Were You There?

It's something I sometimes wonder when I see comments on old music on YouTube.  I just saw that sort of comment on a posting of Deep Purple performing "Highway Star" in 1972 on German TV.  It was the common "Oh, music is so horrible today compared to back then!" type of comment you see on all sorts of things.  But before you get too gushy about early '70s popular music(or any other period of pop music) consider the following:

"Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" was a big hit in 1970, with versions by three different artists getting chart action.  Middle of the Road's version was the most successful, making the top fifteen or better in 13 countries, and number one in 6.  Check out the charts for any year and you find stuff you're likely to think of as dross. 

Pay The Girl.

I'm not going to post Rebecca Black's surprise pop hit "Friday."  It's been seen enough already.  All I'll say is that I hope Ark Music, the company behind the song, will pay her for its success.  At minimum they should pay back her family for the money they shelled out for its creation, no matter what the contract they signed says.  Black apparently had no involvement in writing the song, but she at least deserves a chunk of the mechanical royalties(royalties paid out for the sales of the actual recording) being the artist.

Somehow before all this is done I suspect we'll be hearing about a lawsuit involving at least some of the parties.

Scratchy And Scratchy(Foiled Yet Again).

Here I was, going to do a post that included the promo video for Kim Carnes' hit "Bette Davis Eyes," but I can't find an embeddable copy.  So you'll just have to watch it in a separate window.

In any case if you were around to pay attention to pop music in the early '80s you probably know this song.  Trolling around YouTube last night it came to mind and so I found the video for it and watched it.  Looking at the Wikipedia entry for the tune I was surprised to learn it was actually written in 1974 by '60s pop singer Jackie DeShannon and her collaborator at the time Donna Weiss.  It appeared on DeShannon's 1974 album New Arrangement, and as you can hear it had a rather different arrangement.  Carnes' version not surprisingly has a New Wave sound to it given its 1981 release date, and it's not hard to suspect keyboardist Bill Cuomo, who came up with the arrangement, was thinking of Blondie, then at the peak of their career, when he came up with it.  The simplicity of the arrangement and the production used results in a recording that actually sounds quite contemporary.

A number one hit in various parts of the world, it appeared on the album Mistaken Identity, pushing sales of the album to over 8 million copies.  Although Carnes wouldn't see such success again she continued to do well in the music business, including having considerable success as a songwriter.

I suspect the success of the song may have led to the success of another raspy voiced singer, Bonnie Tyler.  In fact as is often the case of similiar sounding singers I wouldn't be surprised if some people think that Tyler's breakout hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was actually done by Carnes.  The promo video for that song you can actually watch and listen to below.

Coverage.

Going about my business today I heard Rupert Holmes' 1979(just barely) hit "Escape," aka "Escape(The Pina Colada Song)," playing over the PA in a shopping mall. Thinking about the song I mused that it's a surprise someone hasn't done a new version and had a hit with it. There have been at least a couple of covers of the tune but they weren't done by artists who would be given any sort of radio push. Plenty of other old songs have been covered and generated contemporary interest. Perhaps it's seen as too '70s-ish for contemporary audiences. Interestingly his song "You Got It All" was recorded by Britney Spears for her Oops!...I Did It Again album, having been a hit for the R&B group the Jets in the late '80s.

Although Holmes is best known for "Escape" he had an extensive career as a song writer, session musician, and recording artist, with "Escape" coming from his fifth album Partners In Crime. He has gone on to write Broadway musicals, the television series Remember WENN, and two novels. But as he reportedly once joked his tombstone will probably be a pineapple because of that song. And he doesn't even like pina coladas.

867-5309=$2.60

If you're old enough to remember the early '80s you may remember the song "867-5309/Jenny" by the group Tommy Tutone. The song peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1982. As you might imagine when the song became a hit that phone number caused a lot of trouble for phone companies across North America. People phoned it to find out what was on the other end, much to the chagrin of whoever had the number at the time. Other people tried to get the number assigned to them by the phone company. Somehow I got thinking about the song today, and having a bit of time while waiting for a bus I dialed the number into a pay phone. When I did the digital display on the phone asked me to deposit $2.60. I have no idea why it did that, and you'll forgive me if I don't potentially waste $2.60 trying it from my home phone to see what happens if you do dial it. I've seen a couple of sites online that claim it's inactive for this area code, 306, so perhaps it's simply set up so that pay phones give out that ridiculous price so people won't phone the number.