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A Blast from your Pop-Music Past

10292 Views 270 Replies 38 Participants Last post by  Ingélou, 
Ingélou
Every so often I get a spontaneous ear-worm from the 1960s - my youth heyday - which lets me relive for a moment the joy of watching teens music programmes or jiving & twisting at school lunch-hour record sessions.

Your youth-heyday is likely to be a bit later, but please use this thread to post a sudden memory & make any comments thereon - purely for interest.

Thank you.
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Ingélou
Today's ear-worm for me is 'The Best Part of Breaking Up is in the Making Up' (1964) by the Ronettes.


Points of interest for me - the sad tale of what happened to Phil Spector, obviously.

Also, listening to it, the sound seems more blurred and less stomping than I remember it.

But what I noticed at the time, and still notice now, is the 'feminine wiles' aspect. She reminisces about how he apologises and then gets a delightful making up, and even though she sings later that 'it doesn't matter who was wrong', I think the message is clear! :)
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Ingélou
Don't That Beat All - Adam Faith (1962)


I was still at junior school, not yet a teenager, and before this record my tastes were mainly for Scottish songs sung by Kenneth McKellar. But I had been invited out to tea by my best friend Elaine and we were watching Ready Steady Go and Adam Faith came on to plug this record. His career was slipping and later in that year the Beatles' first hit came out, Love Me Do.
But anyway, I watched Adam Faith come on to sing his song, his feet obscured in the mists of swirling carbon dioxide as was the fashion then, and I fell in love with him. It was my first 'crush' though most of my life I've liked dark-haired men. The only other blond man that I've had a crush on was David McCallum as Ilya Kuryakin.

So, this record marks the stage where I started to fancy boys. And that's just about the only merit it has!
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Ingélou
Forster said:
Some quality songs posted so far. The most irritating kind of song that worms its way randomly out of the blue and into your ear is such as this:


Who knows why it popped into my head yesterday, and apologies to anyone I've now infected :devilish:. This was the kind of party song (from 1967) that kids in my class loved, and doubtless we made up our own verses, some unrepeatable on a polite CM forum!

Of the three members of Scaffold, Mike McGear remained famous for being Paul McCartney's brother, John Gorman became a regular on children's TV's Tiswas, but Roger McGough was and continued to be a famous poet with greater longevity than either of his companions.

For those with the view that pop/rock was so much better in the 60s, let it be known that when this song was in the UK charts (no 14 on 6 December, exactly 55 years ago this week) it nestled alongside Des O'Connor, Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck, Felice Taylor (who she?), Dave Dee etc... Even the cult Traffic were singing Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush.

The Beatles were, of course, number 1, with the suitably silly McCartney penned Hello, Goodbye.!
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Oh gosh, yes - and don't forget the horrible 'Granddad we love you' by Clive Dunn (1970) or the vile 'Lily the Pink' (1968), also by Scaffold.
I shall have nightmares tonight! :D
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Ingélou
Rogerx said:


Are You Sure?" is a song by British pop duo The Allisons

Another earworm ;)
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I had no memory of this at all - either the song or the singers - but when I put on the YouTube video, I did remember it. What a remarkable instrument the human brain is. Thanks for reminding me. :)
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Ingélou
Rogerx said:
They even did the Eurovision song contes for the U.K in 1961 with this 😇
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True, but I wasn't allowed to stay up late enough to watch it in those days! :)
I must just have heard it on the radio during the weeks before and after.
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Ingélou
Frankfurter Sandwiches by 'Joanne & the Streamliners' (Rosemary Squires) in 1961.

I remember this now-annoying song well, though I didn't know it was actually sung by Rosemary Squires. There was a brief fashion for 1920s style and Charleston dancing in the early 1960s, along with dropped waist fringed sheath dresses. It hit me and my best friend Elaine in the top juniors and Elaine taught me how to Charleston - well, the basic step. It seems to be the most pointless & energy draining dance ever invented. Elaine & I couldn't keep dancing it for more than about two minutes despite our youthful vigour. It would probably do for me now! :)

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Ingélou
Another fashion of the early 1960s was for songs with yodelling or male-falsetto components. My brother really liked Del Shannon and bought a lot of his records and so I got to know them and like them too. I was very sorry to learn of his suicide in 1990. I still love his songs. Listening to this one again, I'm struck by the bell-like instrumental section which was a feature of singles at this date & which I still like.

Del Shannon: Runaway (1961)
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Ingélou
'Nice One, Cyril' by the Cockerel Chorus

I never realised till now that the tune of this ephemeral effort is basically 'Good night, ladies'.
I remember it floating around in 1973 at about the time I got engaged and married. I have no interest in football, and I hated this pop single, but adopted & adapted the catch-phrase - 'Nice one, Squirrel!' - to congratulate my husband on any clever remark. Sometimes used ironically. It popped into my head today in that context, though I haven't used it for years.

I wish it would pop out again. :)

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Ingélou
Gaudete by Steeleye Span (1972 on the video, but reissued in November 1973 when it reached no. 14 in the UK charts).
1973 was the year I got engaged & became a Catholic. This song was a hit in December 1973 when I got married. The tune's from Piae Cantiones and the place where folk music & early music overlap is a place very dear to my heart. I still love this one.

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Ingélou
Rogerx said:




"Magic Moments"
Single by Perry Como
A-side "Catch a Falling Star"
B-side "Magic Moments
Still have this 😇
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I remember this one well. In 1958 the BBC started showing The Perry Como show & we bought this as a 78. My Dad liked Perry Como's voice and after he sang 'The Autumn Leaves' on his show, he thought there'd be a record available and sent my elder sister out to get it. She came back with Nat King Cole's version, the only one she could find. It's a great version but my father took against it because Nat King Cole sang 'since you wenn away' - sloppy American enunciation instead of the British 'since you went away'. :D
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Ingélou
Thanks, Xenophiliu - I love The Mighty Quinn. You can just hear the twinkly amusement in the singer's voice. :)
Apparently the vocalist was Mike D'Abo by this time. I thought it was Paul Jones. And I didn't know that Bob Dylan had written it either.

Ingélou said:
I remember this one well. In 1958 the BBC started showing The Perry Como show & we bought this as a 78. My Dad liked Perry Como's voice and after he sang 'The Autumn Leaves' on his show, he thought there'd be a record available and sent my elder sister out to get it. She came back with Nat King Cole's version, the only one she could find. It's a great version but my father took against it because Nat King Cole sang 'since you wenn away' - sloppy American enunciation instead of the British 'since you went away'. :D
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Here's Nat King Cole singing The Autumn Leaves. We (apart from Dad) enjoyed listening to this & also liked the B-side, Love is a Many-Splendo(u)red Thing. More differences between American & British English. :)

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Ingélou
The Martian Hop - The Ran-Dells.

This was played a lot on Radio Luxembourg in 1963 when my family were on a caravan holiday in North Norfolk. Mum & Dad had a big living van in which my little brother and sister slept too, and in which we ate our family (self-catering) meals. A hundred yards across the heath was the smaller caravan shared by me (aged 12) & my elder brothers, aged 15 and 16. It was good because at night when we were playing poker or listening to pop music we could see our Dad coming across with his torch and have time to get the caravan in order. At one point my eldest bro slipped out to a local pub and brought back some beer which they both drank - they hid the bottles under the caravan.

I loved this quirky pop record and once, when I was complaining that I wanted to go to sleep, my biggest bro got me to promise that if the next record was The Martian Hop, I wouldn't complain to our parents if they kept the radio on for another half hour. Of course, it was The Hop, as Big Bro already knew, so they won!

Happy Days. :)

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Ingélou
No objection - I love Rivers of Babylon. :)
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Ingélou
The Beatles: A Hard Day's Night (1964)

I had a huge crush on The Beatles - especially Paul & George - when I was thirteen and even got their fan club magazine, stuffed with black & white photos, for a while. I was so excited when A Hard Day's Night came to our local cinema. A school-friend had the 'novel' of the book and lent it to me before I got the chance to see it. I remember reading the slim paperback on the school hockey pitch in the lunch hour, lying on my stomach, with the sun scorching my back, pausing every so often to imagine what it would feel like snogging Paul McCartney.

I was reminded of all that today when I accidentally twanged the washing rack in our bathroom and it tingled metallically, just like the opening of A Hard Day's Night. It was never my favourite of the songs, but it does have a rough sexy feel to it, the Lennon touch.

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Ingélou
pianozach said:
The Beatles released music that I still love today.

It's hard to fathom that pretty much 99% of their canon catalog was released over a half century ago. It still sounds fresh to me today.
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Oh, don't remind me! :D
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Ingélou
Rogerx said:






My Friend the Wind by Demis Roussos


No 1 for weeks in the charts ;)
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Curiously, though it was released in 1973, my magic year, I have never heard this. Lucky escape! :)
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Ingélou
Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through the Grapevine - released as a single October 1968.

Is there anyone who doesn't love this? As someone on this video comments - 'What makes a song over 50 years old pop into your head for no reason? Simple greatness.'


However, I didn't know anything about it at the time. We were preparing to move house in the middle of my A-level course and I had 'gone off' pop by that time. I only noticed this in 1985, the time of the Levi Jeans Laundrette advert - which just shows you that advertising can sometimes promote good music (among other things). :)

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Ingélou
Thanks for sharing, Rogerx.

These Arms of Mine

Another Otis Redding song that has such emotional appeal but I didn't notice it at the time - I think it didn't get much publicity in the UK in 1962 and was the B-side to Hey Hey Baby and only noticed and plugged some months later. Jim Stewart, the founder of Stax records, died recently and it was only reading his obituary that prompted my curiosity.
www.telegraph.co.uk

Jim Stewart, co-founder with his sister Estelle Axton of Stax Records, the epicentre of Southern Soul – obituary

He launched the careers of such singers as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and Eddie Floyd
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk

But anyway, I know now.
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Ingélou
Rogerx said:


The Sounds of Silence," - Simon & Garfunkel
Great blast from the past :love:
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Yep - I remember this one, and as a 1960s moralistic teenager was impressed by it, as a true statement about the human condition, though even at the time I did wonder if the song was a wee bit portentous. :)

The girls who lived in the next room to us at our residential college (part of the university) had a Simon & Garfunkel LP which included Bridge Over Troubled Water which they played over and over again. I do like this one, but one can have too much of a good thing coming through the walls.

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