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And The Stiffs Just Keep On Comin'

And now, for a daily dose of CanCon: A group formed in Toronto in 1978 had three charting singles, their 3rd a remake of "Happy Together" in 1987 done in their usual acapella style only reached #75 on the US charts. The Nylons' other charting singles fared better, "Kiss Him Goodbye" at #12 on the U.S. charts, and their first "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" which was a Canadian stiff, only making it to #99.
 
"Toast And Marmalade For Tea" by the Aussie band, Tin Tin. It peaked at #20 in '71. Heard when new on KB and WNIA, it's understandably rarely if ever played these days on any Classic Hits or Oldies station, but it seems fitting given the recent goings on.
 
Rusty Bridges said:
"Toast And Marmalade For Tea" by the Aussie band, Tin Tin. It peaked at #20 in '71. Heard when new on KB and WNIA, it's understandably rarely if ever played these days on any Classic Hits or Oldies station, but it seems fitting given the recent goings on.
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I hope they had their turntables sped up when they played it. You're correct about it being appropriate as a dirge for Prince Philip.
 
Radknowski said:
If you thought this post might be be about stupid CEO's and greedy COO's, sorry to disappoint you.

No, this is another one of my goofy not-so-late-night posts about music. Unlike a previous post on the same topic, Genny pounders and paint thinner fumes play no part in this post. Not that this will make the post any better than the last music post.

I'm thinking about songs I heard on the radio over the years that were flat out stiffs, turntable hits or m id-chart hits. They weren't bad songs, in fact, some of them are my favorites... I even bought a few. But for the most part, some of the songs I'm about to describe might be thought of as stiffs.

Let's start with a song that brings back memories of being marooned at camp in the Poconos, listening at night to what probably was WABC, but could have been WARM Scranton or WILK Wiles Barre. I don't think this one made it on KB. It was 64 or 65 and "Mixed Up Shook Up Girl" was playing on my Zenith 8 transistor AM only radio. Patty and The Emblems sang the song and I thought she had a glorious voice. I also dug the horns. This is one of those songs you'd like to hear covered these days but only by a woman who can belt it out with a ten ton voice and do it justice.

Only last year, while walking through a shopping mall in Oneonta, New York did I hear this song again and it stopped me in my tracks. You know that slogan that oldies stations used every three minute, "Good Time, Great Oldies?" It was an immediate zone-out to the scent of mountain pines, cold showers (because the only hot water was in the kitchen) and all too heavy pancake breakfasts every day for a week. What a great sensation!

Next up, "Morning Girl" by the Neon Philharmonic, from around 69 or 70. This is one of those ersatz hook-up tunes that made guys wonder who the girl in the song might have been and what she looked like... just before turning it off. I liked the harpsichord intro and the over-orchestrated outro which was played by members of the Nashville Symphony. The lyrics were sappy.

Everybody knows Edwin Starr from his 1970 monster, "War" ("What is it good for? Absolutely nothin', huhhh! Say it again!"), but Starr also had a groovy little tune in 1965 called "Agent Double-O Soul." This song is full of bravado and it's a hoot. When I first heard it, I thought it was from the sound track of one of those Double-0-7 spy movies... later, when I became a little too hip for the room, I thought it was a parody. I've accepted that it's just a song. And a cool time piece song at that.

Then, there's a silky little song called "Suavecito" done by Jorge Santana, one of Carlos Santana's brothers playing with a group called Malo. This song may not have impressed many people, but I think its groovy latin riff and arrangement makes it a good cruisin'-late-at-night-with-the-windows-down tune.

"More" -Kai Winding. One of those songs that parents didn't mind listening to when it played on their kids' favorite Top 40 station. This song isn't any where near as aggressive as those great Ventures instrumentals, "Walk Don't Run" and "Perfidia." It's more uptempo than Santo & Johnny's elegant "Sleepwalk" and it has a similar drive as the Toronado's "Telstar." It just occurs that I've riffed through five pretty cool intrumentals in this paragraph. Here's number six, "Apache" by Jorgen Ingmann (and his guitar). The subtle flip-back on the guitar strings on the intro gives me the chills. It's just that cool.

Todd Rundgren has always been one of my favorite writers, producers and vocalists. Not a great voice, but a great singer-interpreter of lyrics, usually his own. I'd put him in the Marvin Gaye category in this regard. "I Saw The Light" is one of those absolutely superb energetic intro songs that all jocks like to talk up and then feel guilty about talking over atruly great part of the song. And does it ever sound great coming out of a jingle! This is a song that also had one of the better KB Pop Tops. "Hey there bay-bee, guess you're just listenin' to KB..."

"All I Want" Toad The Wet Sprocket. This is a song that was a hit around 1991. It has a neat cord progression (or what I think is a cord progression, I'm not a musician) and I always associate it with picking up a good friend (who has four college degrees) from re-hab and bringing him home after he falls off the wagon (again.) While listening to the song on a Rochester FM station, we both sing the chorus, "All I Want" and he modifies the lyrics and sings "is one more brew" then says introspectively, "I wish I could drink only one," and continues with the AA mantra, "but one's too many and a hundred's not enough." Last I checked, this guy is sober and teaching at one of the colleges. His students don't know how lucky they are to have this guy imparting information to them.

"Voices" -Russ Ballard, around 1983-84. Didn't even break the Top 100, but what a neat arrangement and driving bass, nicely married to a crisp drum in this song. Horns in the bridge and on the outro. It was used in an episode of Miami Vice, that "MTV with cops" program which feature Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas... high powered speed boats and lotsa ladies with very little clothing.

That's it. Hope you've enjoyed the ride. This is where I get off. Feel free to add to the list or rip the writer. Yeesh, these songs are so all over the road that I may have started another Legends thread.
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Most of these I play either at car shows or our LPFM show.
 
JimMcGrath said:
Personally I really think this is a key to a wealth of music for "oldies" stations. Take the context that a song was released in originally. Highly charged singles competition, many artists that were tilling the same soil, could have been the last in a ton of releases at the time and never worked properly, could have been looked down on by the company for all sorts of different reasons including ego clashes, it's the B side, the list goes on but revaluation of music beyond the Billboard and Cashbox lists would open the format up to some great music. Now that tapes from a session can be on one release some one has to go back and listen again or "no hit wonders" at least reviewed. Revisionist history in this case is not a bad thing. If an artist recorded many gems in one day playing the others now would make a format actually sound fresh and new. IMHO. Hidden gems would be a nice daily feature that may lead to sales (again) of a CD release or a download sale.
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I did this when running a high school radio station. Being noncommercial, we had a lot more leeway and freedom. It makes for fun radio!
 
Dave “The Rave” Kapulsky does a syndicated show called Relics And Rarities” that mixes solid gold favorites with music you may have never heard before. It was a staple on my former station. He’s by far not the only one doing this, especially on internet stations.
 
It's nice to see the thread back. I'm not going to go back through the 97 pages, but I don't recall Donald Fagen's "IGY" from "The Nightfly." It got airplay on album-oriented stations in the early '80s while Steely Dan was on hiatus. It was the most commercially successful single from "The Nightfly," which got great reviews and sold well but got limited airplay. Here's the video:

 
Anyone remember "Look Out Girls, Here we Come," by Dino, Desi, and Billy? It may have gotten a grand total of 3 spins on WYSL.

And whatever happened to Mike Radknowsi anyway? Is he still painting houses?
 
SirRoxalot said:
It's nice to see the thread back. I'm not going to go back through the 97 pages, but I don't recall Donald Fagen's "IGY" from "The Nightfly." It got airplay on album-oriented stations in the early '80s while Steely Dan was on hiatus. It was the most commercially successful single from "The Nightfly," which got great reviews and sold well but got limited airplay. Here's the video:

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Let's not forget the song, "The Nightfly" itself: an homage to a certain mythic genre of radio personality. It's a tale of the lonely, lovelorn overnight guy taking calls and spinning jazz. The cover art evokes exactly that guy. "With jazz and conversation from the foot of Mount Belzoni."

"You say there's a race of men in the trees
I wait all night for calls like these."

It's a great serenade to any of us with "Midnight - 6" on our resumes!
 
I was living in Rochester during the summer of 1975. Recall hearing “A Friend of Mine is going Blind” by John Dawson Read. I loved the song enough to buy the album but I definitely think it deserves to be on the list.

My apologies if it was already mentioned earlier in the thread.
 
Try this one on for size: Written by Jackie DeShannon, the Searchers "When You Walk in the Room" peaked at #35 in late 1964. It's a stiff that shouldn't have been. DeShannon's version of the same peaked at #99, so this would be a double stiff (that shouldn't have been.)

Within a few months, the Searchers would follow this song with the bar band favorite, "Love Potion #9," a re-make of the Clovers "race-music" hit from 1959, which peaked at #23 on the pop charts.

"When you Walk in the Room" is one of the many early 60s songs that have great lyrics and offer legacy bands that were raised on 60s pop and rock an opportunity to pay tribute to their roots during their live shows. The production and arrangement are clean and tight and give Mike Pender ample space to show his range and emotion.

 
Rusty Bridges said:
Try this one on for size: Written by Jackie DeShannon, the Searchers "When You Walk in the Room" peaked at #35 in late 1964. It's a stiff that shouldn't have been. DeShannon's version of the same peaked at #99, so this would be a double stiff (that shouldn't have been.)

Within a few months, the Searchers would follow this song with the bar band favorite, "Love Potion #9," a re-make of the Clovers "race-music" hit from 1959, which peaked at #23 on the pop charts.

"When you Walk in the Room" is one of the many early 60s songs that have great lyrics and offer legacy bands that were raised on 60s pop and rock an opportunity to pay tribute to their roots during their live shows. The production and arrangement are clean and tight and give Mike Pender ample space to show his range and emotion.

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Pam Tillis took the song country in 1994. It was no stiff, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard country chart.
 
Thanks for refreshing my memory. Tillis did an admirable job on the song, instilling a country flavor that serves it as well as the pop flavor of the original ... and incorporating the understated and elegant theatrics of a pulchritudinous Jackie DeShannon in this black and white original:
 
Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but there's an internet station on Live365 that is dedicated to exactly these sorts of songs: "Oh WOW! Radio"

live365.com

Oh Wow! The Songs Radio Forgot - Free Internet Radio - Live365

None of the hits, ALL of the time - over 1680 titles and many more to come!The songs radio forgot - overlooked Top 40 tunes from the '50s to the '80s.UPDATED WITH NEW SONGS EVERYDAY! We are the Museum of Forgotten Hits! Feedback at [email protected]://rockradioscrapbook.caSongs...
live365.com live365.com

"None of the hits, all of the time!"
 


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