Looks like it’s mid-60’s day at Dangerous Minds. So be it ! Here’s both sides of this moody/self-loathing/noisy/lysergic 1967 single from Minneapolis band The Calico Wall. Looks like there’s next to no information about this anywhere, but have a listen to this glowering beast. It’s perfect for the rainy day here in Los Angeles
Even wilder B-side after the jump…
I know you’ve all grown tired of the “Trololo” meme, but this version brings some new life to Edward Hill’s interweb sensation. Performed on the Moog Etherwave Pro Theremin by Jairo Moreno.
In the future there will be no love, sex will be provided by robots… and we’ll all be listening to eurodisco: “Automatic Lover” a worldwide hit for Dee D. Jackson in 1978. Apparently, the robot vocals are courtesy of another one hit wonder, Baltimora (“Tarzan Boy”).
Via PCL LinkDump
A lovely vintage psych-bossa dream-popper for the waning days of summer, this is evidently The Critters operating under a suitably groovy pseudonym. The layered harmonies are scientifically engineered to accompany the watching of girls as they walk by dressed in their summer clothes until your darkness goes.
Muchas Gracias, Jimi Hey !
This languid and dreamy, heavily phase-shifted late period mid-tempo disco masterpiece was released on the storied Casablanca Records
More after the jump…
Amongst the many gems and oddities being unearthed as part of The Beatles’ Apple Records catalogue and soon to be lovingly re-issued is a funny little single from 1969, never properly released, by an artist named Brute Force (nee Stephen Friedland). King of Fuh (listen below) is a silly, stoney, naughty hippy tale incorporating as many uses of the phrase fuh king as possible. Get it ? Lennon and Harrison (who arranged it) evidently found it hilarious and although they knew EMI would never distribute it pressed up 2000 copies anyway, presumably to give to friends. Who fuh-king knew?
Thanks Kevin Laffey and Rick Potts!
This is what what happens when a fairly decent pop tune gets wedded to an absolutely horrible video. Safety Dance was a big hit back in the early 80s. I remember dancing to it at New York City’s Peppermint Lounge. And on the basis of the song alone, one could assume that the band performing it might be pretty groovy.
But in the era of MTV, for every star that was created, there were several that were sacrificed on the altar of a shitty video. Case in point : Men Without Hats.
The Safety Dance video looks like a cross between an ad for a Renaissance Fair gathering and a female hygiene deodorant…with a coked-up midget and an obnoxiously blissed-out hippie chick who seems to have wandered in from a Grateful Dead concert. No wonder Men Without Hats quickly became men without hits.
I posted here last month about Belgium’s most famous one hit wonder, Plastic Bertrand, he of Ça plane pour moi fame. and now he’s back in the news, being accused of, well, being a punk equivalent to Milli Vanilli! From the Guardian:
If evidence given to a Belgian court this week is to be believed, the man recognised as the voice behind Euro-punk’s anthem had built his acclaim on shaky ground: he did not actually sing the song.
According to a linguistician commissioned by a Belgian judge to examine the original recording of Ça Plane Pour Moi and compare it with a version released in 2006 by Bertrand’s former producer, the singer of the 1977 track spoke with a distinctive twang that would not have come naturally to the Brussels-born front-man. “With the endings of sentences on the tapes the voice can only belong to a Ch’ti or a Picard,” read the judgment, implying the true singer must have originated from north-eastern France, an area which produced both the Picard dialect and the affectionately mocked Ch’ti patois.
It is also the area that produced Lou Deprijck, the track’s composer and producer, who believes he has been vindicated in his claim to be the true performer of the big-selling single. “My Ch’ti patois has proved me right. I am relieved,” he was quoted as saying in Le Parisien newspaper. “I hope I will finally get my rights.” Deprijck, who for the past decade has been pursuing his music career in Thailand, has insisted for years that he was the real singer on Ça Plane Pour Moi, the hit that made it to No. 8 in the UK single’s charts despite being performed in largely unintelligible French.
Roger Jouret – the man behind the Plastic Bertrand persona – vehemently denies the claims.
Read the entire article: Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand denies allegations over hit song (Guardian)
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Plastic Bertrand vs Elton Motello: Jet Boy, Jet Girl vs Ça plane pour moi
Thank you Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!
Some claim the 1963 hit single Sally Go Round The Roses by The Jaynetts is the first recorded psychedelic pop tune. While this may or may not be true, it’s certainly a beautifully hypnotic, circular number with mysterious and whimsical lyrical imagery. It’s also, I’ve discovered, one of the most covered songs ever so I’ve decided to line up most of the versions I’ve found. Play ‘em one after the other or mix and match to make your own trance-inducing rose parade. Let’s begin with the original. I have no proof, but it’s claimed that the drummer on this session was Buddy Miles, later of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies.
Many more roses after the jump…
A wicked little nugget of psych guitar noise in the form of this 1967 single out of Syracuse, New York. As good a candidate for first shoegaze record as any other I’ve heard. What a fabulously fucked up sound !
“let me have some ssssSSPEEeeeed!”
thx Robert Chrysler !
