They coulda been contenders: memorable and infernally catchy also-ran pop tunes

Since I’m on the topic of YouTube frustration (see below), I want to put the spotlight on a YT poster who has done exemplary work sharing his pop-culture obsessions. He's also had some trouble with copyright holders that don’t wanna *release* the material in question, but don't want anyone hearing it in the meantime. I bring you one music lover’s picks of the pop songs “that should have been bigger hits.”

The poster in question, who calls himself nccvball, has done a wonderful job of assembling medleys of music from the years 1968-89. The only overriding theme is that all of the songs included in the medleys made the Top 100 but never became major hits (although I can attest to the fact that some did have heavy-duty airplay in many markets).

The poster — who, for the lack of any simple-sounding moniker, I shall refer to as “nccvball” — puts historical data about the songs and artists onscreen as the songs are playing. He hails from Philadelphia and possesses a detailed knowledge of both the American and Canadian charts (his well-researched info refers to [gasp!] print-pubs, like the one to the right). He has informed me that the project began as an article he was writing about pop songs that should have gone further up the charts. Given the incredible detail he’s put into these videos, I’d suggest he join us here in the Blogspot sphere, since BS does indeed house some seriously devoted pop-culture fans.

I stumbled upon his YT channel several weeks back and was delighted to hear several songs I hadn’t heard in three decades. The first was "New York City," a tune that got played on the radio here in NYC in the year it came out (1979) and was included in a radio promo for a few years afterward. The tune has been engrained in my brainpan for a long time, and yet I had no idea who recorded it.

Turns out it was Canadian musician Walter Zwol, who had previously had a successful band named Brutus. Our friend nccvball has put up a video for the studio version of the tune and also has uploaded this wonderful clip of Zwol singing the song on a German TV program where the audience seems utterly distant (no dancing for these young folk!). He does his damndest, though, dancing up a storm and trying to sell the song, as the young Germans regard him with mild tolerance. It’s quite a catchy anthem:



Another skull-crusher for me was a power-pop song from 1980 by the band Spider. It’s called “New Romance (It’s a Mystery),” and the song was another one I hadn’t heard since the early Eighties, but which I knew by heart.

Nccvball’s video notes explain that Spider was led by Anton Fig (the drummer in Paul Schaffer’s band on Letterman) and his then-wife, vocalist Amanda Blue. The song was written by the band’s keyboardist, Holly Knight, who went on to write, among others, “Better Be Good to Me” for Tina Turner and “Rag Doll” for Aerosmith.

This is power-pop at its hookiest, and I’m glad I had it shaken loose from the recesses of my memory. For one time, and one time only, I will switch off in this entry from nccv’s account (where he posted this video for the song) to link you to the official music video (which I have absolutely no memory of) that was uploaded after nccv started his “excavation” of lost pop-rock:



While I’m grateful to nccv for uploading the Zwol and Spider vids, the major “rabbit-hole” he has created on YT is a series of videos detailing songs that “should have been bigger hits” in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. The videos cover the years ’68-’89, and there are generally anywhere from 10-15 tunes per 10-minute video. As a verse or two and the chorus play, onscreen info contextualizes the song and the artist.

The videos offer terrific windows into what styles of music reigned from the Nixon era through the Reagan era in the U.S. Our poster friend has put an incredible amount of work into the videos, and they are all worth your time, but I will note that I found the medleys from the Seventies and early Eighties to be filled with really fun, memorable stuff, while the late Eighties songs seemed feebler in comparison.

Perhaps this is just a reflection of my own memories from the periods involved — nccvball is a gent in his 30s, so perhaps he looks at the more recent eras of pop with a less jaundiced eye than I do. Or maybe there was indeed a certain kind of pop craftsmanship that began to wane in the post-MTV period.

In any case, his videos do a valuable service of unearthing songs that were “buried” decades ago and are dim memories to those who were alive and listening to FM radio regularly during the periods in question. Given his “devotion to the cause” and free labor, it was almost certain that the copyright holders, who in most cases haven’t done anything with the music in question since it was initially released, would see fit to either have his videos blocked or “muted” on YT. The companies in question are the usual suspects — WMG, UMG, EMI, SME — and they are incredibly short-sighted, since nccv is actually shining a light on their “dead” product.

Be that as it may (and, as Steve Allen used to say, I doubt it ever was), I want to offer up some links to the wonderful and labor-intensive vids put up by nccv. Prepare to be assaulted by at least a few brainworms (and maybe a few memories) in the process. The 1973 medley includes Andy Pratt’s “Avenging Annie” (first time I ever heard “fuck” in a song as a kid — and Pratt is now an Christian musician! ), Michael Redway (who did the uncredited Viv Stanshall-esque vocals on the Casino Royale closing theme), and the Incredible Bongo Band for some “Bongo Rock.”

In the 1974 entry, we hear the unforgettably catchy “Captain Howdy” by Simon Stokes, the prefab group First Class (actually studio singers Tony Burrows and Chas Mills), the terrific Oscar Brown Jr. singing his “Lone Ranger” tune, and a song I identify with the Smothers Brothers (who sang it every week on their Seventies comeback show), Rick Cunha’s “The Yo-Yo Man.”

I jump ahead a few years to 1976 for nccv spotlighting tracks by the Tubes, the ever-awesome Suzi Quatro, Penny McLean (from Silver Convention) and her single “Lady Bump” (no comment), and, yes, the Hudson Brothers.

The 1980 medley deserves a listen, if only for the wonderment that was the Flying Lizards' “Money” (which I heard on the radio ALL the time at that point but apparently wasn’t a big seller, despite schlubs like me shelling out for the 45).

If you want to hear a song that could’ve only existed in the early Eighties, try the 1983 medley for one of my forgotten faves, Robert Hazard’s deadly serious/wonderfully ridiculous statement about mankind, “The Escalator of Life” (“we’re shopping in the human mall” — don’t ask, seriously…).

I close off the quick-links with the 1985 medley, which includes Bruce Cockburn’s awesome “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” and the 1986 medley, which has the ultimate mind-melting brainworm (just you try and forget the friggin’ thing!), Opus’s dubiously philosophical “Live is Life.”

Now we get to the serious stuff, the video comps from nccvball (no, I have no idea what the nick means) that did literally send sparks flyin’ outta my ears. First off is the transitional year of 1970, when bubblegum ruled the airwaves simultaneously with hard rock and funk. Among the acts spotlighted here are Klowns (a Ringling Bros. tie-in act groomed by Jeff Barry that featured a young Barry Bostwick!), super-pop from the duo Dunn and McCashin, rock from Ten Wheel Drive (with vocalist Genya Ravan), a pre-“Joko” Elephant’s Memory, and a Jake Holmes song that I know by heart (but from a Helen Schneider cover).

Even more importantly: the big “show-stopper” from a movie that few folks have seen (but WAS featured on the Funhouse), The Phynx!!! As a closer, the inimitable Serge and Jane (if you need last names, go and thoroughly immerse yourself in Gainsbourg’s brilliant music).



Another banner year in these compilations is 1971. Forgotten songs by the post-Monkees Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones, hits from future stars Stoney and Meatloaf (well, one became a star…), a great-sounding horn-drive band called “The Mob,” some hardcore bubblegum from Billy Sans, and variant versions of early Seventies hits “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” and “Mammy Blue.” All this, and a Ron Dante song called “Hot Pants,” too.



The compilation for 1972 features two acts I know nothing about, Bill Chase (a jazzman who has done wonderful work with horns and electronics music) and Bang (a group that boasted a raunchy guitar sound).

Also included in this medley are the National Lampoon (I LOVE “Deteriorata,” with Norman Rose and Melissa Manchester on vocals; Christopher Guest was the composer). Nccv has also put the spotlight on two commercial tie-in acts, “the Rock Flowers” (intended to sell a line of dolls to little girls), singing songs by Ellie Greenwich, Toni Wine, and Carole Bayer Sager, and the fucking Sugar Bears (yes, a tie-in studio act intended to sell the cereal) featuring Mike Settle from the New Christy Minstrels and Kim Carnes as singers.



One of the most entertaining collections is a group of instrumentals from 1976. Included is Michel Polnareff’s catchy theme for the film Lipstick,, Bob Crewe’s attempt at disco, and a tune from Gary Glitter’s back-up group the Glitter Band. Also present are three tunes I do vividly remember, Hagood Hardy’s mellow “The Homecoming,” John Handy’s irrestible “Hard Work,” and Walter Murphy’s “Flight ’76.”



As the Seventies ended, the music mix on the pop charts got even stranger. The 1978 medley features the hard-rock band Angel (the anti-KISS act, with a very catchy tune), Canadian diehards Chilliwack, Zwol’s “New York City,” AND the completely unforgettable “Ca Plane Pour Moi” by Plastic Bertrand (which, to my aging “new wave” ears, should have been a hit for five years).



The 1979 compilation features a number of names I knew primarily from spending sifting through cutout bins in the early Eighties: Moon Martin, Charlie, Pousette-Dart Band. Also appearing here are Cherie and Marie Currie, and my own pick for the best coulda/woulda/shoulda hit for that year, “Mirror Star” by the Fabulous Poodles.



I include the 1982 compilation here because our YT-poster friend put as much work into it as all the others, but because it feature two *indelible* tunes, the Waitresses’ “I Know What Boys Like” (which was everywhere on NYC radio at that time, but which I guess didn’t hit the Top 40) and the Monroes' scarily catchy “What Do All The People Know?”



As noted above, I think the late Eighties signaled a serious fragmenting of the music industry (and this was several years before the Internet began its true downward spiral). There were still infernally catchy pop tunes, but pop-rock production across the board just wasn't as exciting as it used to be (a function, no doubt, of the use of rampant sampling and computer "polishing" techniques).

In any case, out of all his medleys, the last nccvball creation I loved (in chronological fashion) was the one for 1984. Included are “the Coyote Sisters” (Leah Kunkel and friends), Naked Eyes, and Martha and the Muffins under the revamped name “M+M” (the music video for “Black Stations, White Stations” was on a late-night syndie show that reran seemingly indefinitely in the mid-Eighties).

There is no better place to end a discussion of pop music than with a mention of producer extraordinaire Jim Steinman, whose work contains the very essence of pop music. Spector-like in its production, Wagnerian in its sincerity, Steinman is the real deal, a pop songwriter who works from the hook outwards. Thus, I welcomed nccvball’s inclusion here of Steinman’s studio creation Fire, Inc. doing the SUPER-melodramatic “Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young” from the soundtrack of the colorful near-future action flick Streets of Fire.



Nccvball has noted he has some Nineties comps in store, but I for one would very much welcome any more “lost” or hidden items from the Sixties and Seventies. For the only way to truly erase one brainworm is to replace it with another….

The fair use image comes from this very enlightening blog post.

“Tears on my Pillow and Ave Maria”: Dean Friedman’s “Ariel”

Sometimes the mere mention of a song title will do it. I was moving through the threaded forums I visit that cover topics related to nostalgia, obscurantia, tangentia, whatever you want to call it, and saw a mention of Dean Friedman’s 1977 song “Ariel.” It’s a tune I haven’t heard in two decades (easy!), and that last listen was most likely to an audio recording I made off the radio.

Friedman seems to have a solid web presence with his official website, which is great, as the fellow is talented and quite singular. He appeared on the scene when singer-songwriters were still having top 40 hits (without having to be country-pop hybrids) and has maintained a cult following over here and in the U.K. In fact one of the more welcome discoveries on YouTube is a guest appearance he made on the much-missed The Kenny Everett Show:



In the U.S. Friedman is best known to folks of a certain age (oh, how coy the phrase…) who remember “Ariel” or his other hit, a duet with Denise Marsa called “Lucky Stars” that was evidently a massive success over in the U.K. I hadn’t heard this tune in a good three decades until the other day, but I know certain lines by heart because it is the most Broadway-sounding song that didn’t come from a Broadway musical — it in fact sounds like a pop-single variation of some of the “conversational” songs from Sondheim’s Company. Friedman succeeds in having a chorus made up of one very long but memorable sentence (“And we can thank our lucky stars/that we’re not as bright as we like to think we are…”):



In case you need a little “snapshot of a life,” check out the YT commenter on the above video who notes that he “was on the way to solicitors to get a divorce from my wife — this came on the radio and I couldn't go through with it.” A moving commentary on the healing power of Seventies pop music!

Friedman also writes catchy songs with food themes, as with “Deli”
and the tune of his that has seemingly been covered the most, “McDonald’s Girl” (which I don’t remember hearing at the time it came out). Here’s a pretty tune he performed on Top of the Pops called “Lydia”:



In researching Friedman for this piece, I found that he’s still recording and performing, has a load of loyal fans in England and Scotland, wrote influential books on synthesizers in the Eighties, has designed video games, and, most memorably for a late-night TV addict like myself, is rumored to be the voice singing in this commercial (I think it doesn't sound a thing like him, but hey, it's nice to include the link since I haven't seen this ad for 32 years!):



No word on whether he wrote the above jingle, but he is seen singing it in a different version here.

But onto the song that triggered this musing. “Ariel” is a tune that will probably seem trifling to naysayers, but it is deeply loved by those of us who can’t forget it. Why? Well, it boasts a humble-as-hell lyric about a hesitant guy falling for a Jewish girl (that fact was edited out by the record label, according to Friedman’s site, to get the single more airplay in the South!) wearing a peasant blouse, looking for contributions to the “Friends of BAI” (meaning the NYC Pacifica institution WBAI).

The song references Friedman’s home state of N.J. and is distinguished by his high-pitched warbling on the chorus. The song went to number 20 on the American charts back in 1977, but it has remained charming, catchy, and damned winsome for the last 33 years….



A crafty editor’s public-domain movie visualization of the song can be seen here.

Power-pop for weekend consumption

When the tedium of daily life is just a bit too much, mindless pop music is the best solution. Perhaps because I was a child of the Seventies, I veer immediately to what was labeled “power pop” and was at one point known by the gimmicky nickname, “New Wave.” In April of last year I offered links to a number of key tunes (the last, most pungent example can be found here), and returned to the topic in October when I offered an all-too-brief personal survey of ’79 new wave.

In this post I return to those thrilling years of yesteryear by first of all mentioning tha the lame-asses at Warner Music have pulled from YouTube any and all postings of Bram Tchaikovsky’s “Girl of My Dreams,” so you must go immediately to our pals at Never Get Out of the Boat and listen to this sterling bit of perfect power-pop right NOW! (there's an embedded player right on the page, babies). I remember that the local oldies station, WCBS-FM, at the time the song was released included it in their playlist, saying it would become a classic. It didn’t, of course, sell millions, but it is fondly remembered by all of us who were addicted to it at the time (and still crack out the “Strange Man, Changed Man” LP to indulge).

And on the YouTube front, we discover the song that received much publicity some months back when Avril Lavigne released her latter-day power-pop ditty Girlfriend. It sounded quite familiar, and I immediately thought of the Ramones' “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”. But those with memories even longer than mine remembered this Rubinoos item that still packs a kick (although Avril’s music-makin’ machine speeded the sucker up for the redo):



I identify power pop with the late 1970s, but there were a bunch of precedents for this sound, most notably the top-10 British hit-meisters The Sweet, whose Greatest Hits album is something I’ve worn out over the past few years. Here's “Wig Wam Bam” (which was gloriously celebrated in a great “Love and Rockets” — the comic, not the band — story several years back):



And from Cleveland, the Raspberries, with two of their biggest PP hits, including the wonderfully come-on, “Go All the Way” (never had pop seemed so… straightforward):



Let’s move back to the late Seventies, and celebrate a Deceased Artiste, Philly rocker Robert Hazard. Hazard was best known for having written the MTV hit “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (his version here, different in its approach and lyrics from Cyndi's hit). His most memorable bit of Eighties hookiness, though, was “Escalator of Life.” Scope out this arch little vid made for the record:



I close out with two songs that have stuck in my brain since I first heard them quite a long time ago. The first comes from the band that Bram Tchaikovsky left to go solo, The Motors. Their 1980 EP “Tenement Steps” is deserving of a place in any Seventies pop fan’s library, and it can be found (along with the band’s albums) at the Digivinyltal blog. Apparently, there are no live recordings or TV lip synchs of the awesome song "Love and Loneliness" available, so one fan has put up a video of the EP cover, with the song playing in the background. It doesn’t convey at all the power of this killer tune, so I recommend you download the EP from the DVT blog. If you need a quick reminder of what the song sounds like from across the room, the link below is worth a click — with, again, the caveat that the melodramatic pop-rock majesty is lost. "Now loneliness is there/ despite the love we make/ And loneliness knows where to find the friends we make/ And the place we live/ is just a new street number/ on an old address/ called Love and Loneliness."



And every single time I find myself thinking or saying the phrase “I don’t want to argue…” in real life, my mind automatically produces the words “I don’t want to budge/take this number down before you call up the judge…” The absolutely perfectly produced tune in question is The Records’ “Starry Eyes.” (I hadn't remembered the legal pun, "The writ has hit the fan...") To hear the real song, go straight to this YouTube upload. I love this song deeply, and recommend the single first and foremost, but a reasonable, not as pitch-perfect, version would be this live TV performance:



One wistful commenter for one of these vids noted, “They tell me not to live in the past, but the music was so much better then….”

"I'm gonna make him penetrate, I'm gonna make him be a girl..."

It seems like a century ago. I listened to the radio on my way to high school, a Catholic high school, a Catholic all-boys high school (if you need to diagnose any of my ailments, please begin there), since there was no better way than to start the day with rebellious rock n’ roll emanating from a small portable radio.

And lest you think the rock was not rebellious, or at least packaged to sound so, let me just me mention that the station being listened to on this particular morning was WHBI-FM, a local oddity that used to rent itself out to foreign programmers, but also had two “punk” programs that played the best and weirdest punk and new wave records — the two featured DJs (a guy named Phil Barry and a Brit called "Scratchy") were clearly into freaking out the listener, and I remember hearing the beloved Barnes and Barnes’ “Cemetery Girls” (their snappy ode to necrophilia) as well as a truly creepy story-song about kids picking on a fat girl at school (all this in the late-evening hours, listening on a transistor, or on my way to prison… er, school).

The morning I remember in particular the song below was playing. Yes, the video you’re about to watch is hopelessly silly, the performer looks ridiculous — plus I was stunned and amused to see his song punctuated with wonderfully cheesy German “saucy” comedy.

Just imagine, though, the song hitting a teenager, back then on a crappy little radio. The melody (actually, the backing track, if I’m not mistaken) stolen from the greatest French “New Wave” tune of all time, actually a tongue-in-cheek punk parody of sorts, the immortal Plastic Bertrand’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi” which can be seen and heard here.

This rip-off English song had a nasty little homoerotic lyric that absolutely freaked the shit out of my mother when she heard it come out of the radio (she loved William B. Williams, as I did, but hey, a kid’s gotta grow up some time). She told me I should turn it off, but much to her credit, didn’t shut the radio off herself (plus the song was already just about over by the time she registered how “dirty” it was).

I know this entire event reeks of a past time before teens were all-knowing and exposed to just about everything under the sun. I guess I’m happy to have lived through those innocent moments, and to have experienced, through WHBI’s “punk” music programs and WBAI’s amazing, still radical free-form shows, a time when regular old commercial radio could be challenging, weird, upsetting, and yes, just plain “dirty” for its era. What followed thereafter (Stern, “O&A,” and the rest…) was all pathetic compared to some insane dude singing about getting head from another guy during the breakfast hour….

1979 wonderments

Let's take a little weekend journey through YouTube music postings, and I promise I won't try and sound too old and cranky ("these kids today... they couldn't craft a hooky riff if their life depended on it!"). Let's start out with two 1979 one-hit wonder bands. First, a public access clip (from San Leandro, California's "Girl George" show) of Pearl Harbor and the Explosions doing their only "hit" called "Driving." I love this song and have been haunted by the well-produced single, but this spare little performance is amazing for what it exhibits about the time and place, and Pearl's wonderfully goofy dancing:



That clip led me to this sad bit of radio history concerning one of Pearl's former bandmates, the actress/singer-turned-traffic-reporter Jane Dornacker, whose helicopter crashed into the Hudson River while she was on the air with WNBC's Joey Reynolds (who's now the all-night host on WOR in NYC, and an amazing AM-radio institution). Not something you want to listen to for a happy weekend, but it's a tragic bit of radio that comes up when you're searching for one-hit wonders (Dornacker's professional bio is fascinating, though). Back onto the happy stuff: the second 1979 one-hit wonder band, again this one was a "hit" on New Wave stations (in my case back then, WPIX-FM in NYC), the Sinceros doing "Take Me to Your Leader":



And since the poster for that vid notes that the musicians played with Lene Lovich, I must melt back into my youthful self and confess my never-ending love for Ms. Lovich. This was her own big 1979 hit, but I have chosen instead to give you an industrial-strength taste of second-LP Lene, killing me with her melodrama (yes, I loved/still love Kate Bush and Rachel Sweet also):



And since I'm in a New Wave vein on this weekend afternoon, let's remember perhaps the greatest unusual one-hit wonder band, Rockpile. Unusual in that they had two starring lead vocalists, Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe, and had been touring behind each guy, and accompanied each on his solo albums (the band was Edmunds, Lowe, Terry Williams, and Billy Bremner). This was their 1980 one-hit wonder, but I much prefer this high-energy version of Elvis Costello's "Girl Talk" from a show called "Countdown 1979." (See, there is some thought to this...) You have to love a song that includes the lines "Was it really murder/were you just pretending/lately I have heard/you are the living end..."



Here's Dave proclaimed as lead vocalist on "I Knew the Bride," one of Rockpile's absolute killer tracks, but he's actually engaged in some Everly-like double-vocals with Mr. Lowe. There is a terrific, prob alcohol-fueled version of this fronted by Nick the Knife on "Live Stiffs, Volume 2":



And, flipping back to 1978, one of the best live clips I've seen of long-haired young Nick warbling "So It Goes" (but where it's going, no one knows!) with the same band o'boys. This stuff is in my brain-pan forever, and I'm quiet pleased about it:



And since I'm on a free-form journey here, let's journey a few years hence (hence sometimes is a good direction to take) for this vintage bit of Nick with his bespectacled friend doing their greatest hit, which never dates (hippie sentiments in a "new wave" jacket):



And I'll move backwards to the early Seventies for song Lowe told us he Nicked the "Peace, Love" riff from. A beautiful ditty from a truly troubled but sublime and lovely singer-songwriter who died long before she should've, Judee Sill. Labelled a "religious" songwriter, she was actually in the vein of a lot of early Seventies spiritualists who embraced all kinds of religious imagery but favored an open theology (wherein you're allowed to worship what ya like, even nature, which the pious truly, truly hate). As a nonbeliever, I'm very touched by this song, thanks to Judee's lyrical skill, plaintive singing, and the classic early '70s arrangement (and here's the the only publicly released film of Sill performing it live). I thank Nick for confessing to his riff-copping on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" DVD:



Since there's so little Sill in existence, I might as well link to the other two extant clips, this live bit of video from USC and this UK TV appearance.

And since this whole post started out about one year, let me return to my "high" and "low" formulation by contrasting the beauty of Judee Sill with the eternal song of 1979 (and there is nothing like seeing the "group" trying to perform it in a live context, albeit lip-synching). And perhaps the finest trash legacy the year had for us (and remember this is when disco fever was at its peak, and even punk had gotten sorta silly), the German group Dschinghis Khan at the Eurovision song contest. There's nothing left to be said:

'70s one-hit wonders: cinematic wonderment

I was super-thrilled to reconnect with this 1979 ditty, which has been playing in my mental jukebox now for the past three decades. The promo clip (that's what they used to call videos) is pretty ridiculously dippy, but the song still kicks ass, and features the best movie-music interlude I've heard in rock outside the work of the great Alice Cooper Group, as produced by Bob Ezrin. This single had it all: the filtered voice, a call-and-response chorus, a mega-dramatic melody, and lyrics that ya just can't forget. "I just been down to New York town/done my time in hell...!"

In researching the guys who recorded this, who named themselves (in a flash of sheer prescience) Flash & the Pan, I discovered that they were the Australian duo, Harry Vanda and George Young, who were behind the PERFECTLY immortal "Friday on My Mind" as the Easybeats back in 1966. Worthy of a major Funhouse salute.

'70s one-hit wonders: some travelin' music, please...

The band had a gimmicky name, the music had that pure-pop drive, and the song had a major hook (in fact some interwoven hooks, best kind) that wouldn't quit. I give you the British band Sniff 'n' the Tears' 1978 hit "Driver's Seat":

'70s one-hit wonders: nothin' matters but the weekend

I'll stretch the time-delineation here by one year, and include a 1980 one-hitter. The Kings doing their mighty "Switchin' to Glide," which is a neat, slick bit of electrified pop-rock. The song appears here combined with another—"Switchin'" starts at the 3:12 mark. I have no idea what the hell the title means, but I wish it had entered the lingo to mean something or other.



And as a bonus, let me throw a 1977 hook-driven gem, Jay Ferguson's "Thunder Island." Ferguson was a vocalist for the great band Spirit, who gave us (among others) two all-time classic tracks, "I Got a Line on You" and "Nature's Way."


Oh, okay, let me get carried away and point you to this godawful vid for yet another super-hooky tune by a guy who left a major band (in this case Fleetwood Mac). Bob Welch actually had his one big hit with "Sentimental Lady," but here's "Ebony Eyes":

'70s one-hit wonders: the peak of pop

There are certain high points in the art of the '70s one-hit, but I'm going to avoid ”Billy Don't Be a Hero” (although it would be VERY interesting to hear a song like this on today's pop charts--it really is a stupid-ass maneuver to volunteer to fight in a war of choice!). Instead, I have to focus on the British band Paper Lace's mega-classic "Night Chicago Died" (1974). Yes, indeed they are not represented on YouTube, except in one TV performance, performing "Billy" (which they had the original version of, and a big hit with, in Europe). Thus, we have fan-created vids for the song, such as this one:



And I just gotta include this "banda" version of the song in Spanish--check out "Senor Al Capone." Killer...


And another sublime bit of one-hit wonderhood, "Skyhigh" by Jigsaw, a song written for The Man From Hong Kong(1975), one of the post-Bond vehicles for George Lazenby. Oh man, the AM memories....


Special kudos to this nonsensical anime homage to the song.

'70s one-hit wonders, the first: catchy rhymin'

I am glad that our local NYC oldies station, WCBS-FM, returned a few months back, but man, oh man, is there ever a lack of Seventies one-hit wonders on the station. I revel in this kind of pure-pop Tin Pan tunesmithing for "the rock era," as it was when I first started indulging heavily in the drug that was then AM radio. Some of the most superb music of the '70s never made the Top 40 (including genius singer-songwriters and nearly all punk/new wave), but in amongst the stuff that did, there were some severely catchy, hook-ridden melodies, and those are what I bow in homage to for this short series of posts.

Some of the songs have very straightforward presentations on YT because the copyright owners of whatever TV-rockshow footage that exists have removed the best TV performances of the songs. Thus we have these poster-created vids for these two seminal one-hits:

Oh yes, the mellow rock sounds of the Sanford Townsend Band, and their catchy-as-fuck hook "Your Eyes Had a Mist/From the Smoke/of a Distant Fire" (1977). This video is just some random STB images and nature stuff, but it's the song that holds the attention (truly, YT can function like the radio we should be gettin' for free sometimes—just let it run as you do other things):


The KILLER "The Rapper" by The Jaggerz, 1970 one-hit bliss. The lead singer on this track went on to sing on "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry. I have absolutely no interest in the visual here (from some stupid-ass horror teen comedy), but dig that chorus.