My post last night about French pop star Alizée elicited a comment from Joachim Mairböck in Germany Austria. (Google translation into English of his blog is here.) Joachim pointed out a YouTube link from Studio 100 UK.
I had talked about Studio 100’s ambitions of expansion beyond Belgium and the Netherlands, yet I’m disappointed that even as they were promoting K3’s tenth anniversary they were auditioning for an English-speaking K3, to be called UK3.
In September, Studio 100 posted a video of Wir3 from Germany with an English overdub. The caption reads “Basic version of U.K audition pop song. Learn the words and the basic dance moves to increase your chance of being chosen. Good luck. Best Regards Peteer”. As often happens, YouTube got the shape of the image wrong, so I’ve corrected it here.
Then, just a week ago, Studio 100 posted the results of that audition, with this caption — “Emily, Lauren and Tahnee, 2 days after meeting for the first time ever, create a decent music video in less than 4 hours. Amazing!”
Well, there it is. The house that K3 built moves on. Karen, Kathleen, and Kristel are now all 30 and over, and it’s time for younger women, who are native English speakers. UK3 looks like just another fabricated fluff girl group, and I couldn’t be less interested. Again I say it’s the people, not the package. Studio 100 got lucky with K3, who were already together before Studio 100 found them. Less than six months ago I didn’t know K3 existed, and now it’s disconcerting to contemplate that they may be getting closer to the end of their run.
All of my K3 posts combined haven’t equaled the online hits to my single mention of Alizée three months ago. Five years ago, Alizée had a mega hit with “J’en ai Marre!” or, in English, “I’m Fed Up!” Is it French vs. Flemish that makes Alizée so popular compared to K3, or is it the way she dishes up sex so shamelessly, yet sweetly? And what is the significance of the cute sailor’s collar and the fanny fish?
I haven’t done a lot of background reading about Alizée, and I’ve watched only a few videos of her doing other songs, but I have to say that Alizée in “J’en ai Marre!” is unforgettable if not sensational, and the song itself is an excellent piece of pop penmanship and production. This performance in French is from Top of the Pops.
K3 found success in going for the kid’s market, and Alizée also took a crack at it, albeit in a more modest costume.
I think it loses a lot in English, so it’s just as well that’s an abbreviated take of the song. The charm just isn’t the same, leading me to wonder if K3’s appeal for me as an American would suffer if their songs were in English?
The introduction to this live performance of “J’en ai Marre!” demonstrates how effectively a simple, well-constructed song can pull in an audience.
I consider Morton Kondracke to be a conservative, but now the GOP attack dogs will undoubtedly call him a liberal, because he starts a recent column this way.
How can the Republican Party rebound? The first step would be to quit letting Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham set its agenda.
I’d add Bill O’Reilly to that list, but Kondracke throws a big blanket over the whole bunch of idiots by saying…
Step 1 is to fire Limbaugh and his ilk as the intellectual bosses of the GOP. They shouldn’t be muzzled, as some liberals want to do by reviving the “fairness doctrine” in broadcasting, just ignored more frequently.
Kondracke may work for Fox News, which otherwise would put him way at the bottom of my list of people to pay attention to, but he wrote a short and sincere book about his late wife, while she was in her final years of Parkinson’s Disease.
Saving Milly, which was made into a TV movie, is now out of print and available for pennies on Amazon. Kondacke was unhappy with the cut in federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, showing he isn’t driven by ideology. He was critical of gay activists for demanding so much money for AIDS research while complaining about having to wear condoms, but he wondered how people without his financial resources manage to care for a family member with Milly’s condition. All in all, Kondracke came across as very thoughtful and not at all driven by an agenda other than the reality of an illness for which there is neither prevention nor cure.
So now Kondracke is telling the GOP what it needs to be told but doesn’t want to hear. They won’t listen, they’ll only attack. It’s all they seem to know.
Today, Charles M. Schulz would have been — yikes! — 86. Twenty years ago, there was a series of Peanuts animated cartoons called This is America, Charlie Brown. I’ve seen most of them and they’re a very good introduction to American history. Unfortunately, the videos are out of print, but they’re available on Netflix. I have some of them on good, ol’ LaserDisc, including “The Mayflower Voyagers”, five minutes of which you’ll find on the embedded video player. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
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I have a special appreciation for the late Norman Smith, aka Hurricane Smith. He had a varied and fascinating career, not only as the Beatles’ first recording engineer at EMI, and as the man who discovered Pink Floyd and produced their first albums, but as a performer in his own right, with his big international hit, “Oh Babe, What Would You Say?”
Rich Phoenix, President of the New Jersey Radio Museum, wrote this remembrance of Norman, that I’m publishing here with his permission.
Nick Smith, Rich Phoenix, Eileen and Norman Smith
I knew the man since 1973, when we met in London where I was on holiday; spent 20+ years in radio trying to make a living. At that point, I was working for a station in New Brunswick, NJ and had gone to the UK for the first time in 1972 from where I brought back a slew of radio airchecks on tape. In the pre-internet days without stations around the world streamed for your convenience, it was like — “fine, you go see Big Ben; I’ll stay in the room and get Radio One, Luxembourg and Radio Caroline on tape!”
Brought home a Radio One aircheck containing “Oh Babe” and I was finished! Knew I had to meet this guy and interview him, and hadn’t even put together that he was the same man with album credits on Floyd’s “Saucerful of Secrets” which I had then owned for years. (There, he was “Norman Smith” — a name like Smith, well, who knew?) Neither had I put it together that this was the Norman Smith mentioned in the Hunter Davies Beatles book.
So, back in New Brunswick, I decided that I would holiday again in the UK in ’73, ‘coz I discovered I loved the place and the American dollar in those days did wonders! By then, Babe was an international hit, and Capitol/EMI were very cagey with me when I told them I was going back to London and wanted an interview. They recommended I contact Chappell, his music publisher?!?, which I did. I wasn’t in my Covent Garden hotel for 24 hours when the desk told me a Mr. Smith was on the phone — wow! Shocker of shockers!! Picked up the phone and, yes, there it was, the trademark raspy but incredibly warm voice bordering on the quality of a seasoned BBC announcer (since he was born in North London, Norman’s speech was impeccable and totally absent any of the many British regionalisms). He invited me up to his office in the EMI House, Manchester Square for an interview.
Over tea, he opened up his entire life to me, we talked the Fabs, music in general and like so many Brits, he had an abiding fascination with all things to do with America and its music (this, again, was 1973). We discovered that we had mutual interest in many jazz artists (some of whom I had interviewed, Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles included) and he opened up about the many, many groups and artistes he had engineered and produced at Abbey Road (which I had already visited in ’72) and about which I could now actually speak intelligently, like ‘what was the deal with that staircase in Abbey Road Two, etc., etc.’ We became fast friends instantly. He was as genuine as the rest of the business is fake — a real gem, bright, funny, would give ya the shirt off his back, and all that. Wow!
1973 was an ideal time to make Norman’s acquaintance. There was so very much going on with the international music scene, and a great deal of it originating from the UK. Without a doubt, Norman Smith is one of the great unsung heroes of the British invasion.
We kept in regular contact over the years and visited whenever possible. Every time we spoke, more and more stories, one of the more telling being that he greatly enjoyed his solo career and the multiple hits (Babe was not a one-hit wonder); but, he said, he would have given it all up if he could have reunited the Fabs. Never heard anybody else quote that from him, but it is something he told me to my face.
I was always after him to write “his book,” which he finally did. It is a great read about a great man! (For some unexplained reason, he even included me in the book, and a practical joke that he played on me one night at his home after we had been down to his local and had a couple of whiskeys!)
He was always an incredibly humble and modest guy about all that he accomplished, but the more that you listen to his recorded work as an engineer/producer/singer/songwriter, the more evident it becomes that, in his time with the Fabs, he was on equal footing with George Martin when it came to being a sounding board, creative force and inspiration for getting their ideas on wax for the ages.
One of Norman’s great moments of triumph — when he sang “Oh Babe” live before a cheering, delirious crowd of fans at the 2007 FestforBeatlesFans on St. Patrick’s weekend, here in New Jersey. It was like the entire ballroom levitated and happily, his wife, Eileen and son, Nick were there to experience it as were my wife, Carla and I. Norman never seemed to believe that the Fabs enjoyed such undiminished adoration over here, or that he and his music were so fondly remembered and “alive,” all these years on, but they were!
Rock’n’Roll!
Rich Phoenix, President, NJ Radio Museum
Programme Presenter, TheAlbumZone, London
Thanks so much, Rich! A brief bit of Norman working with George Martin and The Beatles at EMI Studio 2 can be seen in this silent video from 1964.
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Norman had significant input into the writing of the book RTB Book: Recording the Beatles, by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, and as luck would have it, today Curvebender Publishing sent a mailing announcing the authors will be at the Boston Public Library next week, December 2. This is something I don’t want to miss, and I plan on being there as early as possible. The next night Kehew and Ryan will be at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, where the Beatles made their legendary American debut.
Various news services, including NPR’s website last February, picked up the story that in 1964 there was a comic book that predicted/depicted the first black candidate for American President. In January, this video about the comic book series was posted on YouTube. (Turn down the sound if you don’t like “Switched-On Bach”!)
The man who illustrated those comic books is Joe Sinnott. I took this picture of Joe with his son Mark in New York on Saturday. Dennis provided the comics.
