Tag Archives: Music

Sugar, Sugar

Sugar, SugarSugar, Sugar was a pop song by The Archies that I heard the other day and realised that I had not heard it since the 1960s.

The song was one of those strange songs that you never thought would be a hit since it was not recorded by the proper pop group. Like the Monkees, the Archies were a manufactured pop group and the track was produced, in fact, by unknown musicians in the studio. The song was written in 1969 and recorded in the same year and, as is often the case with unusual records, it caught the public imagination and was released all over the world

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Vintage Shops: Retroporium

Retroporium on EtsyIn our occasional series highlighting vintage shops we like to feature some Etsy shops if we can as these are usually good value and seem to contain some of the things other shops miss. Aside from that, both Avril and I enjoy looking and buying online and my experience with Etsy shops has always been a positive one.

The shop today is the aptly named Retroporium, a British run shop offering a variety of vintage wares. Of particular interest will be the vinyl records from the 80s and earlier. Although not collectors ourselves (we already have far too little room) we saw, from an earlier period, Crosby Still Nash and Young, the Hollies (He Ain’t Heavy) and everyone’s favourite Simon and Garfunkle. For collectors of what is fashionable now and, more importantly, what will become collectable in the decade to come, this is worth a look. Continue reading

Summer In The City

Summer In The CityThis is the ‘Hot town, summer in the city, Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty’ song that is a classic now and which still seems to crop up on the radio once or twice a month in the summer.

It was a big hit in 1966 for John Sebastian and ‘The Lovin’ Spoonful’. The song was written originally as a poem by John Sebastian’s brother Mark while the instrumental in the middle was added later by Steve Boone, bassist with the Spoonful. If you get the words from the internet you can see just how good a poem it was as well as a song, although it’s hard not to fall into the rhythm of the song as you say it. Continue reading

Pamela, Pamela by Wayne Fontana

Pamela, Pamela by Wayne FontanaMy reason for choosing this track is that I like it and it happens to be the first track of the album I have sitting on the desk ready to play.

Pamela, Pamela was a great song sung by Wayne Fontana whose real name was Glyn Ellis. Wayne Fontana was born in 1945 in Manchester, England, and his group ‘Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders’ were big in the 60s, recording and releasing this song, I think, in 1966. Continue reading

Music, song, pop, 1960s, beatles

One of the most exciting songs of the 1960s, the Beatles with ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. It’s a simple song but a good one and one that sounds much better performed live.

The early Beatles songs had a lot of flair and drive to them and can really sound alive when they are performed and this song is no exception. The idea for the lyrics are believed to have come from Paul as he was driving home one day, the music being added later in one of their usual music collaboration sessions.

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House Of The Rising Sun

One of the most recognisable and remembered songs of the 1960s that still sends Goosebumps up my spine when I hear (or play) those opening notes.

It’s a song, an ‘if-only’ song, about a house said to be in New Orleans in the USA. No one knows who wrote the ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ and the oldest recording is from 1933 by folksingers Ashley and Foster and from here it was collected by Alan Lomax and passed into that vast common pool of similar songs. In fact, it’s probably a lot older and may well have been spawned from other similar folk songs brought to the United States.

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A Lover’s Concerto

A great song from 1965 written by the famous and prolific American songwriters Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell and recorded by ‘The Toys’ in 1965.

‘The Toys’ were a Jamaican girl pop group formed some four years earlier and consisting of Barbara Harris, Barbara Parritt and June Montiero all of whom were born between 1944 and 1946. The Toys worked well with Linzer and Randell and recorded many of their songs between 1965 and 1968 which is when they split.

This song, A Lover’s Concerto, was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, doing well in the Billboard charts as it did in the UK. It was also recorded in what I think, personally, is a better and more polished version a little later on by the The Supremes.

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The Beatles First Time At The BBC

The first ever time the Beatles walked into a BBC recording studio was at the Playhouse Theatre in Manchester, England on Wednesday, 7th March 1962 before a live audience to perform on ‘Teenager’s Turn’, a regular radio pop music show.

Interestingly, the Beatles’s manager, Brian Epstein had insisted that they wear ties and suits to look smart and this was to set the Beatles’s look for the next few years of appearances in public. It also set the ‘standard’ look for most groups at the beginning of the 1960s and helped influence the way teenagers dressed.

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