It is incorrect to say that Frankie Valli was not on December, 1963 (Oh What A Night). He actually has two 20 second long solos in the single, comprising 20% of the length of the song. Gerry Polci had the lead on the rest of vocals on the song, though there is a substantial part that is instrumental also.

All artists that had a career before the Beatles and did all they could to make that translate to the 60’s sound.

The attempt to create a sound didn’t always go as expected . Similar ” Black” artists in singing combo’s or solo had the huge advantage of having a ” new” sound of Motown on which to hang their abilities. The ” FUnk Brothers ” 9 see Standing in Shadows of Motown ) gives a new sound that others could not copy, teach, or even, insome cases, emulate.

I also lump Engelbert & TOm Jones in here , too. But reckin they got more respect just because they were Brits..\

Brian in Canada

…which helps explain why folk say the Oasis are Beatles-y, which I can’t normally hear. Oasis are certainly a verrrrry sloooooooow band.

Somewhere on a Todd Rundgren album is a spoken observation before a song that says something like ” make it sound like the Beatles. It sounds fast but they play it slow”.

For the earlier Beatles being wimpy, you have to remember, too, that there was no heavy metal ( or even powerful amps - see the stage set up to play at Shea - 4 tiny amps & 50,00 people) at the time and really as far as the music sounding tough , ” The Stones” sounded a bit wimpy, too. Although they compensated by pissing on service stations, not washing, and lyrically emulating the blues musicians they loved.

I don’t think the Beatles achieved the sonic umph until , say, Revolver.

I’m always surprised at how wimpy much of The Beatles’ records sound in retrospect. Take Day Tripper for instance. I always remember it as one of the ‘Stonesiest’ Beatles’ songs, with the riff being thrashed out at a rate of knots through some sort of primitive 60s fuzztone. In fact it’s picked (all down strokes, no sliding notes) at a sedate pace on a jangly (possibly even a 12 string) guitar.

Also, rhythmically the Backstreet Boys make Beatles and Hollies and Byrds seem like total dinkboy wimps in comparison - though by “Backstreet Boys” I mean their rhythm section too, i.e., Martin and Rami, and it’s not a fair comparison, of course, since technology has changed the game. But still…

The Tremelos lined up with The Fab Four, The Hollies, The Searchers, Hermans Hermits as part of the 60s Brit pop phenomenom. They were, in fact with Brian Poole an r ‘n’ b flavoured band. He left in 1965/66 and they adopted closer harmonies and had bigger hits such as this one.

ITF

About the 4 Seasons. More than being about a Boy Band , The 4 Seasons are more from an age that had The Temptations & The Miracles and that’s where they were coming from musically, but without the Motown connection ( not sure waht label they were on , maybe Capitol in Canada ).

They seem to be a bit of white stuff ( or Olive in FRankie Vali’s case ) for a mass audience , who didn’t get the soul side of things. But they still had many hits of likeable, falsetto driven, middle of the road stuff like ” Walk Like A Man “, “Sherry”,
” Big Girls Don’t Cry ” and ” Silence is Golden “.

Not sure how these fared in UK but all top 10’s in Canada.

Brian

Mind you, I was adolescent at the time. You’re probably right.

I think the issue of “wimpiness” is a bit anachronistic here. There were a lot of male harmony groups in the 60s–dare I say the Beatles were incredible with their three-part harmonies?–that surely didn’t seem wimpy at the time. Granted, there were some truly uncool male vocal groups from the 50s that were still lingering around in the 60s (i.e., the Four Lads, the Sandpipers, etc.), but this has always seemed an American phenomenon to me. The Beach Boys managed to rise above this by being a “band” (i.e., they played their own instruments) and managed to seem cool to their followers by singing about things (cars, surfing) that now seem a bit dweeby. The Association bettered the Beach Boys (but only a bit) by singing about politics and marijuana (some of the time).

But I think our critical negativity about male harmony groups and their triteness (if not wimpiness) comes from later pre-fab models (e.g., NSync, Backstreet Boys, Take That, etc., etc., ad nauseam) whose wimpiness lies in their feigned sincerity and their lack of anything original in their material. (Ergo, they appeal to a wide audience who doesn’t want to be challenged by music they have to think about.)

In retrospect, though, the Tremeloes weren’t bad, and I think the recording is an interesting example of cultural exchange. A group of Brits took a song from one of the most generically American groups of the time (the Four Seasons) and improved on it–at least to my way of thinking. Personally, I never really found Frankie Valli et al. terribly convincing. Come to think of it, perhaps we should blame them for the “Boy Bands” we must endure to day.

I do, though, thoroughly agree with wwolfe about the difference between boy groups and girl groups as a general rule.

I always like “Here Comes My Baby.” hard to believe Cat Stevens ever wrote anything so unassuming and tossed-off (both of which I mean as compliments).

The most interesting thing about the Tremeloes’ “Silence Is Golden” for me is that I think it marks the only appearance in this list, even tangentially, of the Four Seasons. A huge act in the States - four Number Ones and a virtually unbroken four or five years of Top Ten singles - they apparently never translated to the UK in any significant way. (The Seasons are still big, in fact: there’s been a hit musical based on their career running on Broadway for the better part of the past year.)
wwolfe

A song everybody knows, but few have worked out what it actually is all about.

I’d say the Beach Boys, but they were so much more than a vocal harmony boy-band and basically made their name in the early years by being determinedly uncool.