Hepper, but less charming rerun of “Summer Holiday” with the intrusive horn arrangement acting as your hustling tour guide and stamping out any moments of excitement. By the coda Georgie Fame sounds awfully bored. Gotta go. Get away. Go. Go. Yeah.
3
Tom in Popular • 1,301 views • Share/Save
All the UK number ones since 1952, reviewed in order and rated by whim. As featured on Radio 2, The Times, Metro, Paul Cornell's LiveJournal, etc etc.
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The horns (the same horns which reappeared 18 years later on Aswad’s Live And Direct!) actually make the song with their octave-leaping riffs like a tyre desperately trying to warn you of its imminent burst. The song was written for a petrol TV commercial (National IIRC) and the second of the most atypical career trajectory of any serial chart topper – the Jools Holland of his day never had any top ten hits except for the three which went all the way to the top, and none of which betrayed the ska/jazz/R&B/proto-psych lite fusion which Fame was wont to achieve onstage.
Oddly enough, the drummer on this record was relieved of his Blue Flames duties shortly afterwards for general twattish behaviour – one Mitch Mitchell…
Doctor Mod says,
Ah, yes–but this is hardly the worst Georgie Fame track to hit the top of the UK charts.
It’s coming . . . and it makes this one look really good by comparison.
I really can’t stand the octave jumps, I like your tyre metaphor a lot but “whoopee cushion” is what sprang to my mind.
A lot of sixties bands were like that, weren’t they? They’d do bubblegum records to pay the rent, then get down and dirty with the devil’s music (clunky beat-group blues covers with long organ solos) on the sweaty club circuit
Yeah, we’ve still got Long John Baldry and Love Affair coming up to deal with in that department.
Doctor Mod said,
This didn’t make much of an impression on the other side of the Atlantic. I don’t think I’ve actually heard it again since those very few times it was played on the radio in the summer (or so I think it was) in 1966.
Indeed, the thing that I most clearly was that strange octave jump that the horns did…..
Hi Tom,
I just wanted to wish you a Happy Christmas – I totally understand if you don’t have time to post here, though I wish you would, as there are some pretty awesome songs coming up!
Noce blog. johnk5@o2.pl
I don’t know how he got away with this.
Well… what a lot of BS! Georgie Fame was one of the best…and still is.