Entertainment For Lively Minds
Sandie Shaw, I and I is horrified...
Posted by ganglesprocket on 17 May 2011 - 9:35pm.
Recently people here were expressing stern disapproval of "Reggae Like It Used To Be" by Paul Nicholas and quite rightly to. However it turns out that in the early seventies other artists were committing far worse atrocities on reggae than even he could have dreamt of.
Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Sandie Shaw. Be warned, this is bad enough to provoke a race riot.
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28 seconds
was all I could stand. That is excruciatingly bad.
Did Jim Davidson perchance have a hand in writing the lyrics?
54 seconds.
But it was torture. I've chewed my own fist to a splintered stump just below the elbow.
18 seconds. And I want to
18 seconds.
And I want to clear it from my browser history.
56 seconds for me
that was genuinely horrendous
Ten
But the dancers are the same ones as in the Morecambe and Wise sketch top hat and tails "Sweet Georgia Brown" where they keep getting shunted off to the side or obscured by the other dancers.
I can imagine my long-dead grandparents humming along so I can't get into a frothing rage but by god its crap - this is the terrible hidden secret that loungecore tried to cover up i.e. most kitschy MOR has a heart of shite - and I LIKE kitschy MOR
Loungecore? Wassat then??
All that 'This is Easy' music
Urban types listening to generally damn decent MOR but with one eyebrow raised.
and that one eyebrow makes all the difference!
That sounds not dissimilar to the 'Guilty Pleasures' ridiculousness from a few years back.
I don't need to preach it to anyone here, of course, but is there anyone out there in the real world who just appreciate music for what it is? Without needing to impose whole layers of baggage and subtext upon it?
Generally true of course
And a lot of really good music has been written off for reasons which in retrospect seem contemptible - I have the old Brit music mag Thought Police of my teens in mind - but subtext and baggage is a lot of fun isn't it? Sometimes? Its kept plenty of interesting and good-humoured threads on here alive anyway. Some records maybe only work in their ephemeral moment. Jesus I am sounding like a down market Morrissey here - not far from the truth actually.
Anyway the reason this is shite is - its shite! The reason 'Sway' is class is because its just wonderful.
(I'm hoping we're agreeing by stealth here because that's what usually happens)
Hang on. I thought that THIS
Hang on.
I thought that THIS is the real world, and the....rest of them are just figments of my deranged imagination.
Say it ain't so Joe
None more lounge (from Edinburgh)
That was truly awful
Following on from the various 1976 TOTP threads this just proved how shit a large part of "light entertainment" was back then.
That must be how Morrissey
acquired his famed love of Reggae.
Very poor
I'm no fan of reggae but that really is very poor indeed. Her accent seems to veer into Irish at one point.
The Spanish
can't do it either. More stereotypes than you can shake a stick at.
The song is
"Tramp (Burlington Bertie)" by Herbie Flowers. His version is better, but only because he has a certain amount of charm. And he sings it in his own accent.
And, let's face it, it could hardly be worse, could it?
(Thinks back to Shaw's recent appearance on "Desert Island Discs," where her first selection was of her own version of The Lovin' Spoonful's "Coconut Grove." She massacred it.)
Music Hall
It's from an old music hall number "I'm Burlington Bertie From Bow". I think it was Florrie Ford who did this one.
How the feck do I even know that?
Two songs
Burlington Bertie From Bow was a parody of a slightly earlier song Burlington Bertie.
Ella Shields sang the latter while Vesta Tilley made the earlier song famous.
A F-L
Thankfully not every whitey massacred the genre in the early seventies.
This is lovely.
there are times Fraser
when special dispensation should be granted for use of the down arrow
47 seconds
15 seconds
An atrocity.
I give you
Johnny Reggae by The Piglets (aka Jonathan King)
I absolutely love that song
So 1971 - tonic trousers, baseball boots, skinhead haircuts, girls called Mavis. It's a triumph.
I hung on grimly until about 1:05, when the line
"Reggae is alive - you can ask Leroy and Clive"
finally made me throw in the towel. Yikes!
I always try and see the best in things, accentuate the upside,
so, consequently there are very few records of which I will definitively say "This IS shit".
This is one such record.
The vocal is atrocious, the playing is sloppy and the production is thin and weedy. This bears all the signs of the MD realising he's got 20 minutes left at the end of the session and giving it one shot.
Another antidote
Further to torrential1's post above, here's a further example of British white boys doing reggae proud - with a band that was a proper melting pot. UB40 became so awful that it's easy to forget how marvellous they were at the start. I've just acquired Present Arms (their debut album , kids, 30 years old!), and it's as great as I remembered it. Here's a storming live version of Tyler.
A pedant says...
I totally agree that UB40 were once marvellous, but wasn't Signing Off their debut album?
Absolutely
I've no idea at all why I said Present Arms, especially as it's only yesterday I downloaded SIGNING OFF. Brain fart I guess.
I recently did the same
really good album....
20 secs.... too long!
Brain purge severely needed.
Proof that no one from outside of Jamaica should ever attempt reggae. EVER!
I disagree
Eddy Grant is Guyanese. Forget the poppier stuff, listen to Living On The Frontline.
No one from outside Jamaica?
Dennis Bovell, ace dub producer, former member of Matumbi and musical partner of Linton Kwesi Johnson for decades, is Barbadian/British.
The Caribbean is not just Jamaica
Brinsley Forde, once of Aswad, also has a Guyanese background
I stand corrected.
No one from outside of the Caribbean should play reggae.
I really don't agree
I used to but now I'd say only reggae artists should do reggae. Non reggae artists should never dabble.
There goes Ashes To Ashes ...
JJ Cale's exquisite "Does Your Momma Like To Reggae"....
Actually I am not sure about this but should white men sing the blues
:-)
To be frank,
I'd be considerably less embarassed if Mrs. F found traces of porn on my PC than this.
I know a 'reggae' track that's even worse...
Don't say I didn't warn you, here's Cilla with Night Time Is Here:-
Free music - Night Time Is Here
Holy fuck
I daren't click the link. I mean I actually can't. I didn't expected to be confronted with such primordial fears so utterly out of the blue
I did it for you
And now I know how Oates felt when he walked out of the tent.
Cilla. Doing cod Caribbean accent/apttois. In Scouse. Loudly. And a bit shrilly.
I....um...I....well....not often lost for words. But by God, that was amazingly shite.
Mute but heartfelt acknowledgement
Of manly achievement - "sorry old chap I I - I suppose I just couldn't face it" - pours gin - rattles ice loudly - stares out of the window with left side of face working furiously and finger nervously flicking the safety catch on a services revolver
Is the revolver for you or me?
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.
And listening to that track.
sitheref2409 just now:
Tell you what
I'll shoot myself and we can take it from there. At least I won't have to listen to it.
EDIT - I forced myself to listen to it. Its more a shite calypso than reggae but I'm still permanently traumatised.
I wish my sacrifice had not
I wish my sacrifice had not been in vain.
Word failingly awful, eh! What in the name of all that is good and holy made them do it?
Money. Desperation.
Moral laxity. Lack of taste. A sudden and inexplicable mania. I guess that's something we'll ... never know
Altogether now
NOOOWWOOWWWOOWW...Night Time Is Here
Oh the next track is up - just to prove I got that far. The Long And Winding Road. That is a lovely relief.
The Candyman
Played this on his BBC London show yesterday. It could account for the queue of stationary traffic on the approach to the Dartford crossing I was stuck in at the time. I know I was stunned by it's awfulness.
I heard him play it, too.
Do you think he read this thread..?
*Waves*
It's undeniably frightful...
... but it's more "dodgy misguided calypso" than reggae surely? Rather like Supersonic Rocket Ship by The Kinks, most of Benny Hill's musical output and this dreadful thing by Robert Mitchum.
Well...
...I did put 'reggae' in quotes...
Whatever, it's just as offensive and patronising a stab at the music of the West Indies as the song in your OP, surely?
Oh goodness yes.
I'm indulging myself with pedantry is all.
Shame and Scandal
I seem to remember there was an awful lot of cod calypso around at the time.
Step forward, Mr Lance Percival…
I do love that song!
I know it's naff and all that, but it makes me smile. Madness did a very good version a few years ago, if memory serves.
There are several 'proper' versions
of Shame & Scandal from the 60s (including one by Peter Tosh & the Wailers). Here's what could be the original by Shawn Elliott.
I'm surprised the HJHs Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
has got this far unscathed... :-)
(Only teasing...)
Thanks for nothing
I've now got that crock of shit running through my mind and it will probably stay there for days.
The song's a gem......
....it's only 60s dodgers who don't like it.
Made because of a black musician's fondness for using the phrase.
Witness the queue of black artists from '68 through to the early 1970s who stepped up to cover it.
'They' liked 'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da'.
Jimmy Scott
The Ob-La-Di title was inspired by a phrase used by Nigerian conga player, erstwhile Georgie Fame's Blue Flame and Beatle associate Jimmy Scott.
He played with The Stones at Hyde Park and later joined (believe it or not) Bad Manners.
genuis!!
i watchedit all transfixed!!! where can i buy this, my mate Ian would in all probable doubt love this!
Presumably this is
the Tomb of the Unknown Reggae Song.
I'm suprised
that 10CC have got away with it so far on this thread.
This has one foot planted firmly either side of the line marked good/cringeworthy, with more than a hint of good old 1970's racism that seemed to be acceptable at the time but oh so cringeworthy now.
Not sure I buy the racism thing in Dreadlock Holiday
Surely, the character in the song is being mugged on the streets of Kingston and is trying to ingratiate himself with the muggers?
I think the problem was that it was the time of RAR
To put it mildly they weren't surfing the zeitgeist with an innocuous enough song about "black men being muggers and black women wanting sex" - which was the NME view. They got SLAUGHTERED in the press
And yet it's not a million miles away from
Ver Clash's Safe European Home - other than one is telling a true tale and the other is using characters. The nub of both of them is "I went to Jamaica and got mugged for being a White tourist"
Oh yes dead on
Nothing to do with fairness, its just the way it went. Pity, 10CC were fab (don't like that song at all though)
Herbie Flowers...
...may have been a repeat offender, if he was involved in Sandie's thing and this. So... why was reggae some kind of joke circa 1969-72 then?
Great
bass playing though
It was certainly seen as a joke by..
"Heads" at the time, and not taken seriously by any music pundit at all until "The Harder They Come" was released and Bob Marley emerged.
Indeed...
...so lets have some more! This is the only clip I've seen of John Williams (on the left of the shot) playing an electric guitar - and one of those 70s punky ones at that (a Gibson Explorer?). Also, the bloke from Curved Air on Harpsichord - who left after the first album...
I apologise for the total lack of cod-reggae content in this clip.
Not an Explorer
It's a late 70s Gibson RD Artist. This was one of a series of ill-fated and short-lived solid guitars Gibson launched in the 70s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_RD
My confidence...
...that someone here would leap in with the correct info was well placed, Moje!
I've never seen that design before - dare I say, I LOOKS quite attractive. But obviously it was no good...?
Like so many
of Gibson's (and Fender's) attempts to re-invent the wheel, this guitar never really caught on and quickly disappeared.
It may have been fine as an instrument, but it didn't capture the imagination of very many players.
Eventally the big companies gave up trying to compete with the new pointy metal guitar makers and realised what the rest of us knew all along: in terms of design, 50 year-old Les Pauls, Strats, Telecasters etc couldn't be beaten, so they went back and really began to market them with a vengence once again.
I may be wrong here, but
wasn't one reason why the Gibson RD didn't catch on the fact that the instrument was so HEAVY. No wonder John Williams is sitting down to play one in that clip of Sky: you had to be an Olympic weightlifter to actually walk around with one strapped on.
Duco..
..have you ever picked up a Les Paul?
I'm a big guy and a night behind one of them would cripple me
Somehow this slipped my mind
The Beatles done cod-reggae style by the the "West Country Beatles" in 1976
Stackridge - Hold Me Tight
Now That's What I Call.....
....My Definition Of Beautiful.
The one on the left.
Though after a few in the King Willy on a Friday night............
I like that a lot
Nothing wrong with reggae rhythms - it's cod accents and attitudes that are so very wrong.
Never listened to Stackridge before (dons tin hat), but now I will. Soft spot for the Korgis though...
Surely...
that's Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee?
Led Zeppelin vs Elvis vs Reggae!
Genius or Rubbish? You decide!
Mind you, Zeppelin themselves have form...
(By the way, what did happen to Rosie & The Originals)
Bryan Adams - Reggae Christmas
Look up the definition of "crock of shite". It is this track.
Too hideous to post a link to.
For the love of God
Would you people PLEASE stop!
I can't help myself. I know, I've been warned. But you post the link; you post the video; you say it's horrible. I HAVE to watch it.
And now I'm a ruined man. A shell of the rock loving folkie I used to be. And, dear Massive, right now I blame you.