes me hate Michael Damian even more for recording such a jiveass cover in 1989.

7. Boogie Down – Eddie Kendricks

He wasn’t a classic songwriter like Smokey Robinson, but Eddie Kendricks could rock a microphone, and if you give half a shit about R&B or soul, you should get very sad when you think about the way his career swirled down the drain after he left the Temptations.

Before all the bad stuff, though — before he started losing his voice to cigarettes, or let Motown screw him out of his royalties, or spent the ’80s wandering the commercial margins, or lost his life to lung cancer — there was a brief period when Eddie Kendricks seemed like he was getting ready to kick some serious ass as a solo performer. The single that preceded “Boogie Down” was a little number called “Keep On Truckin’,” and it not only went to #1, it’s often credited with helping to invent disco. (I know, I know — this isn’t necessarily a good thing. But give the man his due.)

“Boogie Down” is pretty slight — it’s basically seven minutes of Kendricks telling you to, uh, boogie down — but it does what it’s supposed to, and besides, it’s Eddie Goddamn Kendricks. Don’t make me fight you.

6. Jungle Boogie – Kool & the Gang

From one boogie to another, eh? All right, February 1974. We’ll do it your way.

Unlike “Boogie Down,” you’ve probably heard “Jungle Boogie” about 12 million times, to the point where you’re more liable to associate it with Pulp Fiction or sports highlights — or one of the 12 million songs that have sampled its tasty, tasty groove — than Kool and/or the Gang.

This is understandable. Like the Commodores, Kool & the Gang started off as purveyors of ass-shaking funk, only to find themselves horse-collared by a spotlight-hogging lead singer into recording terrible ballads. Let me tell you, I grew up in the era of “Joanna” and “Cherish,” and even with 20 years between me and those songs, I still find it hard to get my head around the idea that the same people — any of the same people — were involved in “Jungle Boogie.”

Remember “Cherish”?

Yep. Still hate it.

5. Love’s Theme – Love Unlimited Orchestra (download)

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From Wikipedia:

“In the mid 1970s all the way to the early 1980s, ABC Sports used ‘Love’s Theme’ as the opening theme music for its live golf coverage. WPIX used it as the closing music for its then-Action News franchise from 1975 to 1977. It was used as the theme song for the syndicated television series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous early in its run. It was featured on The Weather Channel’s Local On The 8′s segments in 2002 and 2007. It was used as the opening theme to the soap opera Celebridade (2003) in Brazil. The Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep used it throughout the ’70s and way into the ’80s as the opening tune to its popular Sunday morning radio show Relax. The Seven Network in Australia used ‘Love’s Theme’ as the opener for it’s music program Sounds from the mid 1970′s until the show was axed in 1987.”

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Are you there, Popdosers? It’s me, Jason. Jeff is currently passed out on the couch (I think he may be suffering from a case of too much wakichicka), so I’m going to finish up talking about “Love’s Theme.” As you may already know, “Love Unlimited Orchestra” is really just another way of saying “Barry White’s badass sexytime band.” Love Unlimited was, in actuality, a female vocal trio who were under the svengali-esque hand of Mr. White. (Diddy’s got nothing on Barry.) Looking for a bit of filler for their second album, Barry took his 40-piece orchestra and recorded “Love’s Theme.” He is credited as the sole writer, producer, arranger and conductor. The single eventually made it all the way to #1, one of the few orchestral instrumentals to achieve such a feat.

Check out this video of Barry and Love’s Unlimited Orchestra performing “Love’s Theme” (with lyrics sung by Love’s Unlimited) in Mexico City circa 1978. I love the dancers. Also, I can’t speak to Barry’s talent as a conductor, but it sure as hell looks like he’s just waving that baton around aimlessly, and you can tell that none of the musicians are actually looking at him.

Hey! Jeff’s awake! Back to you, Jefito!

4. Spiders & Snakes – Jim Stafford (download)

I’m listening to this song for the first time ever as I write this, and frankly, I’m troubled. This motherfucker had five Top 40 hits in the ’70s? Five? Shit, that’s half as many as Ray Stevens has had in his entire career!

I mean, I understand the American weakness for novelty songs. I have no beef with Weird Al, and hey, if it weren’t for novelty hits, nobody would have ever heard of Loudon Wainwright III. But I’m having a hard time understanding why my parents’ generation thought enough of Jim Stafford to send this all the way to #3. (Or, for that matter, to send something called “Your Bulldog Drinks Champagne” to #24.)

Stafford is still working — performing at the Jim Stafford Theater, natch — in Branson, MO, the place where rhinestones go to die. He’s apparently been voted “Branson’s Best Entertainer,” actually, which reaffirms everything I’ve ever believed about Branson. Be sure to stop by the next time you’re in town.

3. Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do) – Aretha Franklin

Well, this is awkward. We just talked about this song at Chartburn (a.k.a. “Chart Attack!’s lumpy little sister”) last week, and I’m not really sure what else I can add now.

Hmm. Well, let’s just recap all the stuff everyone already knows about the song: It was co-written by Stevie Wonder, but he didn’t release his own version until 1977; it was later covered by Bobby Caldwell, which means it was probably a big hit in Japan; Basia had an AC hit with her version; and Katharine McPhee’s American Idol cover helped kick off the mercifully short-lived phenomenon known as McPheever.

As people repeatedly pointed out during our Chartburn discussion, “Until You Come Back to Me” isn’t high-grade Aretha, but it’s still two scoops of fuck yeah. I believe I’ve mentioned in the past that I’d rather listen to D-grade Ree like “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” than the best of most other artists, so you won’t catch me saying anything negative about this, even if hearing it just makes me want to put on Live at Fillmore West.

I think I’ll do that right now, actually.

2. Seasons In The Sun – Terry Jacks (download)

You know, for a stupid little pop song, “Seasons in the Sun” has a pretty fascinating history. Based on Jacques Brel’s “Le Moribond,” the song was originally recorded by the Kingston Trio in 1963, and covered by several artists after that, including the Beach Boys, who were introduced to the song by…you guessed it…Terry Jacks.

The Beach Boys never released their version, but that didn’t stop Jacks from rewriting portions of the lyrics (according to Wikipedia, he did this to “lighten them up”) and recording his own demo, which he then left lying around his basement for a year. Wikipedia’s version of what happened next sounds a little too perfect to be true, but it’s the only one I have, so here goes:

A newspaper delivery boy heard Jacks playing it and asked if he could bring some friends by to listen to it. Their enthusiasm convinced Jacks to release it on his own label and it soon topped the record charts in the U.S.(where it was released on Bell Records), Canada and the UK and sold over six million copies worldwide.

See? What did I tell you? You can’t make this stuff up. In fact, all I can add is that this single’s B-side, which I have never heard but now feel a strange desire to seek out, is called “Put the Bone In.”

1. The Way We Were – Barbara Streisand

As long as there’s been popular music, people have griped that whatever used to be popular is better than whatever is popular. This is a stupid point of view, but music provokes an emotional response, so it’s to be expected; you’re naturally going to form a deeper emotional bond with the stuff that was on the radio when you were a tot than the stuff your own tots wind up listening to.

Still, the next time you hear someone bitching about Ne-Yo and T-Pain, saying that today’s music sucks blah blah blah, just grab their arm — gently but firmly — look them in the eye, and say “The Way We Were.”

Okay, look, Streisand fans, I know you’re out there, and I know you outnumber me. But honestly, people, I don’t understand the source of this woman’s appeal. Christ Almighty, this shit is schmaltzy and a half. Some folks listen to this song and cry. I want to slap them.

And even if you refuse to concede that Barbra Streisand sucks, and that “The Way We Were” works as an excellent example of the way the pop charts have always pushed lowest-common-denominator pablum to the surface, then here is a list of the three songs that preceded Babs at Number One:

Ringo Starr, “You’re Sixteen”
Dawn featuring Tony Orlando, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Ole Oak Tree”
Maureen McGovern, “The Morning After”

I rest my fucking case. Just wait — ten years from now, people will be getting nostalgic for Creed.

Well, folks, that’s it for me. Be sure to tune in two weeks from now, when someone else attacks some other chart!

Holy shit, that’s me! I gotta go do some writing. Until then, big hand for the Bull to my Judge Harry Stone, Jeff Giles! Thanks, Jeff!