If you held a gun to my head prior to stumbling across this lip-synched performance of Mouth and MacNeal’s “How Do You Do” you would have been forced to pull the trigger. Until the song ran for about a minute I had no memory of ever having heard it. Then I realized I had heard it when I was a kid. It’s one of those songs from my youth like Melanie‘s big hit: I can’t hum a lick of it until I hear it. Then I remember too much, and too much about the times in which such songs existed in the Top 40. This is from a time I’d forgotten ever existed. I kind of like remembering it, though.
What’s a song from your childhood and/or a time that you forgot ever existed until recently?
On the other side of the coin, following is a song I wish I’d never remembered. Yet another number from a time I forgot ever existed…
I completely forgot about Simon and Garfunkel’s El Condor Pasa (If I Could), until a few months ago when I downloaded their greatest hits for my mother in law. I like that song. And I find it interesting that even back then he was showing signs of cultural carpetbagging.
The only reason I remember it is because the I’ve heard it pop up on the radio while I was trying to find a good frequency for my iPod. I don’t even know the name of the song or the group:
“Ain’t nothing gonna break-a my stride. Ain’t nothing gonna hoooooooold me down. Whoa no, I got to keep on moving….”
Oh, yeah, I remember that song….
TB
Cold in that studio…
Now I can’t think of songs at all.
Are we headed toward out next installment of Rock’s Unfulfilled Fashions?
Unfortunately, I recall that song too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28KobNbbI2s
Plenty of unfilled fashion ideas and dance moves plus John Oates unknown cousin.
As a kid in the summer of ’69 I remember hearing a big-production showtune-type song on the radio which sounded like it had the following lyric:
“Taking a trip up to Africa, Benny
Hoping the weather is fine.
If you should see a red dog running free
Well, you know he’s mine.”
I thought the song might have been from a movie or something, but it wasn’t all that important because it didn’t rock, so I forgot completely about it and moved onto more important things. A couple of months ago, I stumbled across the tune again on YouTube while checking out some obscure titles on Cashbox. Much to my surprise, the lyric “Africa, Benny” was actually “Abergavenny”, which was also the title of the song. The artist was Shannon (Marty Wilde), a minor English rocker of the late ’50s, and the title refers to a town in Wales. I had not heard the song in over four decades.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjBXBxKE9x0
I recently swapped mixed cds with my 16 year old niece in a cross generational musical enlightenment initiative. The only song I recognized on the disc was that Nobody Gonna Break My Stride song. I chastised her for it but I really blame the parents.
When I told Mr. Royale about today’s post, he immediately started to sing Clint Holmes’ “Playground in My Mind.” I groaned and looked it up on YouTube. But there on the side bar is the true turd that I really had forgotten about until looking at it again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpSv4WiJXyI&feature=related
I don’t know whether to cry or vomit. And now it’s stuck in my head.
Oh man, there are all sorts of fashion, dance, and visual crimes being committed on that clip. I can’t look away – it’s like a wreck. This is worthy of a topic in itself.
Excellent story, tonyola!
Last week I heard this song, which I haven’t heard in 25 years. I never knew who sang it before.
The Members – Working Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLWvSfDoc1k
Also, my parents didn’t listen to rock or pop music, most of what I heard as a kid was from schoolmates (mostly disco, Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder back then) and perhaps “out and about.” So recently when I heard Glenn Campbell’s version of “Sittin’ on the dock of the bay,” I realized that it was this version, and not Otis’, that I heard first and engraved itself into my little-kid mind. That was a weird realization.
Oh my lord! The artists behind that song are visually more gratingly cloying than their song! I feel violated by your repressed memory, ladymiss.
Ay-yi-YI! That “How Do You Do” song had been successfully purged from my memory banks, too, until you — well anyway, thanks a LOT, Mod.
I remember “How Do You Do” from when I was a lad & I still like it. One song that I remember from that time that scared me was Bloodrock’s DOA. I remember turning off the radio when it came on because it was so creepy.
Does anybody remembers the hits of Jim Stafford, who actually was in a high school band w/Gram Parsons, “Spiders & Snakes” & “Wildwood Flower”, which I haven’t heard since back in the day?
Oh cheers Mr Mod, I haven’t heard that song for over thirty years and now it’s lodged in my brain again, I think it took about twenty years to shift it last time, and what’s far worse is the moment I saw you’d posted it Middle of the Road’s Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep came bouncing back as well.
I don’t need to watch the video to check whether I know every single word and na-na na-na, I can remember quite enough of them to last this lifetime.
In the first category, my much-derided habit of listening to Terry Jacks for pleasure was brought on by remembering the Poppy Family’s “Which Way Are You Going Billy?” recently. I also love Melanie, I think the one you mean is Brand New Key.
Our kids really enjoy a compilation I did for them not very long ago which included The Laughing Gnome. They are tiring of it less quickly than it took me to.
Ooh, you posted that while I was writing mine below, I’d say that I’m glad I’m not the only one, although I wouldn’t wish that song on anyone…
Spiders and Snakes was a hit in the UK as well, I seem to remember buying it
That may be the greatest moustache I have ever seen.
For some reason, “How Do You Do” has morphed into “Candida” by Tony Orlando and Dawn in my head. Not a completely forgotten song, but a suitably distant memory.
The trouble for me is that many of my cheese-pop memories feature J-pop artists from the early 70s. Here’s one I used to sort of like as a wee lad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmicbFtt17E
To me the interesting thing about How Do You Do is that I’m thinking I don’t remember it at all, but then the girl comes in on the chorus and suddenly “Oh yeah THAT song.” Then when the guy sings the chorus right after her, it goes immediately back into forgetability.
The punk band I was in circa 1979 did an extremely fast and thrashy cover of “Candida”, in honour of one of the journalists on the local rag, who would occasionally take pity on us and write pleasant things about our gigs. We’d sometimes do “Knock Three Times” as well, on account of it having almost exactly the same riff and it seemed a shame to waste something we’d managed to work out how to play, with the added excitement of having to try to all stop at the same time in mid-song and then start up again.
I like her yellow shirt!
Those are the people that say, “Well, everyone looked funny in the 80’s.”
No, we didn’t. It was just them.
My brother had that Mouth and MacNeil 45. Didn’t we just watch that around here? A black and white one?
My little brother also had this Daniel Boone classic:
http://youtu.be/feegxv4goKo
The Ick Factor is pretty high, but nothing like ladymiss’ link.
And you’re welcome for me sticking that in your ear all day!
You stay away from YouTube, young lady!
YES, that was the exact moment when I remembered the song too!
I was thankful for the cold studio temperature, as mockcarr noted, for allowing me to hang in long enough for this memory.
There is audio with this clip 😉
Count me in as a “third” who only knew the chorus.
Now if i can get that dude’s look together for tmorrow’s party, then I am set
Dude is a-playing a Stick. Tony Levin would be proud.
I have ladymiss & Mr. Mod to thank for this recent dose of repressed memory: http://youtu.be/yPeAL657lnk
Thanx guys!
Hey, how does that guy’s violin snap in two? He’s playing it, and then during a close up of the woman’s face at :37, she looks down and laughs while he looks dismayed. In the next shot, she’s holding the body of it but he has the neck, which he still manages to play beautifully. Great musicianship.
turkey’s done
Partly because I think I have a good memory for songs and also because I’ve been a fan of the Have a Nice Day compilations from the moment they appeared and rendered my cassettes compiled from old 45s and K-Tel records obsolete, I haven’t forgot about any of these songs. But is it solely a function of what I will take to be our more or less similar ages that so many of these come from the early 70s? It seems to me that that era was chock-full of what, for lack of a definitive term, I will call “these sorts of songs.” Oh, and need I even remind you all that Mouth and MacNeal were Dutch?
So you do you know who’s “Mouth” and who’s “MacNeal?”
Up until around 1969-1970, just about the only radio outlet for rock music was AM Top 40. A few lucky cities had “progressive” FM but most of us had only the AM band to listen to. However, the true rock audiences began to divorce itself from AM around the turn of the decade as AOR FM began its rise, and most of the “cool” rock acts had little or no presence on AM. To fill the gaps, a flood of bubble-gummish, non-threatening, and non-challenging pop appeared exclusively on Top 40 radio. Now it’s true that there had always been dumb pop on the radio, but it really took over and dominated during the early ’70s. So what to call this stuff? “AM gum” is my suggestion.
I’m pretty sure MacNeal is the woman, who I read reverted to her real name some time ago and may continue to perform to this day. The big guy, Mouth, died maybe 10 years ago (if very short-term memory is working). I believe he had a replacement MacNeal performing with him at some point before his death. I actually watched a few other videos by this tandem, but none captured the magic of this performance.
CHECK IT OUT: They must have had a puppet in the act too!
Whenever I make a comp of this stuff for someone, I label it “70’s Pop Crap” but I mean that in a positive way. I love the Have A Nice Decade stuff although I feel that it would have really benefited if they had included Magnet and Steel by Walter Egan, It Never Rains in California by Albert Hammond (is there any other song with a higher FPM [flams per minute] Ratio?) and Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves by Cher.
And I was wrong – it was MacNeal who brought in a replacement Mouth, long after they’d split and even a few years after he’d died. Mouth did form a new duo in the mid-’70s with his wife. He was “Big Mouth” by this point. He also did something with Tenpole Tudor, if I’m reading the Wiki entry correctly. I already know too much. Now I need to know more.
Wow, spooky, The Family Happiness went to Abergavenny for a long weekend in the spring and liked it so much that we spent our two-week summer holiday camping there. It’s a lovely little town, gorgeous scenery, and the weather was (with the exception of one stormy night) finer than we could reasonably have expected. I’ve never heard that song, I’ll have to track it down in time for our next trip there.
I was just going to mention Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep. It’s been bothering me for weeks where I first heard that one.
Here’s a YouTube link to “Abergavenny”. The song actually made it into the Top 50 in the US in 1969. I imagine that it was a bigger hit in the UK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjBXBxKE9x0
Lush’s version isn’t too bad. Palatable even.
Ha ha ha ha. I was going to post that. My sister was just saying that she had been watching some VH1 program about bands from the 70’s and that Edward Bear is actually the original name of Winnie the Pooh.
This is the music that power pop was intended to displace.
Thanks for that Tony, it’s quite jolly, isn’t it! Checking wikipedia it appears that it wasn’t a hit at all in the UK, which would explain why I have no memory of it.
Tony’s post about Abergavenny reminded me of a song I hadn’t heard in a long time – it was used as the music on a promotional film for Northampton which used to play on a constant loop on the top floor in the Museum – which may explain why most of the staff stayed at ground level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W52nq58OYsU
That was only the B side, the A side, if you can take the excitement, describes the joy experienced by extraterrestrials landing in that fair town:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xKjGqefH7U
It’s odd that the British ignored that song. It made the Top Ten in Belgium in 1968!
Happiness Stan, a shout out to you, because you alone may recall this horror. My Mom’s family are farmers and this was a big hit with my cousins…This was very popular during the summer of ’76, along with the Muppets (which it resembles).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAh_A7N3_mc
OOOOOHHHH AAAARRRRRRHHHH!!!!
LadyM, no difficulty working out what that was going to be before I clicked on the link! The song is rated very highly by our kids – a timeless gem, still very popular at weddings, funerals and agricultural shows.
They’re still going strong, and a friend whose musical taste and opinion I value highly has assured me without a trace of irony that they are the most enjoyable band he’s ever seen at a festival.
Is there an American equivalent to The Wurzels? I can’t really think of anyone. Sure, there are some one-hit wonders, but for a band to do a string of take-offs like The Wurzels would require a “sense of humour” just not seen on these shores. And did The Wurzels do any original songs?
I just want to go on record that I preferred The Bay City Rollers that summer…
welcome to team mouth & mcneal, mod!
the puppet makes an appearance in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QXyqk9flwk&feature=related
what other song has inspired such a bizarre variety of video interpretations by the original artist?
off topic, but for years i futilely searched for anyone who remembered stuffy durma, a cartoon about a hobo who struck it rich that aired on the wee willie webber show 40+ years ago.
thanks, world wide web…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYICgW7oyDk
I’ve not delved very deeply into their repertoire, but until the death of their founder, singer/songwriter Adge Cutler, they did mainly originals, since then they’ve done mainly adaptations as far as I’m aware.
Parody has been popular in Britain since at least the 12th century, and since the 60s there has usually been one or another pop band having hits with it, some good (The Bonzos), some tolerable (The Wurzels), some who still seem more popular than they deserve (The Barron Knights).
Dread Zeppelin or Hayseed Dixie spring to mind from t’other side of pond, although as far as I can see they tend to be poking fun at the characters they are parodying than the material itself.
Being a music fan in the UK in 1976 felt like crawling through a desert without water. It started with the abomination that is Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of the charts for what felt like forever, KC and the Sunshine Band, horribly syrupy ballads, and to top it all Brotherhood of Man winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Save All Your Kisses For Me. Even to a teenage boy with a chip on his shoulder about the sort of music his younger sisters liked, the Bay City Rollers and ABBA, and – yes – The Wurzels, seemed like light relief from the horrible, horrible, horrible records being played all day long on the radio.
The US did have Spike Jones, though. His parodies were primarily musical. Jone made hundreds of recordings primarily in the 1940s and 1950s and most were brilliant. The man was a genius and his band was full of great musicians.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BavRrRNvz8g
Victor Borge also had a long career of poking fun at mostly classical music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3QejAk4exw&feature=related
Well, we did have this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDNlSpKLEEo
I recalled this once Mr. Royale reminded me of it. He actually owned it.
Mr. Royale also had an experience like this. He would ask people if any recalled a Mexican Little Red Riding Hood that was dubbed into English and featured a person-sized wolf and his skunk sidekick. That wolf totally freaked him out because you could see the eyes of the person wearing the costume. It inspired many nightmares, and soon a painting. No one believed him, was certain he was an acid casualty, until the world wide web…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSNj_gv9mQ4
Dude can play tuba & sing at the same time! Astounding.
Ah, “Mr. Jaws.” This actually got a lot of airplay. My seven year old mind thought that whole genre of “comedy records that used clips from stuff on Top 40 as answers to questions” was so funny.
Know, not so much.