40 Year Itch : The Dream of Amsterdamee

[Purchase with Carl And The Passions So Tough]

After more than ten years of celebrating Southern California, living in Southern California, recording in Southern California and going crazy in Southern California, The Beach Boys ( even Brian Wilson!) gathered their wives, kids, technicians and hangers on and moved to the Netherlands for an expensive but apparently productive year.

From Creem Magazine

The result is Holland, released January 8, 1973, the band's last studio album for more than three years. You can take the Boys out of California but apparently you can't take California out of the Boys. The centerpiece of Holland is a three song California trilogy highlighted by Al Jardine's cowpokey if not slightly redundant "California Saga: California" which became a Top 40 hit in the UK.

There's much better stuff on Holland. Carl Wilson's "The Trader" shows his terrific contributions on 1971's Surf's Up ("Feel Flows", "Long Promised Road") were no fluke. The highlights both come from Brian Wilson and friends. "Funky Pretty" is the deep cut. Listen closely. Five of the seven band members ( Carl, Mike, Al and the new South African members Blondie Chaplin, Ricky Fataar ) contribute lead vocals as synthesizers swoop and wail in the background. Genius at work!

When the Boys returned from the Netherlands with Holland, Dave Bursyn at Reprise Records rejected the album because he didn't hear a single. It was Bursyn who got Brian Wilson in a room with his Smile collaborator Van Dyke Parks. Together, with a great deal of credit apparently belonging to Parks, they finished an old Wilson song called "Sail On Sailor". Drummer Dennis got the first crack at lead vocals. He did one take and then left the studio to go surfing. Carl tried to sing the song and, while it was a passable effort, he felt Blondie's straight -forward voice best suited the song. Released as a single in 1973 "Sail On Sailor" only managed to reach #79 on the pop charts. In 1975, a re-release of "Sail On Sailor":fared better, reaching #49.

Holland would be followed up in 1973 with a live album. Chaplin and Fataar would leave. The Beach Boys became popular live acts but they wouldn't produce another studio album until the disappointing 15 Big Ones in 1976. To fill in the gaps, record buyers loaded up on those two amazing compilation albums, Endless Summer and Spirit of America.

My Top Ten By Flock of Seagulls's Mike Score

[Purchase]

For the December 23, 1982 issue of Smash Hits Magazine, Flock of Seagulls keyboardist and vocalist Mike Score came up with a list of new wave pop tunes, a White Album classic and two songs from former Be Bop Deluxe guitarist turned experimental art rocker Bill Nelson At the time, the Seagulls single "Wishing" was a top ten hit in the UK and #3 on the US Modern Rock charts. This image comes courtesy of Brian  at Like Punk Never Happened.

40 Year Itch: Madman Drummers Bummers

Click Here To Be Linked To ROIO's outtakes

[Purchase Greetings for $6.99]

 "The rhyming dictionary was on fire."

    Bruce Springsteen

On January 5, 1973 Bruce Springsteen released his debut album Greetings From Asbury Park to both critical acclaim and a mostly uninterested record buying public. And listening to the album with fresh ears, I can see why. Springsteen packs more words per stanza than any rocker before. It's Dylan at double-speed. And it can be jarring for a listener to try to try to keep up. What do some of those lines mean anyway? 

Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
 In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
 With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older, I tripped the merry-go-round
 With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing, the calliope crashed to the ground

In an episode of VH1 Storytellers, The Boss gave us some insight on the lyrics and the way he was writing using word association:

"Madman drummers" : Vinnie "Mad Dog" Lopez ( his first drummer)
"Bummers" : The characters around the Jersey boardwalk
"Indians in the Summer": his little league baseball team as a kid.
"In the dumps with the mumps": another childhood memory, literally being sick with the mumps
"With a boulder on my shoulder": a really BIG "chip" on his shoulder.




These are all lines from Spingsteen's first single "Blinded By The Light" which hit #1 for Manfred Mann's Earth Band  in 1977. Only Manfred Mann and his band pronounced "deuce" in the line "wrapped up like a deuce" as "douche"...leading Springsteen to tell the following story:



Greetings sold only 25,000 copies in its first year of release. Now, of course, we can all hear the birth of a rock n roll genius in the grooves. But it really wasn't until Born to Run became such a huge hit that fans and radio programmers ( especially "Spirit In The Night") rediscovered Greetings.

A Milestone Moment

Not that anybody else gives a shit

40 Year Itch : The Lost Jean Genie Performance

On January 3rd, 1973, David Bowie recorded this performance of "The Jean Genie" live to air the following night on the BBC's "Top of the Pops". Check out Mick Ronson's extended guitar solo and Bowie's extended harmonica solo! Tapes of the show had been wiped and the video was lost for decades before the only man with a copy, cameraman John Henshall (whose fish-eye lens shots are used several times here),  made it available for the BBC to re-air in 2011, much to the delight of rock fans worldwide.

 

"The Jean Genie", featuring its dirty Bo Diddley riff and lyrics that may be about Iggy Pop, was released November 24, 1972 and peaked at #2 in the UK but only #71 in the US. The Sweet's "Blockbuster", released in January of 1973, shares the same beat and heavy guitar sound. But both Bowie and Sweet have all agreed it was coincidence.
     Songwriter Nicky Chinn described a meeting with Bowie at which the latter "looked at me completely deadpan and said 'Cunt!' And then he got up and gave me a hug and said, 'Congratulations...' After all "Blockbuster" went #1.

 

40 Year Itch : Little Jimmy Osmond Rules The UK

 At age 9 years and eight months, Little Jimmy Osmond became the youngest person to ever hit #1 on the UK singles chart. His insipid "Long Haired Lover From Liverpool" stayed at the top of the charts for five weeks there...though it just barely scratched its way into the Top 40 in the US. Because in the United States, most of us are all slightly creeped out by the idea of 9 year old boys being lovers.

Jimmy is now president of Osmond Entertainment and recently did a stint on the UK reality series I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here. Here he is back in THE day.

Meanwhile, does anyone else think Detroit Lions QB Matthew Stafford could be a long lost Osmond?

My Top Ten By Bananarama's Siobhan Fahey

[Purchase Deep Sea Skiving]


Happy New Year! To promote a string of singles that would appear on their the 1983 Bananarama debut Deep Sea Skiving, Siobhan ( shuh-Bone) Fahey gives Smash Hits a list of her ten favorite songs, featuring a heavy dose of American R and B as well as a nod to her Irish roots ( The Wolfetones "James Connolly") and The Sex Pistols whose "No Feelings" they covered in 1982 for a UK film called Party Party. This list comes courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened whose site is in the list on the right.