BROTHERHOOD OF MAN – “Figaro”
When pop’s weather changes, sometimes it’s the mediocre songs that tell you – left beached, suddenly seeming not just below-par but a bit ridiculous. Some records are the sound of a game being up. The hoofy hornsome jauntiness of “Figaro” wouldn’t have sounded good whenever it was released, but not so long before it would at least have fitted in better, just another bad mid-70s pop side, and why expect more? But in the context of 1978 it sounds risible in its complete paucity of ambition (those bastard horns especially). I like this a lot less than the much-despised “Angelo”: a pastiche that runs out of steam beats this horrid evocation of the holiday hustle. “Figaro” – well, “Figaro”’s brass section - is like being woken at dawn, with a hangover, from an itchy bed by a Butlins Redcoat and made to party till your feet bleed. A single too far for the Brotherhood and their whole aesthetic.
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Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 1,378 views • Share/Save
I can’t recall this one at all, even with MC’s lyric quotes upthread. I do have a gut antipathy to follow-ups to big hits that too blatantly repeat the formula, though, so maybe I dismissed it at the time and promptly forgot all about it. From the looks of this thread, I did the right thing.
Fascinating Figaro Fact: this was voted as the best single of 1978 by the viewers of Magpie (ITV’s version of Blue Peter).
I do quite like the rising and falling bass vamp which lurks within the chorus. So that earns it One Point.
I hope Tommy Boyd had a right go at them.
I’m shocked that Magpie viewers would make such a choice, I always thought of that show as the vaguely hipper cousin to Blue Peter. The first time I ever saw XTC was on Magpie, they did ‘Science Friction’ – can’t imagine them sharing a studio with John Noakes can you?
Tsk, kids those days eh? And my generation has the temerity to complain about bassline house at the back of the bus…
I also saw XTC doing “Science Friction” on Magpie! “Damned attractive!” quipped one of the male presenters after it had finished…
Sounds like the Boydmeister, all right…
Ah, “Magpie”!
Theme tune sung by Spencer Davis Group and Susan Stranks followed by Jenny Hanley. Hotpants! Woo-Hoo! A little bit more trouser movement for the young fastly-developing Waldo than was to be had from watching Auntie Val stroking Jason, who I always thought was dead.
And then one day, he was.
Jenny Hanley used to work behind the bar at Playhatch, which is not a kids TV show but a village outside Henley and not far from us here. I think it’s her folks’ pub.
Anyroad, we went, and I had to stop a friend of mine going up and asking her if she was her off Magpie. dense get!
Mick Robertson from Magpie came to our school once to film a bit about our Swing Orchestra (Glenn Miller type thing, they made an album!) and I was in a crush of kids around him trying to get his autograph but by the time I got to him the bell had gone for the next lesson and he told me I had to go to class so no autograph. The bastard.
Mick Robertson was, I think, the first male Magpie presenter since the show’s inception whom I didn’t fancy. I blame the curly perm.
I can recall Mick Robertson singing a song called “The Tango’s Over” and going nowhere in a hurry with it. As Mike says, the barnet was to blame.
Lee – We didn’t have a bell sounding to denote lesson changes at my school. We had four pips/bleeps. The final “hometime” bleeps were then followed by the plumby tones of our librarian, Miss Barclay, announcing which kids, who were not already in custody, were warned for court the next day.
We beeps too over the school tannoy, it was just easier to say “bell”
The thought’s just struck me – isn’t the chorus ripped off ‘Una Paloma Blanca’?
No doubt influenced by it, but I don’t think it’s a direct steal.
I remember Mick Robertson’s follow-up single “and then I change hands” being better.
It was about dancing the tango again, and not the old Boy Scouts joke.
“Then I Changed Hands,” a former Fab 208 Powerplay.
I saw his album (also called Then I Changed Hands) on tape in a charity shop recently but alas the tape was too mangled to justify purchase.
It’s very strange to see Brotherhood of Man as a recurring chart topper here: they were a definitive one hit wonder in America, with “United We Stand.” I’d always thought they were a made-up band, a la Edison Lighthouse, but here I find them a veritable Pop Steamroller. (Well, not really, but still.)
Re: The Survey:
1. When were you born? 1959
2. What was the year you were first regularly interested in what was at #1? 1971. (I listened to casey Kaem’s “American Top 40″ every Sunday morning, even going so far as to keep track of how much each song had risen or fallen from the prior week.)
3. Do you still listen to music in the Top 40 on a regular basis (and if the answer’s “no”, when did you stop)? Yes, I do. The main difference from when I began in 1971 to now is the segregation by genre that exists now across the American commercial radio dial. Which is why I’m about to subscribe to satellite radio, where you can pick channels that mix everything together. Much more interesting and fun.
I’d always assumed the “Brotherhood of Man” to be a dormant bandname that was reactivated for the Eurovision song comp.
But one read of Wiki has a consistent release schedule through the Deram singles all the way up through Pye and onto “kisses 4 me”…
And on the Cattini-watch front, it’s time to bid Our Clem farewell for the best part of five years, as his impressive 15-year run of placing at least Number One in the charts each year draws to a close…
The constant (xpost) was Tony Hiller, who owned the Brotherhood of Man “brand name.”
It took them six whole months to come up with this ’sequel’. Wild.
A pub conversation the other night was on whether a whole compilation could be made up of Abba-alikes from the late seventies. Angelo and Figaro obviously stake their lowly claims, then there’s the much better Wanted by The Dooleys (who, like BOM, switched from male lead to twin female lead with suspiciously ‘professional’ timing). I have a recollection of Dutch group Luv sneaking into this bag. Must be a bunch more acts across Europe doing something similar?
“I’m rather hoping now that when we get to 1978, we don’t have all this over again, along with ludicrous accusations of “racism” being levelled at people who are merely expressing an opinion with which others disagree” said Waldo in the Typically Tropical thread.
Was he referring to this grotesque Latin lothario? I’d like to think so. What next, stereotyping the Italians as overly defensive killjoys with all the entertainment value of Jack Charlton’s Middlesbrough?
Re: 46 the 2M 2F pop group appears to be a model that comes and disappears for a few years. The most glaring example of this phenomena occurring out of time that I remember was Deuce (“On The Loose!’), much heralded by Smash Hits in the spring of 1995. The kids weren’t convinced.
#47: no, Waldo had another one in mind which we’ve yet to reach (and which similarly lowers the tone IMO but we’ll deal with that when we get there).
Re. Italians: my office please, 9 am tomorrow sharp.
Typographers’ favourites Luv’ were definitely ABBA soundalikes though I don’t know if they followed the 2M2F formula. They cleaned up in some areas of the continent, acting kind of as the Coldplay to ABBA’s Radiohead, i.e. “they’ve gone all experimental so someone has to step in and play the early funny stuff”.
They were pretty good though – I may just do an MP3 post on them this afternoon.
re. #48 and modern ABBA-a-likes: aside from a five-piece who are under Bunny Embargo, there’s of course Sweden’s own A-Teens, who vastly improved on their inglorious covers act beginnings with some excellent pop singles (“Upside Down”) and I believe Scooch followed the 2M2F formula – a modern day Brotherhood of Man, except for coming last in Eurovision not first.
Best ever post-ABBA 2M 2F pop group: Propaganda!
It’s February, it’s 1978, you are listening to the no.1 single – is it ‘Native New Yorker’, ‘Mr Blue Sky’, ‘Lovely Day’, ‘Jamming’, ‘Wishing On A Star’, ‘Love Is Like Oxygen’, ‘Loves Unkind’ or even ‘Stayin Alive’ ?? Eh ?? No it’s this, intro sounds like ‘it’s a knockout’, God awful mid fecking winter holiday hit. I fear there will never be an ABBA style re-appraisal for the BoM.
That promised Luv’ post in full
#53: not to mention, a bit further down the chart, “What Do I Get?” and “Shot By Both Sides”…
I’m finding it hard to write about the one song on the charts at this time that I love so much that when it comes on the radio even now I yelp and run and turn it up!
In short, “The Groove Line” by Heatwave (didn’t even make the top 10, alas) is like a vast door opening. The cymbals; the Kraftwerk-like wuh-wuh-wuh noise that comes from God knows where (I can’t figure out what instrument it is, must be a synth but which one?); minimalistic guitar; bass that seems bigger and richer than it has any right to be. All this and harmonies and rhythms and an amiable groove and I cannot help but think one Mr. Jones heard this and he couldn’t resist wanting to dance…and after dancing make a very important phone call. I swear I can hear ABC and Human League in this song as well, though maybe that’s because they are equally irresistable for me…
Yes, “The Groove Line” is a work of art as far as I’m concerned, especially its long, elegant and oddly elegiac fadeout…curiously, I don’t think Rod Temperton ever had a UK number one single as a songwriter (though am certain he must have done) but plenty of time and opportunity for proper assessment of that later on…
# 47 wichita lineman – Marcello’s right. Not this one.
And another vote for “The Groove Line”.
Wanted by The Dooleys
Funny, my memory had it they continued to have hits with this new formation, but one hit by the bloke again, one minor hit I can’t recall but suspect was a girlduo one, then it was all over…
“The Chosen Few” and “Love Patrol” in that order.
“You chose me, and I chose you, we’re the chosen few”
With logic like that, …..
nah, one for the useless hit list.
I quite liked it at the time ‘cos it reminded me of the Archies.
yeah, can see that…
still..
To compare them to Abba is insulting. The only time they nearly managed it was on “lightning flash” which resembled a “Not the Nine O Clock News” parody of “super trooper”.
“Oh boy” and “Angelo” were great pop singles. This is just dreadful summertime pop that you would normally condemn as fit, only for holiday makers in Marbella.
how can anyone not like figaro? It was a hard core classic.