Singles Released This Week Years Ago

 

Another eclectic journey through decades of chart hits and long time not played songs for your pleasure.

1976: Stevie Wonder

1965: Crispian St. Peters

1976: Flamin Groovies

1982: The Kinks

1984: Tears For Fears

1964: The Righteous Brothers

1966: The Monkees

1975: Bob Dylan

1975: Blues Brothers

1980: The Clash

1978: The Records

Singles Released This Week Years Ago

 

My weekly ride through music history continues with some all time classics.

1977: Elvis Costello

1977: Sex Pistols

1977: Garland Jeffreys

1969: Neil Diamond

1971: Carole King

1971: Marvin Gaye

1967: Cream

1971: Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway

1979: The Records

1985: Fine Young Cannibals

1969: Sly and the Family Stone

1959: Sam Cooke

1988: Patti Smith

When Power Pop Met Punk

 

I am not the one looking for samplers about an era - especially when it is about the time music turned from pub rock met punk. But another Kids On The Street another superb compilation by Cherry Red records is one of them you can listen to and bringing back memories from ages ago. I don't have to tell much of the artists, so just enjoy these songs once again.

Wah! Heat - Don't Stop The Cracks  

The Records - Girl

Echo and the Bunnymen -Do It Clean

The Membranes - The Sound Of The Suburbs

The Jam - Boy About Town

XTC - Towers Of London

Boomtown Rats - Diamond Smiles

Who's Afraid Of The 80's? Final

A lot of work to be done these days in the office. I am coming home from work, sit down and watch a bit of the Olympic games and no time muse to continue this blog like you used to have. So here are the last songs of one of the best new compilations of the late 70's presenting new music. You can range these songs as power-pop or fast rhythm 'n' blues but anyway they didn't lost it attraction to me after all these years.

Enjoy.

Who's Afraid Of The 80's? Pt 3

Listening to this almost 40 years old record memories came back to these days. This record was unique to these days. Seldom had a record that gave me an overview of what music could be. It was a bunch of styles all over genres and made me searching for more of this.

It was the first time I listened to electronic music and it was far away of my musical favourites. Human League introduced me to what electronic music could be. Using simple chords and adding hypnotic hooks they made a classic song and they had to match this with their later songs.

Human League - Empire State Human

This record brought me also to bands playing classic rock. I loved them from this song on, bought the older vinyls of their first band Kursaal Flyers and their later albums. They got little success with Starry Eyes a few years later. I still remember them as one of the best and forgotten pub rock bands.

The Records - Girl

There were a few classic and almost perfect pop songs on this record. One of them was by Cowboys International an almost forgotten band which never made a big success. Their first full length record The Original Sin is still a classic in late 70's British pop movement. Later lead singer Ken Lockie appeared as a background singer by the early Simple Minds.


cowboys international - aftermath von ShaniquaOsburn

Teenarama

It's the last day of the working week and a massive heatwave will arrive today. So what to play on a day like this? I think it's time to play another power-pop band that is forgotten nowadays. The Records were formed by Will Birch by the ashes of the Kursaal Flyers. Their 1979 record Shades In Bed was one of my favorite albums in these days long gone by. Based in the tradition of The Kinks they wrote a couple of great power-pop songs that stood the test of time. Sadly they didn't got the success they should have.

The Records - Teenarama
The Records - Starry Eyes

What Happened To Power Pop # 1

Last week Adam over at Bagging Area posted a song by The Posies. It is a great song and it's typed by journalism as power pop. There is no legal definition about what is power pop. For me the definition is something like this: It distinguishes itself by short '3 1/2 minutes of pop songs', easy arrangements, strong melodies and striking riffs. If I look back to songs that are close to power pop there are so many songs that come up to me. Therefore it might be a good idea to start a little series of songs that I would call power pop-like or that I would think that they are close to this genre (even if they are famous a lot of years ago). So look forward to what will appear in this series.

As I finished my little series about pub rock a few weeks ago and as I decided to let it follow by a journey through power pop I asked myself which song I should feature to the start of this new series. I came to the decision that I should start with a band that had it's roots in pub rock and then landed in the genre of power pop. The Kursaal Flyers were a band that had a lot of great songs with marvelous melodies backed up with great harmonies. So it is no chance that the leading members Will Birch and John Wicks formed another band after The Kursaals fall apart. The Records released their first record in Shades in Bed in 1979 and showed their quality in songwriting. They made with this record a pure pop masterpiece and the songs Starry Eyes and Teenarama come very close to the perfect pop song (Allmusic described it as a the main example of British power pop of the 70s). I love this record since I bought it on vinyl added with a 12´-inch with cover versions as a bonus. What more do you need sometimes than a song composed and arranged that is nearly perfect. If you listen to Starry Eyes you think this song is well knows to you. Will Birch itself calls him on the website of  The Records an „audaciously circumscribed‚ Do  ,Anything You Wanna Do‘ from Eddie & the Hot Rods“. It's certainty no disgrace to loans from another splendidly song to make it even better. By the way it was a fantastic cover art. A couple lying in black silk bedclothes - she's sleeping in he's wearing sun glasses and smoking a cigarette (after??).

The Records - Starry Eyes

What Happened To Pub Rock # 5

Another remarkable band from the pub rock era were the Kursaal Flyers formed in the early 1970s in Southend-On-Sea. They had some really good material and excellent cover versions but their records sold poorly by missing airplay. They had one hit-single with Little does she know and their member were found after their demise in bands like Eddie and the Hod Rods and The Records. It's a forgotten band but their legacy were a few good songs, always worth to hear again.

Kursaal Flyers - Speedway (live)
Kursaal Flyers - Television Generation
Kursaal Flyers - Little Does She know