AL MARTINO – “Here In My Heart”
Deep magic from the dawn of pop. Except it’s not really magical, and it wasn’t exactly the dawn, and nowadays this doesn’t even sound like pop. But you have to start somewhere, and the British singles charts started here: a device to sell newspapers that ended up conquering my world. I had never heard Al Martino’s record before I downloaded it on a whim yesterday. It was easy enough to find, easier than it was to listen to twice.
What I’ve often liked about the charts though is their seeming arbitrariness. You can make a good guess at what will be Number One each week but you can rarely get it entirely right - I was surprised (and delighted) that the Black Eyed Peas hit the top this week; I was resigned and appalled when Gareth Gates and the Kumars clung clammily on this spring. So it’s fitting that the first No.1 sounds so overdone and undistinguished - it crashes into life well enough on a surge of strings but Martino’s cornball opera style is baffling to me: this was pop? Um, OK, if you say so.
But the question always has to be - what’s the appeal? Someone (who? why? we can’t really guess) was buying it - what did they like? Martino’s voice is damn versatile - it slides from bellow to purr so slickly over the space of one line, but it never lets the orchestra outshine it. Maybe that was the hook. Maybe what I hear as too-much a 1952 me would have heard as just right. I expect though I’d have thought what I more or less think now - that ‘Here In My Heart’ is OK, just a curio today; just a hit yesterday. And OK seems an OK place to start.
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#98/99 – Make no mistake, there are many here amongst us who indeed would be more than adept at writing and presenting something like this. I would love to see puntum’s Kenneth Grittith. The Swede would do it in the manner of Frank Butcher, wrapped in a sheepskin and donning reactolite rapides:
“Oh ‘ave a word wiv yerself, Ricky! Them Rubettes were just a bunch of pilchards!” Cue Sugar Baby Love..
and I would probably bounce up and down and to the knees like Peter Powell, so don’t ask me…
#100: yes.
#102: Lena thought Peter Powell last night looked like a less Irish Kenneth Branagh.
Many of you may know that Timmy Bannockburn is hosting a show over Christmas on Radio 2, which would be dear to many of our hearts. It is a countdown of our 100 favourite number twos, each of which is accompanied by mention of the beastly record which stopped it getting to the promised land. Plenty of scope for some fun, I think. This and Brenda’s natter. What more could you want whilst you’re trying to scrape globs of congealed brandy butter off the cat?
Would “God Save The Queen” Sex Pistols count as a No2 for these purposes?
Just checked.
The bad news is, you have to choose from a short list of nominated singles.
The good news is, GSTQ is one of them…
‘American Pie’ would’ve been a stone-cold 10 for me on Popular, so I guess I’ll probably go for that, assuming I can be bothered to register. I take it ‘Vienna’s’ in there as well?
The selections are a little odd in that, e.g., Hound Dog/Don’t Be Cruel counts as two #2s (and God Only Knows being b/w Wouldn’t it be Nice isn’t mentioned) whereas Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields counts as one (and both tracks are mentioned). I’m sure there’s a technical reason for this but the effect is to stack the odds in favor of The Beatles (and voters only get to make one selection).
“Don’t Be Cruel” was never a UK #2 single; “Hound Dog” wasn’t a double A-side in Britain and when “DBC” eventually sloped out as an A-side in 1978 it peaked at #24.
With this level of “expertise” I’m sure I can find far more profitable and engaging things to do of a Christmas afternoon than listen to this ageing creep, for example sleeping.
After the Crimbo din-din the Swede traditionally lowers, I’ll have little choice but to nod off too.
Hurricane Smith’s “Don’t Let It Die”, though for me. Not on the list?..
Since I was mentioning the late Jim Capaldi (with whom I share a birthday) in Another Place I’m going to take a punt on Traffic’s Hole in my Shoe, since I don’t suppose anybody else will. (I had to check that Jim wasn’t involved with the Spencer Davis Group and therefore never had a number one. Unless, as I suspect is the case, somebody knows something I don’t. It isn’t hard.) Coming up on the rails is Kim Wilde (with whom I once shared a school) and Kids in America. Mark Knopfler (once my near neighbour in Notting Hill and fellow customer of Geale’s fish and chip emporium) is making up ground on the outside with Private Investigations.
With one vote only, I was delighted my favourite #2 is most certainly there, and therefore went about voting with a strange rush of enthusiasm. After all, I like a good chart! Since then, I’ve noticed that many of the most interesting contenders have been overlooked, in favour of predictable selections which are already overplayed.
How come I won’t be hearing x or y in the chart? Because “The shortlisted vote options were selected form (sic) the complete list of official Number 2 singles by a panel of music experts and BBC Radio personalities.”
And duly I agree with Punctum – “with this level of “expertise” … “
Radio 2 doesn’t consider me an expert, huh? http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-number-two-thing.html Thanks as ever for reading, back to the rest of ’72 soon!
I went for ‘Groove is in the Heart’ after a toss-up with ‘I Want You Back’ – obviously there’ll be plenty of votes for ‘God Only Knows’, ‘Strawberry Fields’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ etc as it is.
What is it with this drawing up a shortlist by “experts” anyway (what makes them more expert than us punters?) What can’t we just vote from all the number twos?
Is Poppa Piccolino on the list?
No, it isn’t – there’s very little pre-rock on the list, because the experts maybe don’t know the songs (or think anyone listening to R2 knows them either).
What a terrible poll. There a so many selections that I doubt most voters will bother to read past about J or K, meaning even more votes for the Beach Boys and Beatles.
Who’s listening then? ‘American Pie’ at 3, Pogues and Kirsty at 2 … GSTQ was at 19 I think, introduced by TB as “a record I’ve managed to avoid playing for the last 35 years!”
He liked Oasis and The Verve though, so it’s not all about the soul for our Tone.
Gambo on ’60 Years of the Charts’ at 8 tonight on the same station ought to be worth catching, I reckon. Certainly gets my vote over ‘Eastenders’ anyway.
Vienna’s a funny one. Would anyone put it in their all time Top 10? It feels like the oxygen given to Ultravox to air their disappointment is completely out of proportion with the perceived ‘injustice’.
God Only Knows. Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane. Waterloo Sunset. All solidly up there as international Desert Island Discs. But Vienna?
A few personal faves that trounce Vienna… Frankie Laine’s Blowin’ Wild. Excerpt From A Teenage Opera. The Casuals’ Jesamine. Barry Ryan’s Eloise. The Moody Blues’ Question. Groovin’ With Mr Bloe. Slade’s Gudbuy t’Jane. Ballroom Blitz. This Town Ain’t Big Enough. Sir Duke. Church Of The Poison Mind. What Have I Done To Deserve This. Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi. Raving I’m Raving. Set You Free. Milkshake.
I wonder how Blur felt when their own self-conscious epic, Tender, was kept off the top by >>bunnied<<. I bet they whined like billy-o.
Yes, they did wander round for at least seven minutes going “oh whyyyy, oh myyyyy”
Their loneliness must have been killing them…
Inevitably, listened to most of the show – one entry from the ’50s (“Move It”) with no “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Hound Dog.” Suspect that James at #118 is right that most people didn’t bother scrolling through all the choices. Was temporarily wondering whether Queen might bag the top four, knowing what R2 listeners are like, but it didn’t work out that way.
Agree with Rosie at #115 that The Public should just have been left/allowed to pick their own favourite #2.
Re the demise of Chartstats – the OCC seem to now have all the Top 75 chart positions up, by artist. I’m not sure if this was the case before.
Yes that was the case when I first visited OCC when chartstats was killed off. So if you were really determined you could use them to write up your own charts. Just don’t post them on the internet!
Website also has single and album charts from 12/3/60, but only up to the Top 40.
One last thought occurred re the Radio 2 number 2 chart – now that ‘Vienna’ has apparently been given ‘official number 1′ status will Tom have an entry for it?
It hasn’t been given “official number 1″ status; it came top of a radio listeners’ poll. Otherwise you might just as well ask whether Tom will do an entry for David Cameron.
‘Vienna’ was discussed at some length on the ‘Shaddup You Face’ thread, unsurprisingly. Radio 2 themselves styled it an ‘honorary’ number one.
Radio 2, like the BBC in general, are very keen on rewriting history.
Honorary number one my hairy arse. Not that it wouldn’t have been fun to write about.
re:121 I think “My Sex” plus a lot of John Foxxs solo stuff wipe the floor with “Vienna”.
Anyone would think it was an endangered species rather than a slightly silly 30-year old pop epic which has made Midge Ure lots of cash regardless of its chart position.
How much does anyone really like it? Seriously? It never gets oldies airplay/ad usage like, say, Heaven 17′s #2 Temptation.
Well, I have a certain affection for this song.
Basically, my first band’s first public performance was at a Pontin’s holiday camp, we got to borrow the resident band’s equipment and did our number with amplification which we’d never had before. The tape sounds like the Buzzcocks, which was fine, this was 1978 after all.
Any road up, the first bloke on was a cross between Brian Glover and Bill Maynard, and he introduced himself as a ‘pub singer’, a long time before the association that Vic Reeves exploited. Anyway, he chatted a little before producing an acapella performance of this song.
I never heard this original version until a recent BBC documentary that Tony Blackburn hosted. Have to say, it’s good but the bloke was better…
Amusing to read #134 and think that, like #133, it’s about Vienna.
Amusing to read # 133 and think that, like #134, it’s about Here In My Heart.