Comments on: WIZZARD – “Angel Fingers”

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:55:08 +0000

I’ve already forgotten what it (“Please Dont Go”) sounded like! Shady Nook I suppose would have already been slightly dated in the 30s kind of a slightly more poppy ancestor of the kind of thing that’d be being sung as they shifted to the more middle class characters in a dinner party scene in a dramatisation of “Our Mutual Friend” or something…

I say dated although particularly amongst Celts (esp Irish, Welsh) up until quite recently there has been quite an audience for this type of stuff amongst quite working class people (Joseph Locke etc).

By: wichitalineman

wichitalineman — Wed, 06 May 2009 08:11:28 +0000

Snap. I don’t think I’d ever heard Please Don’t Go, which has to be one of the most obscure Top 3 hits of the 60s (in as much as it’s never been an oldies hit). More cod contintentalism. Not as good as In A Shady Nook, is it?

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:35:48 +0000

Erithian beat me to it there!
I read about Donald Peers on here the other week and remember my dad mentioning him once or twice (I think in a kind of ‘Peers=very old-fashioned way’) then when I saw he’d had a hit in the late 60s thought I’d see what it sounded like (ie there’s not many top 10 hits from about 1964-about 1987 I havent heard).
Been meaning to mention the Angel Fingers similarity on here for the last week or so…

By: Erithian

Erithian — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:03:09 +0000

Another connection we can no doubt credit to Mike’s “Which Decade” project, which recently featured Donald Peers’ unlikely top-five comeback in 1969 – that has to be why Andy was searching out his work. I love how this stuff all fits together!

By: wichitalineman

wichitalineman — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:56:10 +0000

Bloody hell, good spot! I was prepared to give Roy the benefit of the doubt til it got to the last line of the chorus. Unlikely source of a Popular entry on a par with Rolf Harris’s War Canoe. I’m also impressed by how you ended up listening to Donald Peers on a grey bank holiday.

In A Shady Nook reached no.3 on the Radio Luxembourg chart in early 1949, even though Peers recorded it in ’44. For the record.

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:13:20 +0000

Listen to “In a Shady Nook (By a Babbling Brook)” by Donald Peers then listen to this – slight similarities to put it mildly…

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:09:04 +0000

Yes, Laban, I’ve always been very fond of Forever which is theoretically a Neil Sedaka tribute but trumps everything that noxious character every recorded (how unpleasant is The Queen Of 64?). “I saw my brand new baby walk out the door” – such a fabulously POP opening line.

Just dug out Eddy & The Falcons for the first time in years. It’s rather pub singer isn’t it? And incredibly muddy. Hats off to Everyday I Wonder for blurring the lines between Del Shannon’s Runaway and ELP. Spector-drear This Is The Story Of My Love is quite perfect, though. Such odd chords. The brownness and pub element take it away from ’62 pastiche and into suburban 70s caffdom; it’s the sound of Angel Fingers slowly being swished around the two-thirds-empty glass of a pint of mild.

By: Laban

Laban — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:08:26 +0000

A lot of Roy Wood’s Wizzard stuff is pop-fan-as-pop-star. I’m particularly fond of “Eddy and the Falcons”, pastiche of everyone from Del Shannon through Dion to Neil Sedaka. And the cover features a small ‘greasy spoon’ caff of the sort where you’d go to hear the jukebox and play pinball, before you were old enough to go to the pub.

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:15:34 +0000

Heaven 17

ABC (why does everybody know The Look Of Love, and no-one under 35 know Poison Arrow?)

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:13:27 +0000

Yesterday on BBC Radio London Tony Blackburn treated us to “Together In Electric Dreams” by “Philip Oakley.”

By: mike

mike — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:11:45 +0000

Human League: “D*** Y** W*** M*”
The Clash: “Rock The Casbah”
The B-52’s: “Love Shack”

(EDIT: Oh, snap!)

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:11:02 +0000

We may be pre-empting ourselves a bit here, but -

THE HUMAN LEAGUE, CULTURE CLUB AND DEXYS DID HAVE OTHER HITS, YOU KNOW! Some of which are every bit as good…

Barry White

Take That

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:05:49 +0000

Speaking of which, we ought to compile a list of OTHER RECORDS ARE AVAILABLE BY THIS ARTIST for the benefit of radio station programmers, and Mott/”Dudes” would be top of the list.

Also:
Harley/Cockney Rebel (Make Me Smile)
Talking Heads (Lifetime/Road To Nowhere)
Curtis Mayfield (Move On Up)

(posters plz come up with other examples kthnxbye)

By: mike

mike — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:19:25 +0000

Ooh, did someone mention All The Young Dudes?

This is as good a place as any to shoehorn in the Exciting Revelation that Overend! Watts! from Mott The Hoople was in our village pub the Sunday before last. He is currently walking from Land’s End to John O’Groats, popped in on his own, and ended up getting dragged into our fund-raising Quiz Night.

The aforementioned Exciting Revelation is that both Overend and Ian Hunter are in favour of a Mott reunion (“Well, everybody else is doing it”), and that Steps Are Being Taken to that effect. You heard it here first.

By: richard thompson

richard thompson — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:51:16 +0000

I remember Disco 45 and they had articles about different groups each week and they said all the young dudes should have done a lot better than it did, they got the words wrong to see my baby jive as well.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:49:04 +0000

Ah, so that’s who you are, P^nk etc.

Is Angel Fingers the first pop-fan-as-pop-star number one? The only one, even? The blaring Spitfire saxes, the pin-up strewn bedroom in the opening verse, the image of a divine teen goddess on the chorus, this is just so damn evocative.

In almost every pub conversation that it’s cropped up in, 25 years and counting, I’ve been the only person defending it. Well done Popular! Another winner!

By: pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør

pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 17:50:13 +0000

treasure
world of wonder (cancelled)
look and learn (grew out of)
puffin post (grew out of)
nme (read then wrote from then “famously” resigned from)
sounds (stopped takin in disgust at poor review of 1st raincoats LP)
the wire

By: Waldo

Waldo — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:06:36 +0000

I didn’t read any music mags in 1973. I do however recall reading “Catch 22″ at about this time and my English teacher telling me that I shouldn’t “fill (my) head with such nonesense”. Heller’s masterpiece is one of the great novels of the 20th century, surely to goodness? Problem was, I was a child who whilst gobby, couldn’t possibly argue with a teacher. I’d rip the idiot to pieces today.

By: mike

mike — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:05:18 +0000

…whereas I was a Pictorial Knowledge child, also complete with (orange) binders, whose run was abruptly and prematurely ended by the publishers.

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:48:29 +0000

My principal reading matter in terms of pop music in 1973 was the Story Of Pop magazine-which-builds-up-to-a-complete-encyclopaedia series, complete with free binders. Even now I’m unsure whether the publishers ever actually completed the run (I also subscribed at the same time to All About Science which was the same thing and probably the same publishers – Phoebus? – but with science, obv. Nice bright blue binders they had).

By: Caledonianne

Caledonianne — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:41:17 +0000

Ooh, Music Star!

I loved Music Star!

By: mike

mike — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:27:33 +0000

Oh, and I quite agree about Words being Disco 45's poor cousin; the layout was shonky and amateurish even by 1973 standards, and the song choices frequently bizarre and wide of the mark attempts at second-guessing future hits. Whereas Disco 45 was my pre-teen proto-Smash Hits bible, when I wasn't sneaking glances at my sister's Music Star...

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:19:28 +0000

Despite Tom Browne’s sterling efforts on Solid Gold Sixty to convince us that it was about a woman named Deirdre Lane.

By: mike

mike — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:08:47 +0000

intothefireuk OTM! Yet to become a serious vinyl collector – that was still a few months way – “Angel Fingers” was a rare purchase, and sounded wonderful when played on the Bush mono gramophone with the smoked-effect perspex hood that my father bought me to cheer me up when my mother walked out on us to marry his best friend. In the midst of such a desperately miserable year, the surging day-glo joyfulness of glam-pop was exactly what was needed to take me out of myself, and “Angel Fingers” took me further than any other single from that year. I played it incessantly and obsessively, luxuriating in its maximalist thrill, dancing with myself in the sanctuary of my room. (I had routines, and a video in my head.) Sonically, it’s a fuller, tighter, more intricately worked upgrade on “See My Baby Jive”, with a scintillating pizzicato break and glorious french horns. Wood’s continuing Spector obsession eventually led me back to the original productions, but this was a case of the pastiche surpassing its source. 10 out of 10 (and having finally, FINALLY heard the “one that got away” space age madrigal “Dear Elaine” for the first time this summer, I can only say that it was worth the wait).

By: Marcello Carlin

Marcello Carlin — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:15:59 +0000

If you go to the Radio 2 website and use the Listen Again facility you’ll be able to hear that programme, including the interview, online up until next Sunday.