sixties music: the bottom ten

Ten years ago, I published a list of tracks from the 1960s under the title ‘Sixties Music: the Top Ten’. This wasn’t a list of what I considered the best songs of the decade; it was a compilation of what I regarded as the most significant. For example, I included the Beatles’ Please, Please Me rather than a track from their later catalogue; Hendrix’s Hey Joe rather than All Along the Watchtower (a rare example of a cover version that improved on the original); and Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues rather than, for example, Like a Rolling Stone.

If you were around in the 1960s, you may still be telling people how great the music was back then, but that’s the result of more than half a century of hindsight. I would wager that you’ve already forgotten most, if not all, the songs that I’m about to list. The only criterion, other than their sheer awfulness, that qualifies a song for inclusion in this list is that it had to have reached #1 in the UK singles chart. Prepare to be horrified!

1. Elvis Presley — Are You Lonesome Tonight? (1961)
Presley had been on a downward musical trajectory for several years by the time this record was released, but this is the nadir. However, it could almost be considered bearable if you treat it as a comedy record, with its earnestly recited—and embarrassingly silly—middle eight.

2.  Cliff Richard — The Next Time / Bachelor Boy (1963)
Cliff did record a few half-decent songs in the early years of his career (e.g. Move It!, Dynamite), but this was a double horror. The people who bought this record clearly didn’t notice that the musical scene was changing.

3. The Dave Clark Five — Glad All Over (1963)
This song’s claim to fame—or notoriety if you prefer—is that it replaced the Beatles at #1 in the UK charts at a time when Beatlemania in the UK was at its peak. It may be that the mainstream media emphasized this fact because the record itself is so awful. By the way, I single out the Honeycombs (#5 below) for its poor drumming, but Dave Clark couldn’t play the drums either.

4.  The Four Pennies — Juliet (1964)
I imagine that this ‘band’ secured a recording contract as a result of the rush to sign up any guitar-based outfit in the immediate aftermath of the appearance on the scene of the Beatles in the hope that they would emulate their success. Unsurprisingly, the Four Pennies were a one-hit wonder that quickly disappeared from view. Thankfully.

5.  The Honeycombs — Have I the Right? (1964)
I remember the main selling point of this ‘band’ being that it had a female drummer. It is not my intention to suggest that women can’t play the drums, but this one certainly couldn’t.

6.  Tom Jones — Green, Green Grass of Home (1966)
My abiding memory of this song is of a fellow student in Manchester asking to borrow my copy of Melody Maker, opening it at the charts page and collapsing in a fit of hysterical laughter when he saw that this record was #1. Say no more.

7.  Scott McKenzie — San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) (1967)
Although this song acquired the status of an anthem for the so-called ‘summer of love’, I regarded that movement then—and still do—as bullshit, with its rallying cry of ‘flower power’. The song doesn’t get any better with age.

8.  Engelbert Humperdinck — Release Me (1967)
It beggars belief that this song broke the Beatles’ run of #1 hits, especially as the record it kept off the top spot, the double A-side Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, was arguably the band’s best single. ‘Sentimental garbage’ is my opinion of this vomit-inducing song. I wonder who bought it.

9.  Peter Sarstedt — Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)? (1969)
Pretentious. That was my verdict when this song was released, and it would probably be my reaction now if I heard it again (I’m not about to test this assertion).

10.  The Archies — Sugar, Sugar (1969)
‘Bubblegum’ music had a brief period in the spotlight in the late sixties, and I suspect that this song—and Simon Says by the 1910 Fruitgum Company, also a #1—was bought by the parents of very young children to keep them amused. It certainly didn’t amuse me.

11.  Rolf Harris — Two Little Boys (1969)
The only comment that I can make about this execrable rubbish is that it had a remarkably prescient title.

*  *  *

It will not have escaped the notice of alert readers that I failed to keep my list down to the advertised number of ten. I was reading through the comments on Black Music of the 1960s (link below), where I’d proposed Herman’s Hermits as an example of the kind of garbage that was being promoted at that time. One of my readers countered with the Dave Clark Five, and I realized that I’d completely forgotten what may well be the single most overrated outfit of all time—it has been inducted into the so-called ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame’! The Rock ’n’ Roll Dustbin of History would have been a more appropriate repository.

the more positive side of sixties music
Black Music of the 1960s
Alternative Sixties: Part 1
Alternative Sixties: Part 2

These posts include YouTube links, so you can check out tracks with which you’re unfamiliar. For obvious reasons, I’ve not done this with the main list.

god save the queen?

Between January 1974 and January 1978, I worked as a senior instructor at the Hong Kong Outward Bound School. During the last year of this period, I also moonlighted as the television critic for TV & Entertainment Times, a local listings magazine. Around the time I left Hong Kong in 1978, this magazine published an essay that I’d written about Queen, the third of my all-time favourite bands (and the only one I ever saw live). While I begin to refocus on writing after a barren summer in the UK, I thought that I would republish that essay here.

*  *  *

The problem faced by singers and bands that parody rock music is that no one takes them seriously. People do listen to them, it’s true, but only in a vague, slightly amused fashion. However, the best satirists, like the best practical jokers, are taken seriously—the reason being that their particular audience does not recognize the humorous intent.

The band I’m referring to here is Queen. They are possibly the most original band to appear since the Beatles, but the practical joker side of their music is rarely far below the surface. Yet they have reached their present pre-eminence in Britain purely because their audience takes them seriously.

As Perry Martin [a professional musician working in Hong Kong whom I knew at the time] told me: “They’ve made progressive rock into a saleable commodity.” Of course, this is an oversimplification. What they have actually done is to parody rock music in the most effective way: by the best possible use of existing techniques and by the invention of new ones when necessary. In effect, this means that their performance is often far better than that of the band they are allegedly mimicking.

The first clues that the band wasn’t entirely straight appeared on their third album, Sheer Heart Attack. Killer Queen [the first ever track by the band that I heard] is an apparent dig at the female equivalent of Ray Davies’ Dedicated Follower of Fashion, but whereas the Kinks’ ‘hero’ was a feckless, working-class type, Queen’s ‘heroine’ is an altogether more sophisticated character:

Well-versed in etiquette,
Extraordinarily nice, etc.

As for Flick of the Wrist, it could have come straight out of a Victorian melodrama, complete with moustachioed villain (the butt of the humour). Lap of the Gods is more than a little reminiscent of Bryan Ferry’s Roxy Music, while Bring Back That Leroy Brown is a take-off of a traditional jazz band. Dear Friends is only slightly removed from:

Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares,
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

How can a band that does this kind of thing be on the level?

It is yet another attempt to introduce ‘theatre’ into rock music. David Bowie was probably the first to try this, but his music was little more than unimaginative science fiction, and he was obliged to resort to glitter and greasepaint to disguise his limitations. In the same vein, Alice Cooper has all but left the music behind, with the result that his act is entirely theatrical. At the other end of the scale, bands such as Jethro Tull and Genesis have a strong theatrical element in their music, but it is implicit (cf. Thick as a Brick, A Passion Play, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway). The main weakness here is that the intrinsic ‘plots’ are either too convoluted or else too surreal for a wide audience to want to identify with them.

With Queen, the opposite is true. The fun-poking is so outrageously explicit that no one can believe they really mean it. However, they are merely preying on an age-old human weakness, the inability to believe what is right under one’s nose. And in doing so, they have resurrected music hall (US: ‘vaudeville’), updating it for the 1970s. The clue is in the band’s use of ‘barber-shop quartet’ harmonies, even in the most incongruous places. A song that would otherwise be a straight copy of a rock sausage machine such as Led Zeppelin is turned into near farce by the introduction of beautiful harmonizing voices.

Now listen to A Night at the Opera, which, not coincidentally, is also the title of a Marx Brothers film. The album opens with Death on Two Legs, a song ostensibly directed against loan sharks [I learned subsequently that the target of this song was the band’s former manager, who had ripped them off]. Freddie Mercury is a master of the pointed insult:

Insane! You should be put inside.
You’re a sewer rat decaying in a cesspool of pride.

However, the song has been left subtly ambiguous. It could easily refer to a big-shot businessman—after all, how much difference is there between the two types? It just happens that the businessman has his reinforcements more efficiently marshalled, but the ordinary man in the street supports neither type. He simply accepts the status quo, believing that he can do nothing to alter the situation.

The indignant mood of the first song is immediately punctured by Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, which turns the spotlight on the so-called ‘idle rich’:

I come from London town, I’m just an ordinary guy.
Fridays I go painting in the Louvre.

…the type whose pictures you can look at in the social pages of various magazines—always assuming that you want to in the first place.

Seaside Rendezvous also has a touch of this atmosphere, although the target here is the Charley’s Aunt brand of more or less decorous courtship, from the angle of ‘but who needs a chaperone anyway?’

It will be seen that the satirical element in the band’s work has extended far beyond the boundaries of rock music. The limited credence given to prophets of doom is picked out in The Prophet’s Song. No matter that the prophet of doom is always right. For ordinary people, Noah’s flood never happened, and Armageddon is merely a fond hope in the teachings of fundamentalist Christian sects. And it is all summarized in one line:

Listen to the madman!

Good Company, another song with a quasi-jazz motif, highlights the folly of the man who spends a lifetime building a wall around himself, using people for as long as they serve his purpose, then discarding them. This song also spotlights the technical wizardry of Brian May, who makes his guitar sound like, in turn, a cornet, an alto saxophone and a clarinet.

Love of My Life has to be a jibe at the Happy Days adolescent sexuality of the 1950s, the

Each night I ask the stars up above:
Why must I be a teenager in love?

mentality, complete with hyperbole and mock pathos. It is in a song like this that the true artistry of the band can be seen: the words are straight, almost banal, but the hyperbole comes in the delivery—it is a slow ballad, sung with earnest intensity. However, the illusion of seriousness is dispelled by the ubiquitous harmonizing voices, echoing the lead singer’s words like an unasked-for conscience.

The entire charade is topped off by a poker-faced rendition of God Save the Queen. It’s only as the final note is struck that the listener is treated to a little flourish in the form of a few extra bars—an embellishment that fits beautifully. Again, the subtlety of the band’s art is evident; a heavier-handed band would have ‘jazzed it up’, that is, if they had had the audacity to play the anthem in the first place.

How do they do it? How do they get away with it? The first is the easier question to answer. Broadly speaking, they use a mixture of farce and melodrama, in proportions that vary from song to song but that are selected with an unerring sense of timing. The guitar solo in Millionaire’s Waltz, albeit in waltz time, would be fairly ordinary, were it not punctuated by an absurd single note struck on a triangle.

As for Somebody to Love: how dare they apply such impeccable musical styling to such a trivial subject? But this is the key to Queen’s success. They do have the nerve to do what they do—and they do it so well!

Just listen to Teo Torriate (this, like the last two songs mentioned, is from the band’s latest album, A Day at the Races, another title borrowed from the Marx Brothers). The resemblance to a school choir performing at some inconsequential concert is uncanny, even down to the school music master pounding away at the piano, at the same time doing his best to conduct his proteges with his head.

It would seem that I’m implying that Queen are an eclectic band. This is not strictly true. Admittedly, they do borrow musical ideas, and from the most unlikely places, but these are blended together in a style that is both unique and instantly recognizable. Rock music has come a long way since Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, even since the Beatles, and the post-Beatles era has been one of diversification—there are almost as many ‘categories’ within the genre as there are bands.

However, the 1970s has seen two main trends: mainstream pop music and ‘underground’ rock, the latter originating in the late 1960s with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Velvet Underground in America, and with Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin in Britain. The factor that distinguishes the two streams is that ‘pop’ music is just that—a barometer of popular tastes at any given time—while what I’ve identified as underground music is music for those listeners who are turned off by the banalities of the former. Being freed from considerations of commercialism, it is invariably more adventurous.

Inevitably, this has meant that over the past decade, the two trends have steadily diverged. Music that attempts to bridge the gap, appearing at a time when pop is becoming increasingly elementary in structure, when talent is no longer a necessary prerequisite for achieving popular acclaim, must be either a tedious preciosity or something very unusual. Most people who have listened to Queen would probably agree that they are not the former.

In fact, if it is time for a major new influence to supersede the Beatles, then Queen are a likely candidate. If this is objected to as an overstatement, it must be conceded that they represent an unexpected swing of the pendulum. Nevertheless, it is important not to underrate the Beatles merely because they were overrated 14 years ago. The hysteria provoked by the Beatles in the period 1963–64 is no longer easy to understand, and it is for this reason that it is extremely difficult to envisage a repeat performance by another band.

The Beatles were technically little better than their contemporaries, but they had the good fortune to be assigned a producer who was sympathetic to their musical ideas. Had they not failed their Decca audition, this would never have happened. Also, nowadays, there are just too many bands of comparable technical ability. However, as I’ve attempted to point out, Queen’s style is unique. Someday, another type of music will supersede rock, yet when today’s leading lights are barely remembered, even as names, I would wager that much of Queen’s music will still be around, valued for its creative genius.

A comparison with the Beatles is not completely fatuous. Admittedly, Queen do have a long way to go to emulate the Beatles’ spectacular chart success on both sides of the Atlantic. On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever do so. However, Bohemian Rhapsody, arguably the finest track ever to be released as a single, did hold the #1 chart position for a record number of weeks. Also, Queen share with the Beatles the rare ability to appeal to all age groups.

The only missing ingredient, if it can be so described, is the USA. It was acceptance in America that transformed the Beatles from just another rock ’n’ roll band into a global phenomenon. Yet this is the principal stumbling block. America still gives its allegiance to bands such as Jefferson Starship, Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac, all of which play music that is ten years out of date, or even to such anachronisms as the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. It is the inevitable result of having an ‘awards’ system, with its unavoidable emphasis on the mainstream and consequent inhibition of innovation.

If you have not heard Queen, I strongly urge that you give them a listen, especially on A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. You will not be disappointed. Queen are not merely brilliant; they are a revelation. Queen are not just a rock band; they are a window on life in Britain in the 1970s.

alternative sixties: part 2

…continued from Part 1 (1960–63)

The Rivieras—California Sun (1964)
This recording, with a pounding tom-tom beat, is a cover of a song originally recorded by Joe Jones in 1961 and is the only track that I know by this band.

Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland—Ain’t Doing Too Bad (1964)
I can’t remember what prompted me to buy an album by Bobby Bland, on which this was the stand-out track, but I do remember describing the singer as ‘a less histrionic version of James Brown’ at the time. However, when I listen now, that description is unfair to Bland, whom I consider to be a better singer than Brown.

The Valentinos—It’s All Over Now (1964)
The Valentinos were also known as the Womack Brothers, and this version of the song, written by Bobby Womack, is far better than the cover by the Rolling Stones.

Tommy Tucker—Hi-Heel Sneakers (1964)
Although Tommy Tucker was recorded by Chess Records of Chicago, he was an also-ran in a stable that included Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. This is his only notable recording.

Don Covay—Mercy, Mercy (1964)
Don Covay was also a minor figure on his label, in this case Stax Records of Memphis, where the star performer was Otis Redding. The guitar on this record is played by Jimi Hendrix—before he developed his flamboyant individual style.

The Olympics—Good Lovin’ (1965)
The Olympics are the only performers to make this list that I also included in Music of the 1950s. By this date, doo-wop was a moribund genre, but you wouldn’t guess it by listening to this recording. The song is probably better known in an insipid version by the Young Rascals.

The Knickerbockers—Lies (1965)
When I was a student in Manchester in the mid-1960s, I spent a lot of time scouring second-hand shops looking for old 45s. I often had no idea what I was seeing, but any record on the London American label was snapped up immediately. This is the only reason I’m familiar with this recording, which sounds remarkably like the Beatles. It’s the only track I’ve ever heard by this band, which made no impression whatsoever in the UK.

Roy Head—Treat Her Right (1965)
The thing that should immediately grab your attention on hearing this record is the instrumental intro, which lasts no less than 34 seconds! This recording sounds like it’s by a black singer, but Roy Head was a white boy from Texas!

The Vogues—Five O’Clock World (1965)
This record is another result of my policy of buying London American 45s unheard. It’s also the only record I’ve heard by this band, and if you listen to it, you will probably ask why it was never a hit in the UK, given that London American was a Decca label, which should have guaranteed it plenty of airplay.

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs—Wooly Bully (1965)
This almost qualifies as a novelty record, by a novelty band, but what’s this song about? I’ve no idea, but I’ve always liked it!

Sir Douglas Quintet—She’s About a Mover (1965)
Although this record was a minor hit in the UK, the band quickly disappeared from view, and I never heard anything else by them. However, this track is definitely worth a listen.

Little Joe Cook—Stormy Monday Blues (1965)
When I was a student, I knew two fellow students who were blues ‘purists’ (‘white men can’t sing the blues’). I remember that they were full of praise for this record, which had been released on the Sue label, an outlet for American blues recordings at the time. They were mortified to learn a short time later that it was actually by Chris Farlowe and his band, who were moonlighting and therefore needed a pseudonym.

The point of this story: white men can sing the blues, although the title is a misnomer. This recording is actually a cover of Stormy Monday by T-Bone Walker. Stormy Monday Blues is a completely different song!

Jackie Edwards—Keep On Running (1965)
This song was a hit for Spencer Davis, who also covered Somebody Help Me, another Jackie Edwards original. Edwards, who was Jamaican, was more or less unknown to the general population in the UK, although I imagine that his music was appreciated by the country’s West Indian population.

Eddie Floyd—Knock on Wood (1965)
This is the only song on this list that I ever saw performed live. Floyd was part of the Stax Road Show, which I saw in 1967. Although Floyd was low down on a bill that starred Otis Redding and Sam and Dave, I still rate this record as a stand-out in the Stax catalogue.

The Electric Prunes—I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) (1966)
Most people listening to music in the 1960s wouldn’t have become aware of LSD until the release of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967, but this is when that notorious hallucinogenic drug first hit mainstream consciousness, albeit not in the UK. The title of the song says it all.

? and the Mysterians—96 Tears (1966)
The unusual feature of this recording is that the principal accompaniment is by staccato organ. It’s yet another one-hit wonder, which you would probably guess from the name of the band.

The Bobby Fuller Four—I Fought the Law (1966)
Unlike the songs covered by Blondie in this list, the Clash did a creditable version of I Fought the Law, which I included in a list of my ten favourite punk records.

Bobby Fuller was found dead in his car a couple of weeks after this record hit the US charts. His death was ruled a suicide, a verdict that spawned a few conspiracy theories because it did seem an unlikely scenario following his first (and last) major hit.

The Smoke—My Friend Jack (1967)
I never heard this song when it was released, which is not surprising, given that it was banned by the BBC because the lyric is a graphic description of what it’s like to ingest LSD. The disco version by Boney M in the 1970s was meaningless, because it retained just the opening line of the song:

My friend Jack eats sugar lumps

which was a popular method of ingesting acid when it first appeared on the scene. It sounds innocuous when it isn’t followed by lines such as

Oh! What beautiful things he sees.
…
Lost in a wonderland of colour and of sound.
…
He’s seeing things you can’t imagine

This was real psychedelia!

The Paragons—The Tide Is High (1967)
This is another sixties song covered by Blondie more than a decade later, and as with their earlier cover, they didn’t add anything to the original.

further reading
Black Music of the 1960s.

alternative sixties: part 1

Given that I recently posted a comprehensive survey of the music of the 1950s, you might expect a similar overview of the music of the following decade. However, even if you weren’t around in the 1960s, you’ve probably already heard at least some of the music of bands such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, so I thought that I would try to compile a list of recordings that people may not have heard before but that are nevertheless worth a listen.

Such an endeavour is probably impossible, but not one of the 40 songs on my list was a significant hit in the UK, although most were successful on the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, only two of the 40 are by British artists.

As with my 1950s list, the records are presented in approximately chronological order, with a short comment on each one and a YouTube link should you want to check that particular song out. You will notice that there are no recordings listed for 1968 or 1969, mainly because I worked abroad during those years and had limited opportunities to listen to contemporary music.

The Hollywood Argyles—Alley Oop (1960)
This song was covered by the Beach Boys on their cod live album Party. It is essentially a novelty record, the subject of which should be familiar to American listeners:

There’s a man in the funny papers we all know,

I don’t think that Alley Oop, a cartoon strip about a stereotypical caveman, was ever published in the UK.

Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs—Stay (1960)
Following covers of Coasters songs for their first two singles, the Hollies then released their version of Stay as a follow-up. This is the original.

The Isley Brothers—Twist and Shout (1961)
The Beatles had a major hit in 1963 with an EP on which this was the title track, but this is the original—and the Isley Brothers’ last significant recording before being consumed by the Tamla-Motown hit ‘factory’.

The Tokens—The Lion Sleeps Tonight (1961)
The original of this song was written and recorded in South Africa in the Zulu language, and the English-language version was recorded by several artists in the late 1950s, but it is usually associated with doo-wop group the Tokens, who had a #1 hit in the USA. The version by Tight Fit, which was a #1 hit in the UK in 1982, sounded, to my ears, like an exact copy of the Tokens’ version.

Ike and Tina Turner—It’s Gonna Work Out Fine (1961)
This is what Ike and Tina Turner sounded like before they fell into the megalomaniac clutches of producer Phil Spector, who ruined everything he touched (cf. the original release of the Beatles’ Let It Be, John Lennon’s Imagine and the Ramones’ later output). At least Ike and Tina did show a return to form with Nutbush City Limits in 1973.

The Regents—Barbara Ann (1961)
The Beach Boys released their version of this song, from the Party album, as a single, but they should have stuck to Brian Wilson songs and left this to a real doo-wop group like the Regents.

The Dovells—Bristol Stomp (1961)
It may be 1961, but this up-tempo number is right out of the 1950s doo-wop playbook.

The Contours—Do You Love Me (1962)
If I were to choose just one record from Tamla-Motown as ‘absolutely atypical’ of this label’s output, this would be it. Brian Poole and the Tremeloes had a #1 hit in the UK with an execrable cover, and the version by the Dave Clark Five, also a hit, wasn’t much better. This is the original, and the probable reason it wasn’t a hit in the UK is that it was released on the obscure Oriole American label.

Richie Barrett—Some Other Guy (1962)
This song was a staple of the live performances of many British bands in the early 1960s, but the only recording of which I’m aware was by the Big Three, who were considered the best of the Liverpool bands when playing live by all the other Liverpool bands of the period. However, they were a flop nationally!

The B-side of this record was Tricky Dicky, about a notorious career criminal, which may explain why this sobriquet was attached to Richard Nixon towards the end of the decade.

The Exciters—Do Wah Diddy (1962)
This is yet another song that hit #1 on the UK charts in a cover version, in this case by Manfred Mann, who as an all-male band had to doctor the lyric—the Exciters were a female vocal group, and their version does sound more natural.

The Rivingtons—Papa Oom Mow Mow (1962)
This is yet another song that was covered by the Beach Boys on their Party album, and the comment that I attached to Barbara Ann (above) also applies here.

Arthur Alexander—A Shot of Rhythm and Blues (1962)
The Beatles (Anna) and the Rolling Stones (You Better Move On) both recorded Arthur Alexander ballads on their respective debut albums, but although this up-tempo number was a staple of live performances at the time, I’m aware of just one cover recording, by Gerry and the Pacemakers. That wasn’t bad, but you should check out the original.

The Routers—Let’s Go (Pony) (1962)
You’re probably familiar with a particular hand-clapping routine much used by football crowds:

clap-clap, clap-clap-clap, clap-clap-clap-clap [two-syllable shout]

But did you ever wonder where it came from? It’s this record!

The Rockin’ Rebels—Wild Weekend (1962)
When I was a teenager, the proprietor of the coffee bar that I frequented after school and at weekends regarded me as knowledgeable about contemporary music and trusted my recommendations as to what records to buy for his jukebox. I was pretty good at picking records that would become big national hits, but I suggested this instrumental just because I liked it. It turned out to be very popular with the coffee bar’s young patrons.

Little Stevie Wonder—Fingertips (Part 1) (1963)
Despite receiving a rave review in Record Mirror, this Motown track also failed to hit the UK charts, mainly because of a poor distribution deal. This is an instrumental track (harmonica, with vocal interjections), and Stevie Wonder never released anything remotely similar in his later career.

Marvin Gaye—Can I Get a Witness (1963)
By the time this heavily gospel-influenced recording appeared, Motown had secured a distribution deal with EMI for it to be released on the Stateside label, but it still wasn’t a hit, even though I bought a copy at the time. In fact, I bought a demo recording, because my local record shop used to sell demo records, provided free by travelling sales reps, for just half a crown (12.5p), a third of the price of regular records.

There is a delicious irony here. Many years later, I was browsing in a bookshop when I came across a catalogue that listed how much you could expect to pay for old records. I looked up Can I Get a Witness and discovered that you could expect to pay £2 for a copy. However, a demo version would set you back £50!

The Kingsmen—Louie Louie (1963)
There is an urban legend that the FBI spent 18 months trying to decipher the lyric of this song, which in this version of a song that had been around since the 1950s is all but unintelligible. Apparently, the FBI believed that it contained a subversive message, but that was probably down to the paranoia of J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau’s director at the time.

Inez and Charlie Foxx—Mockingbird (1963)
This is the only song by Inez and Charlie Foxx that I’m familiar with, but it’s unusual in style–and certainly worth a listen.

Randy and the Rainbows—Denise (1963)
This song was covered by new wave band Blondie in 1977, who didn’t add anything to the original apart from an obvious gender reversal.

The Righteous Brothers—Little Latin Lupe Lu (1963)
The Righteous Brothers were another duo that had their biggest hit with a Phil Spector-produced monstrosity. This is what they had sounded like before this. Much better, in my opinion, especially if you heard this one first, as I did.

Rufus Thomas—Walking the Dog (1963)
Rufus Thomas was recorded by Stax Records of Memphis and was already 46 years old when this song, with a lyric based on traditional nursery rhymes, was released. He was a mentor to a young Otis Redding, who overshadowed him musically and commercially in the next few years.

List continues in Part 2 (1964–67)

music of the 1950s: part 3

…list continued from Part 2, (1957–58).

Chuck Berry—Sweet Little Sixteen (1958)
Unbelievably, it has taken me until 1958 to get around to listing Chuck Berry. Nobody from the 1950s has had more of his songs covered by later musicians, although this isn’t one that I’m aware has been covered by anyone else. However, it’s always been my favourite Chuck Berry track, although this isn’t because the lyric includes the following lines:

They’re really rocking on Bandstand,
Philadelphia, Pa.

It was clearly Berry’s intention to celebrate the program, but I’ve always considered American Bandstand, and its host Dick Clark, to be among the prime movers behind the general trend towards emasculating rock ’n’ roll that gathered steam in the late 1950s in the wake of the payola scandal, when it emerged that record companies were paying disc jockeys such as Alan Freed to play their records (Freed has a composing credit on Chuck Berry’s first ever hit, Maybellene, which is highly suggestive of a corrupt system).

Jerry Lee Lewis—High School Confidential (1958)
If Little Richard is the rhythm-and-blues exemplar of manic singing and piano playing, then Jerry Lee Lewis is his country-and-western counterpart. And this is Lewis at his most manic.

The Coasters—Yakety Yak (1958)
The Coasters were probably the most prolific vocal group of the late 1950s, and several of their songs were covered by British bands in the mid-1960s, including Poison Ivy and Searchin’. A lot of their output could be categorized as ‘novelty’ songs, but Yakety Yak had a more serious message: the nonsense that teenagers have to put up with from adults.

Johnny Otis—Willie and the Hand Jive (1958)
The cadences of Willie and the Hand Jive bear a strong resemblance to Bo Diddley, but Bo Diddley’s endless self-referencing is tiresome. This is a far more interesting song.

Bobby Day—Rockin’ Robin (1958)
Most people will be familiar with this song from the version by Michael Jackson, from the time when he was still a squeaky-voiced member of the Jackson 5. Check this one out—it’s much, much better!

Frankie Ford—Sea Cruise (1959)
This song was originally recorded by Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, but as I’ve already included a song by this artist in my list—and this is the version I heard first—I thought that it was worth a mention.

The Olympics—Hully Gully (1959)
This song is reputed to have kickstarted a dance craze, but if it did, the echoes certainly didn’t reach the small market town in the north of England where I grew up. And the twist had to wait for Chubby Checker before catching on as a dance rather than being just a song (below). I don’t think many people will remember this one.

The Clovers—Love Potion No. 9 (1959)
This song was written by the Leiber/Stoller partnership, who were also responsible for the bulk of the Coasters’ output, and I’ve often wondered why it was never recorded by the better-known group, because it would have been right up their street. This is the only notable recording by the Clovers.

Chan Romero—Hippy Hippy Shake (1959)
Most people will have first heard this song in the version by the Swinging Blue Jeans, one of the lesser bands to emerge from Liverpool on the back of the Beatles, but this is the original. As a Latino, Chan Romero was heavily influenced by Ritchie Valens, but this was his only major hit.

Hank Ballard and the Midnighters—The Twist (1959)
Chubby Checker may have popularized the twist as a dance, but he added absolutely nothing to the song. This is another original that deserves more attention.

Wilbert Harrison—Kansas City (1959)
I’ve often wondered what is special about Kansas City, which strikes me as an insignificant midwestern conurbation. Perhaps it’s because it’s the only place that I can think of whose name fits the cadences of the song. However, that observation doesn’t detract from this recording, which is another widely covered original that is well worth a listen.

Ray Charles—What’d I Say (1959)
This record attracted controversy when first released because it featured the call-and-response motif that had until then been restricted to gospel music. And this was a clear example of ‘the Devil’s music’ and thus antithetical to gospel.

Barrett Strong—Money (That’s What I Want) (1959)
I first heard this song in the Beatles’ version, and I was electrified. However, this is the original version, and it’s well worth a listen. It was also the first ever hit on the soon to be dominant Tamla label.

Johnny and the Hurricanes—Red River Rock (1959)
Purely instrumental music was a rarity in rock ’n’ roll, but Johnny and the Hurricanes produced a string of hits in the late 1950s. This track, a rocked-up version of the country song Red River Valley, is my favourite. The melody is played on a Hammond organ, with embellishments by guitar and tenor saxophone.

further reading
Don’t Talk Back.
Black Music of the 1960s.

music of the 1950s: part 2

…list continued from Part 1, (1952–56).

Buddy Holly—That’ll Be the Day (1957)
I was a big fan of Buddy Holly in the late 1950s, although in retrospect I find that much of his output seems to have been designed to appeal to self-conscious adolescents. Not this one though. Holly’s ‘hiccupping’ vocal styling is what makes this record.

The Edsels—Rama Lama Ding Dong (1957)
This track is classic doo-wop, complete with a honking saxophone solo and a nonsense title.

Dale Hawkins—Susie Q (1957)
This echo-laden example of rockabilly clearly shows the effect of other influences, especially the blues of the Mississippi delta.

Johnny Burnett—Rock a Billy Boogie (1957)
Although Johnny Burnett had his biggest hit with the pop song Dreamin’ in 1960, he’d been active throughout the second half of the 1950s with a string of rockabilly numbers, of which this is a typical example.

Thurston Harris—Little Bitty Pretty One (1957)
Several versions of this song were released around this time, but I believe this to be the original—and improvements on an original song are extremely rare.

Buddy Knox—Party Doll (1957)
This is another rockabilly number, although it’s unusual in featuring female backing singers.

The Diamonds—Little Darlin’ (1957)
The Diamonds were a Canadian doo-wop group whose success was achieved in the United States. This isn’t the original, but it was the only one to be a hit. It also includes a spoken middle eight, which in retrospect turns it into something of a comedy record!

Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Clowns—Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (1957)
As you might guess from the singer’s nickname and the title of the song, this recording features piano accompaniment that is heavily influenced by both R&B and boogie woogie.

Bobby Freeman—Do You Wanna Dance (1958)
This song was covered by several bands in the mid-1960s, including the Beach Boys, but once again the original is the best. Freeman was just 18 years old when this record was released.

Larry Williams—Slow Down (1958)
I first heard this song on an LP by Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1963, and it grabbed my attention, but this, the original version, was on my search list when scouring the second-hand shops of Manchester a couple of years later. There are hints of Little Richard here (both recorded for Specialty Records), but this is almost out of control. It is, without doubt, the fastest record in this list. It may also have been, originally, just a B-side, because the other side was Dizzy Miss Lizzy, also a rock ’n’ roll classic.

Eddie Cochran—Summertime Blues (1958)
Although I’ve not attempted to rank the recordings in this collection, the fact that I selected this record as one of just eight to be marooned with on a desert island indicates that I consider this the #1 record of the 1950s. Cochran’s death in a car accident in the UK in April 1960 is particularly tragic because he was one of the first to experiment with a variety of recording techniques, including overdubbing and double-tracking, and it’s likely that he would have become a major star in the 1960s had he lived.

This track is also the first on this list to feature a fade-out groove—the standard practice used to be that a song had to have a precise end. It may just be coincidence, but the next recording on my list also ends with a fade-out groove, and Eddie Cochran and Ritchie Valens were friends. Just saying.

Ritchie Valens—Come On, Let’s Go (1958)
Ritchie Valens was the first Latino to make a mark in rock ’n’ roll. Sadly, however, he was only 18 years old when he died, in the same plane crash that killed Buddy Holly in February 1959, so it’s impossible to evaluate what he might have achieved. This record provides just a hint.

The Everly Brothers—Bird Dog (1958)
There was a lot of crossover from country and western music to what was increasingly becoming ‘mainstream’ rock ’n’ roll in the late 1950s, and most of it can be ignored, but not the Everly Brothers, whose close-harmony vocals were something new. This song is typical of their early output, and it also provides another early example of the use of a fade-out groove.

Danny and the Juniors—At the Hop (1958)
This song was performed by Sha Na Na at Woodstock in 1969, but this is the original—and vastly superior—version.

The list is continued in Part 3 (1958–59).

music of the 1950s: part 1

It is slightly misleading to talk about the music of a given decade as defined by the calendar, because the emergence of new musical styles doesn’t neatly coincide with the start of a decade. For example, from a musical point of view, the 1960s didn’t begin until January 1963 with the release of the Beatles’ Please, Please Me. The 1950s experienced a similar delay, because the music of the decade is inevitably defined by the emergence and early development of rock ’n’ roll.

The milestone in this case is Rock around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets, which was originally released in the USA in 1954 but didn’t catch on around the rest of the world until it was used to back the opening credits of the film Blackboard Jungle the following year. However, although I’ve labelled this record a ‘milestone’, I also regard it as one of the most overrated records of all time. Wikipedia describes it as ‘a rock and roll song in the 12-bar blues format’, but although I’m not an expert on music theory, it sounds to me more like a novelty foxtrot sung by a balding, middle-aged man with a condescending attitude. That patronizing mindset is exemplified by the reasons Haley gave for ‘cleaning up’ the lyric to Shake, Rattle and Roll (see below).

In preparing for this assessment of the music of the decade, I started by compiling a ‘top ten’. That seemed easy, except that I soon found myself pondering what to leave out! As I reviewed the options, I found myself struggling to restrict the list to a ‘top twenty’, and in fact the following list contains 42 records. And I’ve probably still overlooked at least one recording that belongs on the list. In case you’re wondering, I have to confess that I didn’t hear any of the early records on this list at the time they were released. The main reason I’m familiar with them now is that as a student in Manchester in the mid-1960s, I spent a lot of time scouring the city’s second-hand shops looking for old 45s.

I’ve deliberately excluded urban blues recordings of the period, such as Smokestack Lightnin’ by Howlin’ Wolf, Hoochie Coochie Man by Muddy Waters, Dust My Broom by Elmore James and I’m a King Bee by Slim Harpo. Although these are now regarded as classics, they attracted very little mainstream attention when first released.

I’ve listed the following records in approximately chronological order with the year that they were released and a YouTube link so that you can listen to ones with which you’re unfamiliar (click on the artist/title). You may notice that all but one of the 42 records are by American artists. The sole exception is a Canadian doo-wop group that achieved its success solely in the United States. Britain didn’t make any original contributions to the development of rock music until the release of Shakin’ All Over by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates in 1960.

Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats—Rocket 88 (1951)
This track is often touted as ‘the first rock ’n’ roll record’, although to my ear it sounds more like the kind of urban rhythm and blues that was becoming increasingly popular towards the end of the 1940s. Definitely worth a listen though.

Lloyd Price—Lawdy Miss Clawdy (1952)
Although rock ’n’ roll didn’t become defined as a distinct genre until the emergence of Elvis Presley, this record is a classic early example of one of the two main influences on the developing style: urban rhythm and blues. You will notice that the guitar is merely part of the rhythm section; the principal accompanying instruments are piano and tenor saxophone.

Big Mama Thornton—Hound Dog (1952)
Although Hound Dog sounds like ‘authentic’ blues, it was actually written by two professional songwriters from New York, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were Jewish. However, like much of the blues, this song is full of sexual innuendo, albeit not in the sanitized—and inferior—version recorded by Elvis Presley a couple of years later.

The Drifters—Money Honey (1953)
In the later years of the decade, the Drifters specialized in saccharine ballads and went through so many personnel changes that there were half a dozen vocal groups touring the world as ‘The Original Drifters’ in the mid-1960s, but this record features the original line-up, with Clyde McPhatter as lead vocalist. It dates from the time when the Drifters were still an authentic doo-wop quartet.

Joe Turner—Shake, Rattle and Roll (1954)
Now this is a real 12-bar blues (with refrain), although its status as an embryonic rock ’n’ roll song is obvious. And if you listen to the lyric, you will get a sense of why Bill Haley thought it necessary to prettify it. It is relentlessly misogynistic. However, I might add, if you think the Haley version superior, you ain’t no rock’n’roller.

Carl Perkins—Blue Suede Shoes (1955)
This is the first of several songs on this list to be recorded by Sun Records of Memphis and is also the first example of the second main influence on the development of rock ’n’ roll: an offshoot of country and western music known as ‘rockabilly’. Note that there is no piano or saxophone on this track. This is when a guitar became the main instrument to accompany a song.

Elvis Presley did a passable version of this song, but this is the original. Not that Perkins had any grounds for claiming he’d been upstaged. The other song for which he’s well known, Matchbox, is merely a reworking of Matchbox Blues by Blind Lemon Jefferson, which was recorded in the 1920s!

Fats Domino—Ain’t That a Shame (1955)
Fats Domino had been recording since the late 1940s, but this is his first song to catch on with a mainstream audience. It is also the first recording on this list to feature piano (played by Fats himself), saxophones and guitar in the accompaniment. It was covered by Pat Boone at the time, apparently in the belief that the Domino version would be too ‘difficult’ for white audiences.

I should also note that in compiling this list, I decided to restrict every singer to just one entry. Had I not done so, Fats Domino would have been mentioned half a dozen times, with songs like Blue Monday, Blueberry Hill, I Hear You Knockin’ and Sick and Tired.

Smiley Lewis—I Hear You Knockin’ (1955)
Having mentioned I Hear You Knockin’ in connection with Fats Domino, it is probably a coincidence that this recording is next on my list. Both artists were recorded by Imperial Records of New Orleans, and this is the original version of a much-covered song. The distinctive driving piano is provided by Huey ‘Piano’ Smith.

Elvis Presley—Heartbreak Hotel (1956)
Presley’s early (and best) work was recorded by Sun Records of Memphis but reached only a local audience. This was his first record for RCA and showcases his unique vocal style—a style that was slowly diluted, to the extent that he recorded absolutely nothing worth remembering after he was drafted into the US Army in 1958.

Little Richard—Long Tall Sally (1956)
And this is when rock ’n’ roll performance really became exciting. Nobody could match the hysterical singing and frenetic piano playing of Little Richard. All the songs for which he’s famous (e.g. Tutti Frutti, Ready Teddy, Rip It Up, Lucille, Good Golly Miss Molly) were recorded during a two-year period, and this record is Little Richard at his most intense. Try sitting still while listening to it!

Roy Orbison—Ooby Dooby (1956)
Roy Orbison’s reputation rests almost entirely on the quasi-operatic ballads (Only the Lonely, Running Scared, Cryin’, In Dreams, etc.) that he recorded for Monument Records in the early 1960s. I suspect that the vast majority of the people who bought these records are totally unaware of his rockabilly recordings for Sun Records in the mid-1950s. This is the best.

Gene Vincent and his Bluecaps—Be-Bop-A-Lula (1956)
This recording is quite a rarity: an example of a slow (and moody) rockabilly number. Few singers could have pulled this off, but Vincent does. In spades.

LaVern Baker—Jim Dandy (1956)
You would probably have to be familiar with the R&B scene of the 1950s to have heard this record, but it’s a classic.

The Del-Vikings—Come Go with Me (1956)
The Del-Vikings were a racially mixed group at a time when this was an extreme rarity. In this classic doo-wop song, you won’t hear a single intelligible word until 30 seconds has elapsed from the start!

The list is continued in Part 2 (1957–58).

desert island discs

I haven’t been able to confirm this, but Desert Island Discs may be the longest-running radio program in the history of broadcasting. It started during the Second World War, and it has been broadcast continuously by the BBC since 1951, initially on the Home Service and since 1967 on Radio 4, the corporation’s talk-radio station. The concept is simple: a celebrity guest is asked to imagine themselves a castaway on a desert island. Originally, the idea was that they would somehow have a wind-up gramophone and eight records, and while being interviewed about their lives, they would introduce the records they had chosen, and brief extracts would be played.

The longevity of the program can probably be attributed to the notion that one obtains a more nuanced insight into someone’s personality by discovering what turns them on musically than by anything they might say. With that in mind—and I’m never going to appear on the program, obviously—I thought that I might list the eight pieces of music that I would choose to be marooned with. I’ve listed them in approximately chronological order, and where possible I’ve linked each one to YouTube so that you can listen to the track if you’re unfamiliar with it.

Eddie Cochran: Summertime Blues
I started listening to music in the late 1950s, and for me this is the record of the decade. I didn’t become a teenager myself until 1959, the year after this record was released. It articulates perfectly what we had to put up with from grown-ups—and politicians.

Solomon Burke: Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
I was a huge fan of what I later characterized as real soul music in the 1960s. My favourite singer in this genre was Otis Redding, but this is the stand-out individual performance. This is what I wrote about it in my essay Black Music of the 1960s:

This record, more than any other, betrays the gospel origins of what was beginning to be called ‘soul music’, because it is impossible to listen to this pulsating up-tempo song without gaining the impression that one is listening to an old-style revivalist preacher whipping up the emotions of his congregation.

The Beatles: I Am the Walrus
I was 16 years old when the Beatles burst onto the music scene in 1963, and I was so impressed by Love Me Do that I placed an advance order for Please Please Me. However, if I’m going to pick a Beatles song for this list, then it has to be from their later work, because they continued to improve throughout the decade. Despite this caveat, you may be surprised to learn that it is the surreal lyric rather than any musical qualities that makes it one of my favourites. Shakespeare buffs may spot some quotations from King Lear during the fade-out groove.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: All Along the Watchtower
Although I included Hey Joe in Sixties Music: The Top Ten, my assessment of the most significant records of the decade, this is a much more accomplished work. In fact, it is an extreme rarity: a cover version that improves on the original. I’d begun to lose interest in Dylan by the time he released his version, but Hendrix really brings this song to life—so much so that whenever Dylan performs the song in concert, he uses the Hendrix arrangement nowadays. And the guitar solo on this record takes my vote as the best guitar solo in the history of rock music!

The Grateful Dead: Uncle John’s Band
Although I was aware of the Grateful Dead, I didn’t hear anything by the band until I came back to Penrith after working in Australia in 1970 and became a friend of someone who was an avid Dead fan. Although my favourite Grateful Dead album is Aoxomoxoa, this song, from Workingman’s Dead, is the one I will always choose if I’m restricted to one track. Even though I detest country and western music, and the Dead have been labelled ‘the world’s loudest country band’, this will remain my choice.

Pink Floyd: Atom Heart Mother
Pink Floyd are one of my all-time favourite bands, and if restricted to just one track, then the choice is extremely difficult. However, there is an intensely personal reason for choosing this one:

In 1971, I joined the staff of Eskdale Outward Bound School. The mainstay of Outward Bound in those days was the 26-day ‘standard’ course. The daily routine on such courses included an assembly at 9 o’clock each morning. The format of the assembly was simple: the warden made any announcements that were required, then an instructor gave an ‘inspirational’ reading and led a short prayer.

On my second course, I was asked to perform the second and third parts of this ceremony. I decided to interpret ‘reading’ in the widest possible sense. I rigged up my two large speakers to a recently acquired stereo cassette deck containing a tape that had already been cued to the start of the final movement beforehand. Before pressing the ‘start’ button, I explained to the audience that the music symbolized the symbiosis between different levels of consciousness (I’d recently been reading Timothy Leary’s The Politics of Ecstasy—and consuming LSD for the first time). I sat down and started the music. The warden didn’t look too impressed, but he said nothing.

After what seemed like a lot more than the six minutes that the final movement actually takes to play, the music stopped and I stopped the tape. The reaction was so far beyond my expectations as to be halfway to the outer reaches of the solar system. All 108 students (all male, all between the ages of 16 and 20) stood up, and I received a standing ovation. Even the warden admitted that he’d ‘appreciated’ it, and he appeared not to notice that I skipped the prayer. Several students sought me out during the day to tell me that I’d made them think. 

This may have been the single most personally uplifting experience of my entire life.

This extract is from Atom Heart Mother, my attempt to analyse what is a hugely complex piece of music that features a brass ensemble and a choir to augment the band.

Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody
In 1975, I was working at the Hong Kong Outward Bound School, and we used to take groups of students on two-day rock-climbing expeditions to the sea cliffs at Fat Tong Point, in the extreme southeast of the New Territories. On one occasion, at the end of the first day, I was listening to one of those tiny pocket radios that were popular at the time when Killer Queen began.

“Wow!” I thought. “What is this?”

Shortly thereafter, I was wandering around a branch of ParknShop, a local supermarket chain, when I came across a rack in the middle of an aisle with vinyl records for HK$20, which was a third of the price I would have expected to pay at the time in the UK. I didn’t look too closely, but I spotted a copy of Sheer Heart Attack. At that price, I was bound to want to buy it, which I did. I became an instant Queen fan and bought their next album, A Night at the Opera, on which this is the obvious stand-out track, as soon as it was released.

This is the only track in this selection that I’ve actually seen performed live. I was living in London in 1979 while working for the BBC. One evening, I was watching an arts program on BBC2, from which I learned that Queen were doing ‘a crazy little tour of London’, playing in small venues. When the program finished, it was time to take my dog for a walk, and I bumped into the  guy who lived in the ground-floor flat. I already knew that he was a sales rep for EMI, so I had an obvious question:

“Hey Nigel,” I said. “Is there any chance you can get me tickets for Queen at the Rainbow tomorrow night?”

The Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park is just down the road from where I was living in Highbury.

When I saw Nigel the following evening, he handed me two tickets, not for the Rainbow but for the Lyceum Ballroom in the Strand two days later! I could not have been more grateful.

One of these days, I plan to post a copy of an essay that I wrote about the band that was published by TV & Entertainment Times—for which I’d been the resident TV critic—in 1978.

Dire Straits: Sultans of Swing
By the 1980s, for someone who had begun the process of growing up accompanied by the music of Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino, there was almost nothing to spark my interest, but this ‘song’ was something that immediately caught my attention. It wasn’t the almost spoken delivery of the words—a feat that is technically far harder than most people realize—but the sparkling guitar embellishments that originally caught my attention.

The irony is that it’s about a jazz band, and jazz is the other musical genre that I’ve always found abhorrent. While I associate country and western music with right-wing rednecks, I consider jazz to be the music of left-wing ‘intellectuals’, and I like to think that I don’t fit into either category.

*  *  *

I will resist the temptation to include any ‘honourable mentions’, which seems to be the de facto way to present this kind of list, except for my reason for not including classical music, which I do listen to—and enjoy—from time to time. My introduction to this type of music will probably surprise you. When I worked on oil rigs in the Sahara Desert in 1968, there was always a recreation cabin, which invariably included a pool table and a ‘library’ of paperback novels that workers had purchased at airports before flying out to Libya, read and discarded. I can’t tell you how many Agatha Christie novels I read during this period.

However, on one rig there was also a gramophone, and among the small collection of records was a recording of Beethoven’s sixth symphony. You can imagine how boring it must have been in the middle of nowhere that I decided to give it a listen. To say that I was impressed would be a massive understatement. Although I’m now familiar with all Beethoven’s symphonies—and his sixth is not his best by a long way (that would be his seventh)—I’m still a rock ’n’ roller at heart, and if condemned to listen to just eight tracks, possibly for eternity, I’m always going to go with that.

I was tempted to include a rendition of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General, from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance, which is the ultimate rap song, but I know all the words, and if alone on a desert island, I can sing it myself!

*  *  *

Desert Island Discs always concludes with the presenter asking their guest that if their collection of records is threatened by the breaking waves and they can rescue just one, which one would they choose. I think that my choice is too obvious for me to identify specifically here.

The presenter then informs their guest that despite being granted the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible (the Authorized Version, I would hope), they can also have one other book on their desert island. As someone who spent almost 20 years editing other people’s books, I think that I would forgo that concession. However, if forced to choose, I might go with Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge by Robert Audi. This was the most challenging assignment of my editing career, and the author was so impressed by my work that he asked that my name be added to the acknowledgements at the front of the book. I haven’t read it since, even though there is a copy on my bookshelves in Penrith.

The guest is also allowed one ‘luxury’, and that is an easy choice for me: a pack of playing cards. I know more than 20 types of patience (US: solitaire), and a pack of cards is the ultimate time waster, or time passer if marooned on a desert island.

jailhouse rock

When what we call the frontier road, which runs from northwest of Sheung Shui to Lok Ma Chau, was opened to the public in 2013—it had previously been part of a zone that had been designated ‘the frontier closed area’ by the British administration—it didn’t take long to check out the various options. There are only two road junctions: leading to the village of Liu Pok, and thence via Liu Pok Hill to Ma Tso Lung Road; and via Ma Tso Lung Road, through the village of Ma Tso Lung to the same point. If I didn’t want to go back all the way following the same road as on the outward journey, these were the only options.

Ma Tso Lung Road is reasonably rural for the first few kilometres, but as one proceeds southwards, the incidence of quasi-industrial premises, and the frequency with which one encounters industrial traffic, steadily increases. To the point where no sane cyclist would continue. On my first foray here, I did cycle as far as the junction with Ho Sheung Heung Road, but it was immediately obvious that I needed a better way to return to my starting point.

And I found it! A quiet road, unmetalled in part, allowed me to avoid all the industrial premises on both roads on the way back to the start. So the routine became outwards on the frontier road, back via Liu Pok Hill and Ma Tso Lung Road, then Ho Sheung Heung Road, which, after a short but steep ascent, includes a long downhill section where I can reach a speed of 45km/hr.

Mentioning the speed here is relevant to the continuing story. The start of the frontier road coincides with the end of Ho Sheung Heung Road, and the plan was always from this point to follow the Drainage Services (DSD) access road that runs alongside the Sheung Yue River as far as the expressway, which we could then cross via a footbridge before continuing out west. However, when travelling at the aforementioned speed, you cannot allow yourself to be distracted—your focus must be straight ahead—but on one occasion, as I passed the Lo Wu Correctional Institution, I couldn’t help but notice a car waiting to pull out of a side road on the right:

Where does that lead to? Naturally, I had to come back later to find out. It leads to the village of Ho Sheung Heung San Tsuen. Ho Sheung Heung (‘village above the river’) is the name of an important nearby village, and san tsuen simply means ‘new village’, so it’s clearly a kind of overspill, albeit with some obviously important buildings. However, was there anything else? I found a typical country path, which led—surprise! surprise!—to Ho Sheung Heung.

Here are some video stills of Paula on that path:

It will probably not be a surprise to learn that we no longer follow the DSD access road on our way out west. After exiting this segment, we follow ‘the heart of darkness’ and the serendipity alleyways to reach ‘long tall sally’. Even though a dedicated cycle track is currently being constructed in parallel with the DSD access road. Our new way is a lot more fun!

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will probably have already deduced why I’ve named this segment ‘jailhouse rock’. Yes, it starts at the prison, but you will have noticed that I named a segment that I discovered two years ago ‘long tall sally’. I grew up with fifties music, and one of these days I’ll post an assessment of what I consider the top ten records of the decade. However, I can’t foresee any circumstance where I would name a newly discovered cycling segment ‘summertime blues’—the record of the 1950s, in my opinion—or ‘great balls of fire’. ‘Yakety yak’? Possibly.

photographic abstraction #26

Although I keep thinking that I won’t find enough suitable images to continue my series of abstract photographs, I’m still coming up with new ideas and new motifs. Of course, a lot of the images I produce—and reject—are too amorphous to allow me to suggest a meaning through a title, although I think that you will find the present collection both varied and interesting.

What is going on in the first picture? To me, it is a perfect illustration of chaos.

chaos theory

I believe that most people are familiar with Descartes’ famous dictum, cogito ergo sum (‘I think therefore I am’)—indeed, I’ve had it quoted at me on several occasions by someone trying to make a philosophical point, invariably without their realizing that this statement assumes that ‘mind’ and ‘body’ are somehow separate, which is probably an error. The most cogent rebuttal of Cartesian dualism was made by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, who called it ‘the ghost in the machine’:

ghost in the machine

You don’t need me to point out that the next image isn’t hair, but it is something that’s been brushed. I can’t remember what though.

hair today, gone tomorrow

The impact was on the left, but the target was in the middle. In other words, the attacker missed:

missed

The title I’ve given to the next image refers to the term’s cartographic usage rather than to remission of pain:

relief

It isn’t often that an image is so striking that I simply have to get off my bike and take a photograph, but this is what happened with my final image, which I’ve named after one of the few musical acts of the twenty-first century that I consider worth listening to.

white stripes

recent posts in this series
Photographic Abstraction #21
Photographic Abstraction #22
Photographic Abstraction #23
Photographic Abstraction #24
Photographic Abstraction #25