Non-Hits you couldn't live without

[johnbasalla]

Re: Music we've talked about

I finally heard the two songs that VinylTapeCD shared.

"Theme From The Magnificent 7" by Al Caiola was really good. Sounded very much like a Duane Eddy record, including the strings which popped up in some of Duane's records. Yep. This is a keeper, and I'm going to add it to my collection.

"Younger Girl" by The Critters is, in my opinion, not as good as "Mr. Dieingly Sad". Not as memorable. Still, it's not bad.

 

[johnbasalla]

Here are more cool non-hits, as in ones that never even made the "Hot 100". For the most part, these are all records I took from the radio station. If I didn't take them, they would have been thrown away.

SHAWNE JACKSON - "Just As Bad As You" (1974, Playboy Records). Here's the only '45' in this group that doesn't completely follow the "saved-from-the-trash" theme so common to most of the bombs that I love. This is one really fun, upbeat Pop-R&B piece. Catchy as heck too.
The composer was Domenic Troiano who spent time in The James Gang and the 1973-1975 version of The Guess Who. I liked this record so much, that I asked the record company if I could buy one from them since I couldn't find it in the stores. The company's promoter sent me a free copy.
In 1975 Playboy Records enjoyed their biggest hit with "Fallin' In Love" by Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds, which peaked at #1.

WARP NINE - "Theme From STAR TREK" (1975, Privilege Records... Distributed by Stax Records). This was a perplexing record to receive considering that the TV series had been off-the-air since 1969. It's not a Disco version either. I'd call it space-age Techno-Pop, in other words, lots of synthesizer. Interesting, but not all that good, actually.


TWO MAN SOUND - "Charlie Brown" (1976, Shady Brook Records). Great, happy sing-a-long song. A bouncey beat with "Island"-like percussion.
Most likely recorded outside of the States as it says "English version lyrics by..." and credits the "Original English version" composition" to Benito di Paula. As I re-played this record to refresh my memory, I felt compelled to play it multiple times.

FLAME - "Beg Me" (1977, RCA Records). Here's another winning catchy tune that should have been a hit. Upbeat, aggressive lady Rock and Roll.
On my first set of "Non-Hits you couldn't live without", I posted about a girl group called Mother Trucker. Flame is in that tradition. She says, if her ex-lover wants to get back with her, she wants him to "Beg Me".

VILLAGE PEOPLE - "5 O'Clock In The Morning" (1981, RCA Records). Not able to come up with more super-catchy hits like "YMCA", "Macho Man" and "In The Navy", these Casablanca Records hit makers of the late 1970s tried to make a comeback on RCA in 1981. This promo '45' came with a picture sleeve showing 6 people in the Village. No doubt they were going in a different direction, as this is a downbeat, serious sounding song. It's about a guy who's messed up his love life... "It's 5 O'Clock In The Morning. This city seems so empty as I'm wandering the streets alone...
And now I feel like such a fool because I broke the golden rule, and I hurt the one who loves me." On top of all this, this is a Soft Rock tune with only an ever-so-slight touch of the Disco background from which they came. It's an artistic triumph, even though it wasn't a commercial one.

I have many more tht I can share if you have an interest. Respectfully submitted.

 

[vinyltapecd]

Glad you liked "Theme from the Magnificent 7"...that is possibly my favorite instumental of all time, or at least ONE of my favorites.

Just curious...were you able to listen to the two songs using the file I sent you, or did you hear them somewhere else like YouTube?

 

[johnbasalla]

Re: Answer for vinyltapeCD

I heard the Critters on YouTube and Al Caiola on another sight as I remember the mention of the so-so quality on YouTube. I found a real nice version as I fished around. It was way clearer and had better dynamic range then the YouTube one had.

 

[kenb]

My Summer Love/Ruby & the Romantics from 1963
Gonzo by James Booker from 1960
This Little Bird by Mariane Faithfull from 1965
Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys Do by the Cookies from 1963
Guitar Boogie Shuffle by the Virtues from 1959
It Might As Well Rain Until September by Carole King from 1962
James Bond Theme by Billy Strange from 1964
Mary Lou by Ronnie Hawkins from 1957
Mr. Lucky by Henry Mancini from 1960
Mr. Rebel by Eddie & The Showmen from 1963
Pop Goes The Movies medley by Meco from 1980
Over the Rainbow by the Dimensions from 1960
Spring Rain by Silvetti from 1977

These are probably more like lost hits that never made it to the Top 10

 

[hornet61]

My Summer Love/Ruby & the Romantics from 1963
Gonzo by James Booker from 1960
This Little Bird by Mariane Faithfull from 1965
Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys Do by the Cookies from 1963
Guitar Boogie Shuffle by the Virtues from 1959
It Might As Well Rain Until September by Carole King from 1962
James Bond Theme by Billy Strange from 1964
Mary Lou by Ronnie Hawkins from 1957
Mr. Lucky by Henry Mancini from 1960
Mr. Rebel by Eddie & The Showmen from 1963
Pop Goes The Movies medley by Meco from 1980
Over the Rainbow by the Dimensions from 1960
Spring Rain by Silvetti from 1977

These are probably more like lost hits that never made it to the Top 10

The Virtures and Dimensions have to be considered hits at #5 and #16 respectively..

 

[1st of 5]

I have always asked, on our local market board, why stations insist on wearing out only one or two songs from an album, without playing any other songs, thereby denying the artist and themselves more $$$, if that those extra songs became hits. I have yet to receive a straight answer. When I entered junior high school, I began listening to the entire albums that I started accumulating and realized that there was more to a band than just the single "hit" that played on the radio. When I listen to my personal CDs, instead of tuning into the on air crap, people often ask me who or what I am listening to. They are dumbfounded when they learn that the music is mostly "the other songs" on the albums that they have at home. Who decides these "hits" and what prevents a station from playing "something else" on that album?

Some of my examples:
Nu Shooz-"Don't let me be the one", "You put me in a trance"
Brenda K Starr-"Giving you all my love"
Men at Work-"Highwire"
Kim Wilde-"Say you really want me"
And many more....

 

[johnbasalla]

The prevailing wisdom is and has been since the birth of "Top 40" that people want to hear songs they know and like. Since there's just so much time in a day and so-many "brain cells" available to consume new music, if a station spreads itself to thin, they'll take a hit in the familiarity department. This 'play-the-hits' and 'play-songs-people-know' mantra is particularly noticeable on "oldies"/"Classic Hits" etc... outlets. They never play new music by even top flight core artists. The Beatles put out two new songs in the mid 1990s. Very few played even them! A specialty segment on the weekend to play new music by core artists in "oldies", "classic hits" and "classic rock" would be nice. Some years ago, Chubby Checker put out a new record. Ringo Starr's new CD has some hot stuff on it. Gotta give props to that "Garage" show heard on Classic Rock stations. He plays some new stuff. I heard "Weight of The World" by Ringo Starr from his phenomenol 1992 release "Time Takes Time".

 

[Dave Andrews]

There were a couple more non-hits in the '70s and '80s.

"Isn't She Lovely" by Stevie Wonder got a lot of airplay (and still does) despite never having been released as a single. It got heavy airplay simultaneously with his #1 hit single "I Wish" while that one was on the charts.

"Isn't She Lovely" charted on KHJ in Oct-Nov 1976. I coulda sworn it was a single.
http://socalradiohistory.com/khj/khj590.html

A song that shoulda been a monster hit was "What's Your Hurry Darlin'" by Ironhorse, in 1980. It also would have fit right in with the shoulda-woulda craze of late 1988.

BTW I found that "Haldeman/Ehrlichman" song on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK8Iowe83-A

While I'm at it, I should put the link to Ironhorse's unsung hit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHLvASdV66g

It says 1981 but that's wrong. We got the album at KRCL in 1980.

 

[johnbasalla]

OH! YES! IRONHORSE's "What's Your Hurry Darlin'" IS HOT!! Absolutely it should have been a hit. I got a chance to play it on the Top 40 station I was working at. It was better then the first single "Sweet Lui-Louise". My single says 1980 on it. Ironhorse was a Randy Bachman (Bachman-Turner-Overdrive, Guess Who) group. The writers of "What's Your Hurry Darlin'" are Randy Bachman and Carl Wilson... I assume of the Beach Boys. I must confess that I enjoy Randy's composition style. In 1981 he was in the band UNION with Turner from BTO. There's a hot tune on that LP called "Next Stop London". The song "Mainstreet" got a little AOR airplay back then. Then he put out a CD in the 1990s with his self-titled band "Bachman" and it's all good. Get ready for another list of "Non-hits I couldn't live without" in the near future.

 

[johnbasalla]

It's been awhile, but here are more bomb records that I have in my collection, and really enjoy.

"THE CANCER STICK (Pt. 1)/ ... (Pt. 2) by The Americans of '71 (Bell Records). I don't have to tell you what year this came out. It's obvious.
This is a comical, some might say annoying, R&B-based anti-smoking record. The "song" starts with a guy coughing and then saying "We figured you'd be here". The "refrain", such as it is, is made up of a lot more coughing and hacking (instead of singing) over the music. The lyrics are spoken by Chester Orndorff (no relation to "Mr. Wonderful, Paul Orndorff, I'm sure!) ... "If you give in to that crave, you might dig yourself an early grave". WABQ, an R&B daytimer for many years in the city of Cleveland Ohio, had this record on their Top 40. Hey! What the H..L's this? "Recorded at Nashville Sound, Houston Texas"!!

"SLIP THE DRUMMER ONE by Lunar Funk. (Bell Records, 1972). This Funk band had a modest hit with "Mr. Penguin", an inconsequential novelty keyboard heavy Funk track. This one is lower key and even more inconsequential. Every once in a while they stop the music to say the title, and they do so with a low key delivery consistent with the entire piece. Then the vocalist mumbles "Double up" a lot, along with a few other ad libs.
This one was played on the other R&B station, WJMO. Now, I know my review here seems quite negative, but let me assure you that I like this record. The part where they say the title is the hook, and it works.

"WHO HAS THE ANSWERS" by Andy Kim (UNI Records, 1972). An attempt at a combination Spiritual and Social Comment record. This slow paced, dramatic song starts out by questioning if there's a God and does He have a Son. Then goes into "But when I'm down, I turn to Him". However, it's still hard to get a handle on exactly what the Spiritual view is because the lyric goes on to say: "God made the sun, at least that's what they say" and "Who made the child, that's hungry and black?" Later politicians are brought in for some scorn. Confused is the best description I can give of this interesting, but unsatisfying piece composed by Andy Kim.

"LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW" by Kursall Flyers (EPIC Records, 1976). A Top 20 hit in the U.K., this is a medium-upbeat Pop-Rock piece about a guy who knows his girlfriend is cheating on him. It's actually played for laughs, and is comically over-dramatic, building to a big orchestral finish complete with a faux-religious sounding choir singing "Hallelujah". The verse is spoken while the refrain is sung. One source says that producer Mike Batt was responsible for the orchestra and choir addition.

 

[cyberdad]

Just a few off the top of my head that "live on" in regular rotation on my iPod....

"Spider & The Fly"-Rolling Stones
"Joy"-Mitch Ryder
"Poor Baby"-Cowsills
"Darlin' Baby"-Elgins
"Clock"-Eddie Rambeau
"Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me for a Little While)-Charity Brown
"Harlem Shuffle"-Fabulous Flippers
"Get Away"-Georgie Fame
"Jet Song"-The Groop
"Straight Shooter"-Mamas & Papas
"Day After Day"-Shango
"Amy"-Bobby Darin
"Devil You"-Stampeders

 

[johnbasalla]

CYBERDAD! You hit some hot ones, although some were minor hits.

"Day After Day" by Shango was a favorite of myself and my brother when it came out. It got a good amount of airplay and peaked at #57.

"Devil You" by The Stampeders was the follow-up to the big hit "Sweet City Woman", but only managed a meager #61. Still, I think "hits" of this nature fit into this Non-hits thread simply because they were here and gone so fast. "Devil You" is my favorite Stampeders tune. It's upbeat and aggressive.

Charity Brown's take on "Take Me In Your Arms" was beaten by The Doobie Brothers version.
Still, you are correct. Charity Brown's version is good too, even if it's not as dynamic (imo).

Not every Motown group was guaranteed to make it big. That's what The Elgins prove.

I can't place The Rolling Stones song. I don't remember it as a single release.

The Cowsills piece was almost a Top 40 hit in 1968.


Thanks for playing!

 

[Talk_Dude]

These are in heavy rotation on my MP3 Player that I never (or almost never) hear on the radio:

10000 Maniacs - Because the Night
Al Stewart - Year of the Cat
Alan Parsons Project- Don't Let it Show
Alan Parsons - Some Other Time
Babies - Everytime I Think of You
Bangles - Be With You
Billy Joel - You're My Home
Blood Swest & Tears - I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know
Deep Purple - Child in Time
Donnie Iris - Ah Leah
Fire Inc - Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young
Fire Inc - Nowhere Fast
Frankie Miller - Caledonia
It's a Beautiful Day - White Bird
Jay Hitt - Scarlett O'Hara
Julie Driscoll - This Wheel's on Fire
Leonard Cohen Everybody Knows
Leonard Cohen Hallelujah
Lovin Spoonful Darling Be Home Soon
Mind Garage Reach Out
Neon Philharmonic - Morning Girl
Pandoras Box - Good Girls Go To Heaven
Pandora's Box - Original Sin
Queen - 39
Spirit - Natures Way
Spooky Tooth - Waiting for the Wind

 

[johnbasalla]

You also rarely hear the original hit version of "Because The Night" by Patti Smith. There are a good number of versions of "Everybody Knows" out and about. They're all good. That is an interesting and moody piece of music. "Ah Leah" by Donnie Iris gets a good amount of airplay in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Always has. The Al Stewart and Babies songs you mentioned are my favorite by those respective artists. I've heard the Stewart piece on Classic Rock stations occasionally. Mind Garage sounds familiar. We're they on RCA Records?

 

[Talk_Dude]

You also rarely hear the original hit version of "Because The Night" by Patti Smith. There are a good number of versions of "Everybody Knows" out and about. They're all good. That is an interesting and moody piece of music. "Ah Leah" by Donnie Iris gets a good amount of airplay in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Always has. The Al Stewart and Babies songs you mentioned are my favorite by those respective artists. I've heard the Stewart piece on Classic Rock stations occasionally. Mind Garage sounds familiar. We're they on RCA Records?

I have both recordings of "Because The Night". Smit's was more raw and emotional, but 10,000 Maniac's version from "Unplugged" appeals to me more, mostly because of Merchant's vocals.

Donnie Iris has a fairly good regional following centered on Ellwood City, PA and reaching to Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

The Mind Garage was on RCA, but "Reach Out" was an early single on Morning Glori records before they signed with RCA. It was made around the time that the Vanilla Fudge's radical remake of "You Keep Me Hangin' On" was popular, and is a similar treatment of a Holland, Dozier, Holland song. The Mind Garage is one of the many bands who turned down a chance to play at Woodstock.

Other 60's & 70's songs you seldom heard in the day on the radio and never, ever hear today include "Brown Chestnut Mare" by the Byrds, "Where Were You When I Needed You", by the Grassroots (when they were a fictitiuos studio group backing songwriter PF Sloan), It's a Beautiful Day's song "Bombay Calling", Jefferson Airplane's "Lather" and "Triad", Traffic's, "Paper Sun", and "Crying to be Heard", and Iron Butterfly's "Are You Happy".

 

[cyberdad]

CYBERDAD! You hit some hot ones, although some were minor hits.

"Day After Day" by Shango was a favorite of myself and my brother when it came out. It got a good amount of airplay and peaked at #57.

"Devil You" by The Stampeders was the follow-up to the big hit "Sweet City Woman", but only managed a meager #61. Still, I think "hits" of this nature fit into this Non-hits thread simply because they were here and gone so fast. "Devil You" is my favorite Stampeders tune. It's upbeat and aggressive.

Charity Brown's take on "Take Me In Your Arms" was beaten by The Doobie Brothers version.
Still, you are correct. Charity Brown's version is good too, even if it's not as dynamic (imo).

Not every Motown group was guaranteed to make it big. That's what The Elgins prove.

I can't place The Rolling Stones song. I don't remember it as a single release.

The Cowsills piece was almost a Top 40 hit in 1968.


Thanks for playing!

John....

Thanks for your comments. A few to go with them from my perspective....

"Day After Day"-Shango Here in the Midwest, the only station within earshot of me that played it was KSTT in Davenport, IA (Programmed by Bobby Rich). I don't recall it doing all that well there, although we got quite a few requests for it on our campus radio station. WLS, WCFL, KXOK, and WHB all ignored it...as did smaller market KIOA, WIRL, and KLWW.

"Devil You". I 100% agree with you. I'm in Canada several times a year on business, so this one's in fairly regular rotation on oldies stations up there due to Can-Con rules. You can find a really fabulous hard-rocking live version of this on Youtube recorded at the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) a few years back.

Charity Brown's version of "Take Me In Your Arms" Motown cover is another Can-Con oldies station staple. Chance it could've hit here in '75 had the Doobs not come out with their own version right after she released hers.

"Darlin' Baby" Not sure what the problem was...sensational girl group vocal work.

"Poor Baby" This is actually one of my wife's favorite songs. Here I'll hazard a guess at what the problem was. It was 1968, playlists were getting tighter, and the Cowsills were starting to be viewed as "uncool". Still they did a nice job on this one, as well as the somewhat sappier "In Need of a Friend",which is also on my iPod. Don't remember which followed which!

"Spider and the Fly" This was from the "Out of Our Heads" album, which produced "Satisfaction". Blues tune about an entertainer picking up a girl in a hotel bar. Mick sings...."She was common flirty, she looked about thirty. She said she liked the way I held the microphone". Heard it just about every night on WBZ back in the summer of '65. All but forgot about it until one night about five years ago I was in a Holiday Inn in Nebraska, and heard whatever local band was playing lead off their set with it. It was a surprisingly good version, and I was absolutely stunned to hear it in the setting I was in!

 

[Talk_Dude]

"Spider and the Fly" This was from the "Out of Our Heads" album, which produced "Satisfaction". Blues tune about an entertainer picking up a girl in a hotel bar. Mick sings...."She was common flirty, she looked about thirty. She said she liked the way I held the microphone". Heard it just about every night on WBZ back in the summer of '65. All but forgot about it until one night about five years ago I was in a Holiday Inn in Nebraska, and heard whatever local band was playing lead off their set with it. It was a surprisingly good version, and I was absolutely stunned to hear it in the setting I was in!

That's one of the big differences between someone who works in radio (or is mostly a radio fan) and someone who is a musician. Small time local bands are always looking for good music to play. Even if they write some of their own songs, if they need enough material to fill an entire evening from 10:00 to closing time with only a few breaks, and they don't want to be thought of as a "cover band", they get used to searching through old albums for good songs that the suits didn't decide to push as hits. If you work in radio on any sort of vintage music format and don't want your sound to get stale, then checking out the obscure songs from albums that generated hits is a great way to find good "deep cuts" to spice up your playlist.

People who listen to your station that's playing vintage music, especially classic rock, listen because they like the way classic rock sounds. They aren't just listening for familiar hits like fans of teenybopper stuff on the pop-based oldies stations. If they like classic rock, they'll like songs that they might be hearing for the first time that have the same sort of classic rock sound that they like. Maybe auditorium testing doesn't bear this out, but then again maybe auditorium testing might not be done right. If a classic rock stations makes a big production thing out of playing deep cuts, it might not go over as well as you'd like. But if you just slip good sounding deep cuts into the rotation, you'll find that most of them will go over well and you'll avoid burn-out.

 

[TheBigA]

People who listen to your station that's playing vintage music, especially classic rock, listen because they like the way classic rock sounds. They aren't just listening for familiar hits like fans of teenybopper stuff on the pop-based oldies stations.

I don't know if you can make that generalization. I was at a classic jazz station at one time and if we didn't stick to the hits, the listeners screamed. Duke, Count, and the Prez. Stick to the basics. I did some time at a classical radio station. Whenever we diverged from what we called the war-horses, we got killed by the listeners. We tried modern 20th century stuff, but they wanted Beethovan and Mozart. And nothing too obscure. I was also an oldies DJ and tried to mix in songs that weren't solid hits for the "oh wow" factor, and it became more of a tune out factor.

I learned pretty early on that musicians make up a very small percentage of the radio audience. The vast majority have very simple tastes. If you're at a classic station, be it rock, jazz, country, or anything else, your diversity comes from the scope of the period you cover, not the depth of the songs you play. That's what separates classic stations from contemporary. But both should stick with the hits. That's what made the format classic, and there's no shortage of them to play. There are better ways to keep playlists from burning out.

 

[hornet61]

"and there's no shortage of them to play."

for the 4,000,000,000,000 time.Yes there is a lot of truth to the familiar hits, but listen to rich brothers radio they blend the big hits with the lower 40 beautifully............then everybodys happy.