Synth-pop was new and exciting once. To appreciate the music of the High Eighties, you have to get the freshness, the sense of possibility opened up by synthesisers. Some of it was a bit thin, a bit tinny, but at its best it had an energy, a zip. One of its best practitioners was Vince […]
Category: Single
It is a misfortune perhaps unique in the whole of popular music. Barry Crocker was an Australian pop crooner in the early 1970s: something in the style of Tom Jones or Englebert Humperdinck. He must have sold truckloads of records, because it is a rare op-shop in Australia which does not have several of his […]
I had known Gene Pitney for his gunslinger ballads, especially the themes to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and Town Without Pity. He was also a successful songwriter, whose material was performed by Roy Orbison, Bobby Vee, The Crystals – heaps of others. Many are jaunty pop or country numbers with no lyrical pretensions: […]
I had an eating disorder when I was a teenager. I didn’t think of it that way. I just believed that I was fat, and that it was thus a really good idea to not eat breakfast or lunch. I spent a couple of years like this. I spent the day with a dull ache […]
Billy Vaughn was an American multi-instrumentalist and band leader, who had success in the 1950s and 1960s. These were days when a hot dance band could earn a living playing instrumental versions of popular tunes. It was the quality of the playing and the inventiveness of the arrangement, rather than new material, which was the […]
It’s always exciting when, flicking though a pile of dusty old singles in an op-shop, you see the distinctive apple of Apple Records. This was the short-lived but famous label which was established by the Beatles, and which just about bankrupted them. It remains one of the great label designs: simple, memorable, imaginative. The A […]
I will admit to having low expectations when I picked up this single. The name Jive Bunny, and the image of said bunny in a Hawaiian shirt aboard a Polynesian war canoe – not promising. Apart from anything else, rabbits are a major pest in Australia. Anyone who grew up in a rural area here, […]
Six degrees of separation between Dr Barnardo and John Travolta. Thomas John Barnardo was an Irish philanthropist. While training as a doctor in London in the 1860s, he became aware of the miserable plight of the many homeless children in the city’s slums. He established the first of “Dr Barnardo’s Homes” for children in that […]
I live near Geelong, a regional city which is a bit down on its luck at the moment. It used to be an industrial town, but the industries have closed, or will do soon. There are other ways to prosper besides making cars or smelting aluminium, but the transition isn’t easy. Making things harder is […]
What do the following songs all have in common? Leo Sayer: “When I Need You” Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias: “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” Diana Ross: “When You Tell Me That You Love Me” The Pipkins: “Gimme Dat Ting” The Hollies: “The Air That I Breathe” Along with dozens of other successful […]
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