Category: Music
Two of My Favorite Things
At the NCS conference last August, Colleen Doran and I discussed how, generally, comic book people are more familiar with comic strips than comic strip people are familiar with comic books. Today’s Jumble has an exception to that generality.
Boomer boy that I am, Marvel Comics from the Sixties are one of my favorite things. Another is, of course, the Beatles.
LBJ was notorious for strong-arming legislators into voting his way. What if he had been a flat-out authoritarian president, like Trump? Could he have kept the Beatles out of America?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/could-president-deploy-wartime-law-203749200.html
Mellow in Black and White
I first used ‘Hello, Mellow’ six years ago. It had fewer than 200 views on YouTube. Now, it has more than 500. Progress!
And here’s the white version of Mellow, which is actually yellow.
Small Records With Big Rabbit Holes
Looking at the charts Denro provided in the previous post, I see ‘Nothing But a Heartache’ by the Flirtations. A powerful, catchy record that deserved to do better, it peaked at #34, even lower than ‘Will You Be Staying After Sunday’.
How did a 1968 Psychedelic UK record that didn’t chart in America (was it even released here?) …
… get reworked into the Soul Pop sound of ‘Nothing But a Heartache’?
Here’s the explanation. Its history starts with a former Beatle.
Five years later came this Sugar Pop classic.
Setting the Record Straight on Records
Denro has replied to my recent request for clarification on two favorite singles from ’69 — ‘Will You Be Staying After Sunday’ and ‘Morning Girl’. The big surprise for me was that WABC didn’t play the Peppermint Rainbow’s record. Doing well in Los Angeles and Boston apparently wasn’t enough to compensate for the lack of airplay in New York.
It may have only hit #32 on Billboard, but ‘Will You Be Staying After Sunday’ peaked at #12 on WRKO and #11 on WMEX. I know, because I bought the original 45, probably at Woolworths in the Falmouth Plaza.
Later, when I started getting Joel Whitburn’s books, I was always confused by lower charting songs that I knew were “hits” in my mind. Then I discovered the treasure trove of local Radio Charts!
Of course, if you had stayed in Norwalk and listened to WABC, you were out of luck. It never charted – nor was it apparently played – on WABC. But it was big on local CT stations!
It reached #4 on KHJ – 3 weeks before! The week that WYBSAS peaked on RKO, Morning Girl was making its debut.
1969-04-24 — WRKO 680 AM (Boston, Massachusetts)
The Neon Light Orchestra
Before the Electric Light Orchestra in England, there was America’s Neon Philharmonic. ‘Morning Girl’, was released on April 5, 1969, just one week before ‘Will You Be Staying After Sunday’. The Neon Philharmonic peaked at #17 on Billboard, compared to #32 for the Peppermint Rainbow.
Forty years ago, Tipper Gore put attention on song lyrics in popular songs.
Songs from the Sixties about sex had lyrics that were coded, rather than explicit: “How’d you sleep last night? You’re several ages older now.”
My father would immediately turn off the car’s AM radio when Gary Puckett’s ‘Young Girl’ started playing on WABC. A #2 hit that debuted in March, 1968, what I paid attention to weren’t the lyrics, but the record’s sound.