No normal post this week; I’ve been staring at the list of records I bought in 1984 trying to seek inspiration, but have not, as yet, been able to come up with anything of interest to say about any of them. Also, I didn’t have a drink last night. I’m sure these two things aren’t related.
So, it’s Sunday morning, and all is well with the world: the weather was glorious yesterday, the Football season has started here in the UK (with a loss for Spurs, but you can’t have everything), and England have just absolutely tonked the Aussies for the second match in succession to regain the Ashes – and if there is a better sight in sport than the look of shock and delight on Stuart Broad’s face when Ben Stokes takes that amazing catch then I’m yet to see it. I could watch that clip on a loop for a very long time before I started to get bored of it.
So anyway, I thought since the weather is threatening to be rather fine again today, I’d make this week’s Sunday Morning selection have a summery feel to them:
Betty Boo – Let Me Take You There To say Alison Clarkson (for it is she) has had a mixed career in pop music is an understatement: originally a member of hip-hop group She Rockers, she toured The States supporting Public Enemy, and had an all-too brief solo career under the alter-ego of Betty Boo, releasing the rather wonderful “Hey DJ (I Can’t Dance)” The Beatmasters, the second video for which launched her uber-foxy Betty Boop meets Barbarella image, followed by the killer tracks “Doin’ The Do” and best of all “Where Are You Baby?“, which if you don’t like, you are officially dead inside. Betty Boo’s short lived time on pop’s shelf of wanted goods ended as suddenly as it began around the time “Let Me Take You There” came out, when she was accused of miming at a gig in, if memory serves me right, Australia. Later cited as the influence behind the Spice Girls, she wrote “Pure and Simple”, which was recorded by Hear’Say, winners of the reality show Popstars, the fore-runner to the X-Factor, and the video for which appears to show the band lighting their own farts. She’s also written for Girls Aloud (“Love Bomb” apparently. Nope, me neither), Louise, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and…er…The Tweenies, as well as making the frankly rather odd “WigWam” with Blur’s Alex James, a song which has not improved with age. She’s also provided guest vocals on a record by The Feeling so…y’know…a career with as many highs as lows, I think it’s a fair to say.
Like it? Buy it here.
Don Henley – The Boys of Summer
In the mid-1980s, it seemed there were former members of The Eagles everywhere; Glenn Frey’s “The Heat Is On” was featured on the sound track to Beverley Hills Cop, Don Henley released this corker and…erm….does anyone even know who the other members of The Eagles were…?
Like it? Buy it here.
John Denver – Sunshine On My Shoulders
A typically schmaltzy offering on which the Milky Bar Kid lookalike and country music’s most famous pilot (well, now ex-pilot, actually….) advises us that “Sunshine on my shoulders always gets me high”. On one of his more famous records, which bizarrely got embroiled in the whole Tipper Gore/Judas Priest/DMCA court case back in the 90s, he describes getting a “Rocky Mountain High“. One suspects Denver thinks “getting high” is the same as “being happy”. Either that or he had a phenomenal dealer.
Like it? Buy it here.
I’m not going to talk too much about these late-80s/early-90s indie jingle-janglers and John Peels’ Festive 50 toppers (though not with this song) as they’ll feature later elsewhere on this blog. Calling a song Summertime leads to an almost inevitable comparison to the Gershwin-written Ella Fitzgerald classic (see?) and it would be wrong to do so (sorry!) for The Sundays’ Summertime is a) a completely different song, and b) simply wonderful in its own sweet way.
Like it? Buy it here.
If have a theory about Weezer and it is this: you only need to bother listening to their albums with a colour in the title. Check out the evidence: Blue Album – includes Buddy Holly and Undone (The Sweater Song); Green Album – contains Hash Pipe and Island In the Sun; Red Album – includes Pork and Beans
Now ask yourself: what other Weezer singles are worth listening to?
Like it? Buy it here.
A History of Dubious Taste 