Remember when the Hustle swept through discos everywhere?  People were taking Hustle classes, the nightly news reported on the fad, there were instructional records and books.  Hey, remember when everyone did the bump to, say, “Lady Bump?”  How about in 1977, when everyone was doing the latest dance, the “Crazy Thing,” to Jeff Lynne’s “Doin’ That Crazy Thing?”

No?  Oh, sorry.

Creating a new dance craze was definitely on someone’s mind when Jeff Lynne took a short break from leading the Electric Light Orchestra to release this forgotten single.  “Doin’ That Crazy Thing” (download) was released with the mugshot picture sleeve overseas, but here in the States the 12″ version can with a sleeve complete with step-by-step instructions on how to do the “Crazy Thing,” the new moves that were destined to sweep the nation.  Except, like, they didn’t.  The copy I found was sadly saddled with a generic Jet Records sleeve, damn it.

“Doin’ That Crazy Thing” was a strange detour for Lynne, a downtempo, straight-ahead disco tune slipped out under his own name rather than ELO’s, even though the group would flirt with and nearly fully embrace disco a short two years later.  You don’t hear about the one-off solo single, it’s never been released on CD (to my knowlege) and along with its almost identical B-side, “Goin’ Down To Rio,” (download) it’s been written off in Lynne/ELO history. (more…)

We all know Charo for her ubiquitous variety show and Love Boat appearances throughout the ’70s, but did you know the former María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza Rasten was also an accomplished flamenco guitarist? Of course you did. A young Charo learned guitar from Andres Segovia, considered an icon of modern classical guitar music. After she moved to the States and married Spanish bandleader Xavier Cugat, Charo began forging her “cuchie, cuchie” persona with countless stints on The Tonight Show, The Mike Douglas Show, even the infamous Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

Throughout her years of campy shtick on TV, Charo never stopped recording, both classical-guitar works and more dance-oriented Latin-fusion disco with the Salsoul Orchestra. In fact, she scored three hits on the Hot Dance Club Play chart in the ’70s, starting with “Dance a Little Bit Closer,” which reached #18 in 1978. Later that year “Ole Ole” climbed to #36, while the second single from her Ole Ole album, “Stay With Me” (download), didn’t get quite so far. But “Stay With Me” is an excellent salsa/disco hybrid, with “let’s spend the night together”-type lyrics that were de rigueur in the disco era, and a more restrained vocal than you’d expect from the hyperactive Spaniard. While the track didn’t do much here, it was a big hit overseas, helping Ole Ole sell more than half a million copies worldwide.

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Boy, we’d buy anything in the ’70s, wouldn’t we? Laverne & Shirley, the most successful spin-off from Happy Days, was riding high in 1976, overtaking its parent show to capture the number-one slot in the Nielsen ratings. It was time to cash in.

Lunch boxes, Mego “action figures” (don’t call them “dolls”!), Colorforms sets — you name it, the L&S logo was slapped on it. Then someone had a bright idea: since Laverne and Shirley were often shoehorned into painful musical numbers (remember the annual Shotz Brewery Talent Shows?), why not release an album of Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall singing their favorite ’50s and ’60s hits?

Because they can’t sing, that’s why not!

Logic has rarely stopped anyone from making a cash grab, so 1976 saw the release of Laverne & Shirley Sing, a charitable title at best. While Cindy Williams has a, um, passable singing voice, I think we all know how Penny Marshall handles a tune. Thankfully, her nasally whine was kept to a bare minimum on the album’s single, a remake of the Connie Stevens hit “Sixteen Reasons,” (download) where “Laverne” simply keeps a number count.

What’s amazing is the number of professional musicians who lent their expertise to the project. Melissa Manchester is credited with backing vocals, Kenny Loggins plays some percussion, and Elvis Presley arranger Jimmie Haskill did, well, the arrangements. In fact, Haskill gets name-checked along with Michael “Lenny” McKean in the one nonmusical skit on the album, “More From Our Yearbook,” (download) where the girls recite what fellow students wrote in their high school yearbooks.

Sadly, Laverne & Shirley Sing wasn’t nearly as funny as the first few years of their sitcom. It’s an artifact of a simpler time in the record industry, when novelty records were both a traffic driver and a gateway drug for young consumers into the world of music buying. Strangely enough, Collector’s Choice brought the album to CD for the first time in 2003, and more amazingly, it’s still in print (and on iTunes!).

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So, who worries about the music their kids listen to?

I don’t have any kids myself, but when I was visiting my 13-year-old niece recently, she asked me to get her the new Ting Tings and Office CDs (very hip, that one). At first I didn’t even think about it, until I remembered there were a few naughty words on both and I checked with her mother.

“Oh, she’s heard much worse than that. Go for it,” she told me. I was taken aback for a minute thinking, wait a minute…don’t you care that your child is being exposed to this? Thankfully, it was only a momentary flash of 40-year-old old fogey thinking, quickly dashed when I started to recall my record collection at 13.

From the Village People chanting about “My Roommate” (winkwink), to Barry Manilow bragging about feeling his “blood flow” (nudgenudge) in “Weekend in New England,” not to mention the gem of my 45 collection, Nick Gilder’s “Hot Child in the City,” my pre-teen records were just as racy, if perhaps a little less direct. Heck, even something as deceptively benign as Neil Diamond’s “Desirée” (download) had a saucy little subtext:

It was the third of June
On that summer’s day
When I became a man
At the hands of a girl
Almost twice my age

Ooooo, young Neil got some cougar action for his first time! Granted, I don’t think I knew what that opening verse really meant when I was ten years old, but now it really jumps out.

“Desirée” is a strange little single in Neil’s canon, coming at a pre-Jazz Singer time in his career when the hits were far from guaranteed. “Desirée” broke a bit of a losing streak he was having, hitting the Top 20. It’s been included in a few greatest hits packages since, but it’s not a song you ever hear on oldies radio and it’s not a tune people normally bring up in Neil Diamond conversation (and who doesn’t engage in Neil Diamond conversation at least weekly?).  For some reason, my ten-year-old self loved it, though, and the scratched and dusty 45 still sits in a box somewhere in storage.

“Desirée” peaked at #16 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart in 1978.

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Can you believe Joan Armatrading has been making music for nearly 40 years? Yeah, me neither. Did you know her first album came out all the way back in 1972? I knew of her mid-’70s output, but until recently, I had never heard of her debut album, 1972’s Whatever’s for Us.

Armatrading got her start in the London repertory for the musical Hair, alongside lyricist Pam Nestor. The duo began collaborating on original pieces and the result was Whatever’s, a definitely singer-songwriter-y work, produced by early Elton John helmer Gus Dudgeon. Dudgeon’s hand, along with a few other Elton sidemen playing on the record, account for Armatrading’s debut having a very Goodbye Yellow Brick Road feel, as evidenced on “City Girl.” (download)

Whatever’s didn’t make much noise on the charts, and while Nestor got her picture and a bio on the sleeve, the lack of notice and sales must have broken the partnership, because from this point forward it was simply the Joan Show. As Armatrading continued recording to varying success, her debut slipped out of print for years, and apart from the title track (download) being featured on a few compilations, it’s basically been an ignored portion of her canon. The album did come back into print a couple of times, for the first time on CD in 1987, and again in a remastered form with bonus tracks in 2002. Both those versions are out of print now, too, and command some collector’s prices — but honestly, unless you’re a hardcore fan, or you’ve got a weakness for ’70s acoustic rock, save your shekels.

No singles from this album charted.

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Yeah, I know we’ve done ABBA once already this year, but in celebration of “Mamma Mia” stinking up theater screens nationwide, I figure we should probably take a look at one of the earliest glimmers that ABBA were more than just your standard bubblegum pop group.

While early singles “Waterloo” and “Honey, Honey” were decidedly lightweight, the Swedish foursome showed a more mature side with “Mamma Mia’s” b-side,  “Hey Hey Helen” (download), a track taken from their second, eponymously titled album.  A guitar-driven glam track from when the group was experimenting with glitter rock (see “Ring, Ring”), “Helen” took an adult look at divorce and single motherhood in a time when the divorce rate was up and the traditional family unit was taking a beating.  At first, the lyrics seem a bit judgmental, until you get to that last bit in the chorus where the girls assure the newly single mother that she can, in fact, make it alone:

So at last you’re free
It’s the way you wanted it to be
And the price you paid
To become a woman of today
Is it worth the pain to see the children cry
Does it hurt when they ask for Daddy

Hey hey Helen
Now you live on your own
Hey hey Helen
Can you make it alone
(Yes you can)

I’m surprised that considering the theme of the song, it wasn’t used in the “Mamma Mia” musical or movie.  Perhaps it wasn’t considered a popular enough tune to make the cut, even though the group mimed it for quite a few TV appearances at the time.  Here’s the quartet lipsynching the song on “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” in 1975: (more…)

When I was 11 years old and living in rural Grafton, Ohio, there weren’t too many other kids my age in our neighborhood, especially any with my twin obsessions, Micronauts action figures and music. So when I met Ricky, one grade behind me, and discovered that not only did he have both the Baron Karza AND Force Commander figures (those were the expensive ones!), he also had quite the record collection for a 10-year old, I knew I’d found a friend.

Since Ricky’s family was a bit more well-to-do than mine, they also had the first VCR I’d ever seen. You mean you can record “Solid Gold,” then watch it over and over again, whenever you want? So jealous! And you can buy video tapes with music videos already on them like Olivia Newton-John’s Totally Hot video LP? Another video LP Ricky had that we watched again and again was Blondie’s Eat To The Beat, which featured videos for each of the album’s tracks. My favorite song from this was one I never heard on the radio, a mid-tempo tune called “Union City Blue.”

After “Dreaming” hit the charts, “Union City Blue” (download) was released as the second single from Eat To The Beat in the UK, while the US got “The Hardest Part,” a move I could never understand. While “The Hardest Part” is a great album cut, it’s not exactly Top 40 friendly like “Union City Blue” instantly is. As it was, “The Hardest Part” choked at #84 - competing with another Blondie single released at the same time didn’t help … a little ditty titled “Call Me.” But while the US was denied, “Union City Blue” climbed the charts overseas.

The single ended up peaking at #13 in the UK, and it was an obvious favorite for many fans, including Radiohead, who do an interestingly serviceable cover: (more…)

Happy Gay Pride!

I mean, really. This just may be the gayest post ever on Popdose, and that’s coming from the guy who does a feature called Phagz on 45 each week. You’ve probably heard of this legendarily awful album that combines the gayest of the gay — show tunes, Ethel Merman’s distinctively campy delivery, and, of course, disco. All that was missing was a complimentary bottle of poppers.

So, who was responsible for this mess? We can probably excuse Merman, who was 70 years old at the time of recording and who, rumor has it, recorded her vocals with nothing but a piano accompaniment, the disco-fied backing tracks added later. Can we blame A&M Records, the label that actually unleashed this upon the world, thinking it might move a few copies? Perhaps we should place the blame on producer/arranger Peter Matz, who in the liner notes thanks executive producer Kip Cohen “for having such a good idea.” Aha! Kip! Oh, Kip, so much to answer for.

So, what’s the album like? Um, pretty much Ethel Merman singing her standards with a generic disco beat and strings tacked on. Take a listen to the beginning of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (download) then “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (download) and tell me they don’t start off exactly the same. The entire album sounds like this … at least what I’ve been able to get through before whipping the needle off in an act of self-preservation. This makes Paul Lynde look like John Wayne in Rooster Cogburn.

Just to prove the Merm was still lucid when she recorded this, here she is promoting the album on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Money quote by Johnny: “I hope it’s not too much of a hit for you!” No worries there, Johnny. And hey, check out Albert Brooks next to Ethel on the panel! (more…)

With the exception of Bowie and a couple of can’t-be-denied hits from the Sweet and T. Rex, American radio just had no time for glam rock. While the U.K. was bursting at the seams with glam hits from Hello, Mott the Hoople, Racey and Sailor, the States were mired in Seals & Crofts, Blue Swede and Helen Reddy hell. Perhaps the payola wasn’t high enough, perhaps radio programmers were terrified of men in eyeliner (unless it was done with a horror feel, a la Alice Cooper), but for whatever reason, many huge U.K. bands and hits never got a shot here. One of those was “Dyna-Mite” (download) by Mud.

Originally written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn for the Sweet, “Dyna-Mite” was rejected by that group and ended up in the hands of fellow glitter rockers Hello. But Chapman/Chinn snatched it back from Hello and delivered it to Mud, who had been knocking around for a few years with minimal success. “Dyna-Mite” changed all that, becoming a massive Top 10 hit. There’s no question why — it’s a classic C&C stomper, full of the handclaps, high harmonies and tasty hooks that would score the songwriting duo countless hits throughout the ’70s. Yet the single and Mud never even got a U.S. label interested.

A short year later, C&C and Mud would score an even bigger hit with the massive “Tiger Feet,” a song that definitely laid the groundwork for the Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz.” “Tiger Feet” spent four weeks at the top of the charts in the U.K., eventually becoming the biggest selling single of 1974. (more…)

The ’70s were the golden age of the double A-side single, a curious little thing where a record company would release a single and promote both sides to radio, all in an effort to get listeners to trade up to the full album since, hey, two good songs on this 45, so why not? But for every “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions,” where both sides got equal acclaim, there were dozens more where one side was just a liiiittle better and got much more airplay. That’s the case with today’s entry, Ringo Starr’s double A-side single, “No No Song/Snookeroo.”

Plucked from Ringo’s fourth album, Goodnight Vienna, both songs were strong as Ringo tunes go, but it was “No No Song,” with its “no, no, no, I don’t *sniff* no mo‘” refrain that won the hearts of radio programmers and most of the public. Oldies radio stations still play it often — in fact, I heard it last week on Sirius Classic Vinyl. But I prefer the flip side, “Snookeroo” (download), an Elton John/Bernie Taupin composition that sounds just like, well, a John/Taupin song. Elton even plays piano on the rocking track, which sounds like it could have been plucked right off Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, released that same year.

While “No No Song” is one of those typical Ringo songs (by that I don’t mean it was written by Ringo, just that it was a country-flavored number bordering on novelty, like “Octopus’s Garden” or “Oh, My My”), but “Snookeroo’s” rollicking tale of a pool hall cad born the eve of Halloween has a “Crocodile Rock” feel that lifts it above the normal Ringo fare. Some radio stations did play the two in a row at the time, but most chose to spotlight “No No Song,” leaving poor “Snookeroo” lost in the ’70s.

Tangentally related observation: My favorite Stuttering John (former celebrity interviewer for the Howard Stern Show) moment was when he asked Ringo what he “(did) with the money” (What money? “The money your mother gave you for singing lessons”) and if it was difficult writing “It Don’t Come Easy.”

“Snookeroo” peaked at #3 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart in 1975 as part of a double A-side with “No No Song.”

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