Nic

I think that television companies are obliged to agree to reasonable requests to view material from people who were originally involved in the production, so if original New Seekers ask the archives directly they could well be successful.

Nic Culverwell…New Seekers Manager

She then (my sister, that is) went onto a dancing college in CovGard area London, along with Emma Forbes, funnily enough.

I can just see Elsie Tanner singing this to herself as she’s putting on her lippy to go down the Rovers, as she bids farewell to another wrong ‘un. Sort of smouldering over the barm cakes and meat and potato pies.

Erithian describes this as the last number one of the 50s, and in some ways that feels like a fair assessment. On the other hand, I don’t think this could have been made in this way in the fifties, because there’s something about the style of the vocal that wouldn’t be allowed in the fifties. I’m not sure that ‘raunchiness’ is the word - Shirley Bassey did raunchy in the 50s and Eartha Kitt did raunchy in spades, but this isn’t the same thing. I thought perhaps ‘blowsiness’ was nearer the mark. Whatever it is, it’s something very English, and Northern English at that. You could imagine it on a Saturday night in the Rovers Return, or at the end of Blackpool Pier.

There was a lot of retro stuff about at the time, perhaps because in the world it large it felt like a time when an old age was passing and a new one feeling its uncertain way in. This seems a good moment to give a mention to Norman ‘Hurricane’ Smith, sound engineer turned solo artiste, another retro act with a distinctly Oop North flavour. And Peter Skellern, of course.

“Winchester Cathedral” is fantastic though! That makes me like this song a little bit more already. We’ll see it how it grows on me…

Marcello, please don’t reduce the wonderful Manny Tranny to the level of the company you’ve put them in. I’ll have more to say on the subject anon.

Also, apropos of Penny Lane the singer, and as we are marking (ad nauseam) the 40th birthday of Radio One, let’s those of us who are old enough recall that on its inception, Radio One was required to give over a fair slice of its air time to Live Music at the behest of the Musicians Union. Naturally, this didn’t mean top bands appearing in the studio, it meant the resident BBC dance orchestra fronted by third division cabaret singers like Penny Lane performing covers of hit songs. It was dismal, gruesome, and wince-inducing, and within a couple of years the practice was stopped.

Now they didn’t come much more 1970 than Maggie Fitzgibbon - all over the telly that year what with variety shows and appearing in “Manhunt” alongside Robert Hardy and Cyd Hayman (drool..) - and then back to obscurity all of a sudden. The presence of the New Seekers alongside Anita Harris and Frank Ifield is as archetypal as they come.

Oh, and apart from being a Whizz-Kid rather than a Chip-Ite also, definitely Lyn Paul over Eve Graham. Eve was way too “nice”.

Radcliffe is exasperating. He is clearly very much in control of his brief and has been around the rock/pop/punk fermament for ages. It’s just a pity he has never been able to put a sentence together.

David Coleman to thread…

When it comes to the New Seekers, another stark and important choice had to be faced – Lyn Paul or Eve Graham? I thought Eve was lovely, ever-present smile, crisp brown hair and a healthy natural look. Lyn, whilst hardly the antithesis, provided a bit more danger, I thought – the good time blonde, who could kill a man, well certainly a barely teenaged boy, at fifty paces. I was thus very much for Lyn, although never regarded Eve as a consolation prize. It was, of course, dangerous blonde Lyn who belted out the vocals on this, the New Seekers’ second and last chart topper and a fine brassy job she does on it too. The song became an anthem (albeit a mostly ironic one) for all women who were pissed off with their geezers and I actually think it works well as merely a riposte rather than as an implied threat of terminating the relationship. In fact the story of this song is identical to that of a seminal country song we will be discussing next year. The man may have been “treating (her) like a fool”, but despite constant threats of dumping him she stays with the bugger. Ergo she is indeed a fool and she knows it. Of one thing I am absolutely certain, though, is that the man has never hit her. Lyn would have ripped his knackers off had he tried that one.

There’s a nice story about Geoff Stephens, the co-writer: he was comforting his secretary after she’d been dumped by a boyfriend, and she told him how as he walked out she’d defiantly shouted after him, “Go on, but you won’t find another fool like me”. Stephens said, “Looking back, I hope I had the good grace to comfort her before dashing off to turn that line into a song.” His other songs include “The Crying Game”, “Winchester Cathedral”, “There’s a Kind of Hush” and “Knock Knock Who’s There?”

Interesting bit about the Lyn Paul lead vocal. It seems she was feeling under-appreciated within the band, so she obviously took her opportunity with both hands. Good to see she’s still doing the business (see her website).

Number 2 Watch – Leo Sayer’s debut hit “The Show Must Go On” stopped at 2 behind the New Seekers. Great record… but who’d want him as a housemate?

Heh, my granny loved the New Seekers’ “Circles”. She said it summed up how she felt about her own life.

Where Parky went wrong is that he should have booked Mengelberg and Bennink on his show; they would have gone down a storm and probably got a long-term Seaside Special residency out of it.

I’ve got a Derek Bailey album at home somewhere (I think live at the ICA, early seventies) where he switches on the TV mid-improvisation because “Oscar Peterson’s on in a minute and I’ve always wanted to play with him” and then he “plays with him” so to speak.

mind you i still hate parky (and richard is VERY tart abt j.cullum in the encycylopaedia)