Comments on: VILLAGE PEOPLE – “Y.M.C.A.”

By: Iron J

Iron J — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:21:00 +0000

I attended YMCA’s “after-school day-camp” throughout primary school and this song was a feature on the annual talent shows. As such, I have an instinctively negative reaction to hearing “YMCA”. The descending horns in the chorus particularly evoke feelings of deep sadness and imminent doom. So gauche it hurts. I am fascinated by the U.K. perpsective of this being an emblematic American artifact.

By: Waldo

Waldo — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:14:19 +0000

As the idiot who started all this “I Will Return” malarkey, I’ve just listened to it again for the first time in years and think it’s a lovely piece of music. “Abide With Me” is certainly in there and it’s clear that it’s all about a bloke who has just skied one and is simply waiting for deep mid-wicket to take the catch. It’s certainly NOT about someone telling his old lady that he’s just off to the grocers to pick up a medium Mother’s Pride and a pint of Goldtop.

Mr Turner may have been right about the girls crying over this. I myself am holding a screwed up hankie now, although this has not so much to do with “I Will Return” as the fact that I’ve just checked the share prices…

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:36:28 +0000

Given that he put out an album at the same time entitled Born Again I fear that this was the path he was treading.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:18:09 +0000

That’s not the flu talking, there’s a definite bagpipe feel, and someone else pointed out to me recently that the title could be religious. Prefer to think it isn’t. The promo clip and Phil Cordell’s demise keep its mystery caged.

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:36:59 +0000

Reminds me rather more of “Abide With Me” but in keeping with a top ten which also included “Softly Whispering I Love You” by the Congregation. That strange Godhead tinge to the early seventies charts.

By: mike

mike — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:16:33 +0000

Well, it wasn’t what I was expecting. At all. Quite out of context with the charts of its time, which only serves to underline its “outsider” status. For some reason, it reminds me of the second part of the album version of “Layla”, slowed down to 16rpm. Also easy to imagine this being covered by a bagpipe troupe, but that might just be the fag-end of the man-flu talking; I’ve been a bit delirious all day.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:46:51 +0000

A loved-up Wasp, even! I didn’t think it was a Moog but couldn’t place the sound. On the DTBM clip you can almost see the thought bubble: “Shit, I’ll have to make a whole album of this stuff now.”

Mike, what did you make of I Will Return after waiting to hear it for 37 years?

By: mike

mike — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:32:51 +0000

Sounds more like a loved-up wasp to me! Amazing that this knocked “Teenage Rampage” off the top of the German charts…

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:32:21 +0000

Thanks Billy. Could it look more 1971 if it tried? Only if the mysterious lady turned out to be Sally Carr. I Will Return (says Wikipedia) earnt an entry on the Swiss version of Popular.

And here’s Phil C three years later…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiTUxqH5BqA&NR=1

Dan The Banjo Man was a no.1 in Germany (how queer), knocking Teenage Rampage from the top before being replaced a week later by Nazareth’s This Flight Tonight.

Very sad to read that he’s no longer with us, I didn’t know. Anyone know anything else about him?

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:21:29 +0000

Dan The Banjo Man has a relentless synth line that sounds like an over-excited sheepdog. No banjo or slide guitar. And it was on Berry Gordy’s Rare Earth label. Phil Cordell’s phenomenal ‘solo’ single Londonderry, one of the most dense sounding records ever made, was on Mowest.

It’s rather like Motown signing The Fall. Which apparently (apocryphally?) they nearly did.

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:59:03 +0000

Here’s your chance to, Mike;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qk__jZfkc0

By: mike

mike — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:49:10 +0000

I remember watching Springwater rising up and falling down the charts, and feeling frustrated because I had never actually heard it. Indeed, I still haven’t heard it to this day.

By: Mark G

Mark G — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:21:45 +0000

Noo, I know that one well!. Never seen a copy! (though, I have Boulders, obv)

The “DTBM” I know went ‘plunka.. plunka..’ with some steel slide guitar in the background occasionally. Still, that was back in the early seventies, so…

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:58:10 +0000

Possibly “When Grandma Played The Banjo,” the underselling debut solo single but Fab 208 Powerplay by Roy Wood, which featured plenty of excellent banjo playing from the Wizzard himself.

By: Mark G

Mark G — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:44:28 +0000

I don’t remember it. File it next to Donald Peers then.

I do remember “Dan the Banjo Man”, used to get a lot of Radio Luxembourg play…

although, if “no banjo to be heard” is right, I must be thinking of something else…

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:21:54 +0000

I’m still quite astonished at how well “I Will Return” did in the charts – when I listened to it recently I couldn’t remember it at all and don’t recall it being played on the radio, although obviously it must have been. Was it perchance a TV theme tune?

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:13:57 +0000

As long as I remember that I’m repeating myself I can’t be going senile…

By: DJ Punctum

DJ Punctum — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:14:56 +0000

Here, to be exact.

By: wichita lineman

wichita lineman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:50:33 +0000

Re 87: I Will Return would have made me well up at primary school with its melancholic yet triumphant wall of guitars. One of the best drum sounds ever, too – as if they were recorded at the bottom of a lift shaft with a dictaphone, a cross between Trampled Under Foot and Spectre Vs Rector.

I always pick up anything with Phil Cordell’s name attached – Springwater aside, Dan The Banjo Man gets a mention somewhere else on Popular I think (?). Probably repeating myself but it sounds exactly like the inside of a two-year old’s head.

By: intothefireuk

intothefireuk — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 03:49:44 +0000

Nope – I certainly wasn’t in the mood for this in 1978. Head full of macho rock – you can’t air guitar to it can you ? Disco, for me, did suck for at least another year, until I actually went to a nightclub and the penny dropped. So YMCA was off the radar but I did eventually come around to it, by then of course it was mobile DJ fodder so I was endlessly subjected to ‘the arm dance’ ad infinitum. It is so familiar I can no longer judge it subjectively – it just is and it’s still a guaranteed hit at every party and I don’t know whether that’s a good or a bad thing either.

By: Waldo

Waldo — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:44:57 +0000

# 85 – I recall the last couple of years at my primary school at the top of the seventies when we were allowed to bring in records on occasions. It was all very innocent and the records were left on a table for the kids to look at, our teacher, Mr Turner, watching closely. Most of us had committed the sacrilege of scribbling our names on the labels to stop other kids “borrowing” them. I recall bringing in Springwater’s “I Will Return”. The disc was not nicked but it wasn’t played either because DJ, Mr Turner told me: “I’m not putting that thing on, Waldo. It’s too sad. It will make all the girls cry.”

Whilst still attempting to work out what this meant, I picked up a record with a blue label, which a boy called Noel Stewart had brought in. I can’t remember the group but to this day, I can still remember the titles. The A-Side was called “Drink Milk” and the B-Side “Smoke Dem Botty Men Out”.

I can’t imagine Tatchell and John Barrowman doing a cheek to cheek to that one, quite frankly.

By: Erithian

Erithian — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:05:52 +0000

The link didn’t work – try http://www.jamaicans.com/news/announcements/Reggaestarsrenouncehomophobia062007.shtml

By: Erithian

Erithian — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:04:56 +0000

#70 – just to come back on-topic from the not unpleasant topic of Jamaican women sprinters… one of those sprinters, Aleen Bailey of the 4x400m relay team, is the sister of the dancehall star Capleton, who in the past has not been averse to making records advocating setting fire to homosexuals, but who last year was hailed by none other than Peter Tatchell for signing up to the Reggae Compassionate Act. It’s not a subject that will crop up on Popular for some while if at all, but is an interesting sideline in the Village People context.

By: Andy Pandy

Andy Pandy — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:47:45 +0000

I agree with whoever mentioned that the YMCA dance appeared years lately (at least on a mass level). I was too young to be at clubs when this first came out but by about 1982 and thereafter I spent far too much of my time in often the dodgy kinds of clubs where such dances are done.And I never saw anyone do it then I read an article in (I think)the Sunday papers in probably the late 80s/even early 90s which mentioned this dance as though it was a big thing. And suddenly well over 10 years after the hit I noticed people started to treat the dance as though everyone had been doing it for years. But that’s not how I remember it at all…

By: Chris Brown

Chris Brown — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:10:33 +0000

Albumwatch: on the original Cruisin’ LP, ‘The Women’ appears as part of a medley with ‘I’m A Cruiser’. I’m slightly surprised they bothered to split them rather than pick one of the individual tracks from Side 2 as the B-side.

Beyond that I haven’t much to add to what other people have pointed out. The one parody that sticks in my mind is Jasper Carrot singing about the SDP.