AMEN CORNER – "(If Paradise Is) Half As Nice"

Amen Corner flap dangerously on the boundary between dreamy and drippy, and then tip right over thanks to the washed out vocals of Andy Fairweather-Low, whose voice is a pale and smeary thing, a wimpy croak that leeches any real delight out of the song. The final straw is when the song wheezes to a halt halfway through, sacrificing what little energy it had. A waste of an attractive tune and a good hook.

Score: 4

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THE MOVE – "Blackberry Way"

PETER SARSTEDT – "Where Do You Go To My Lovely?"

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wwolfe

12 September 2006 19:58

This entry brought into focus a thought that’s been lurking just out of sight for me: as an American listener, the British Invasion ended around the time of Whiter Shade of Pale/All You Need Is Love/San Francisco, back in 1967. By “British Invasion,” I mean a shorthand term signifying, roughly, the notion that nearly anything British inherently possessed some enchanting quality – style, mystery, wit, sophistication, or simply a vague exotic lure – that made it desirable, or at least more desirable than its American competition. The run of #1s over recent months that simply never made a noise for me as a 10-year old with his ear glued to the radio suggests that this spell had ended for some reason by early 1969. I suspect it was the transition from Swinging London circa 1966 to the Summer of Love circa 1967 – from Carnaby Street to Haight-Ashbury in geographic-slash-stylistic terms – that caused English acts to be somewhat superceded by American acts, for an American listener at least, subsequent to the Procol Harum/Fab Four/sub-Mamas & Papas run of acts cited above. Those three songs do a decent job as signposts to this change, come to think of it.

Whatever the reason, though – my suggestion could miss the mark, I’m not sure – Amen Corner is another act that elicits a response of “Oh, I’ve always wondered what they sound like.” (See Dave Dee, Scaffold, Marmalade’s Beatles’ cover, among others.) I’m curious to see if there will be another period in which the charts of the two countries will again be as similar as they were from early 1964 through mid-1967.

Pete Baran

12 September 2006 21:56

My Dad told me at a young age that this was by an Irish singer called Eammon Corner. It explains a lot about our relationship.

Doctor Casino

12 September 2006 22:50

This trite and glib comment isn’t intended in any way to undercut yourr (very interesting) observations, wwolfe – but I think another reason that these songs didn’t make it over here is that they sucked. Was there something in the water? What was going on in England that they embraced such watery, punchless music mere years after sending kick-ass songs like “Paperback Writer” to the top of the charts? I admit I wouldn’t mind it if “Fire” had made it into the US classic rock canon, but taken together, “Cinderella Rockafella,” “I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You,” “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “Lily The Pink,” “Obla Di,” (downloaded it – it sucks) “Blackberry Way,” this one, “Something In The Air,” “Where Do You Go To My Lovely,” “The Year 2525,” and “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus” form a cavalcade of the unspectacular, the overworked, the unsubtle and the unfinished. I can understand why all of these should have been hits of some form or another but to picture them at the top of the charts for three to four weeks really just sails over my head and suggests to me that it was a really different time.

I realize a lot of my comments on this blog amount to “Woah, I don’t know this song – who was buying this exactly?” but I do think the end of the 60s come out looking rather bad for Britain. Take out the Beatles and the Stones and all the imports and about the best #1s you can come up with are “The Mighty Quinn,” “Albatross” and “Xanadu.” Maybe it’s always been this way and I’m just noticing it now that so many of the songs are unfamiliar?

mark sinker

12 September 2006 23:31

one of the things that happened — notoriously, inasmuch as it became part of punk ideology later — was that somewhere between mid-67 and mid-68 “rock culture” stopped being interested in the three-minute single as a worthwhile medium: LPs were no longer semi-arbitrary collections of songs but ALBUMS; and rock started making use of the 23-odd mins of an LP side blah blah (led zep actively protested when atlantic released cuts of theirs as singles) — the charts stopped being held in high regard by a particular, fairly significant constituency and that maybe took the pressure of the rest?

in this reading, the popcharts were handed back to the “non-serious” and trivial and the chancer — and the skills of compacting complex observations and emotions into direct and compact form maybe waned

obviously it’s simply false that only “rock culture” — even if you expand it to include soul — was capable of complex emotion or observation, but this is how late-70s punk rhetoric claimed to read the situation: as if to say between kinks and buzzcocks a desert

it’s almost nonsense — not least bcz it depends so heavily punk’s very contradictory attitude to “seriousness” (is it pro it or agin it?) — but i think it’s true in a way that pop and rock, having been “one body” for a season or two, moved apart, and that advocates on either side can fairly soon no longer even understand the views or ears of their opponents

i actually really really like “Blackberry Way” and “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus”, which are outside the standard rock canon, but none the worse for that — but more interesting to me in this wave of number ones is that, while some of them are aimed at tiny kids, surprisingly few of them (if any) seem to have been made for TEENS; ie for the late 60s equivalent to the age-group where the beatles’s condition of possibility in 63

mark sinker

12 September 2006 23:32

(not well spelled out in the above: this is from a brit perspective — and i was 8 when this was a hit)

Tom

13 September 2006 00:13

Yeah, the way I’ve come to think of it is that the huge success of the album as a way of packaging music (69 is when album sales overtook single sales I think) and the enthusiastic collaboration of big name artists in marketing the album format took the business a bit by surprise.

They simply had no real idea how to sell singles to the new teens, and they were making so much money selling albums to the new and older ones, and this state of affairs continued until around the end of 1970 when glam gave them a singles-based teen movement to push(note that 69 and 70 is also when you get more soul and reggae stuff breaking to the top of the charts, both genres with big teen audiences which didnt make the move to albums.)

Doctor Casino

13 September 2006 01:38

I buy this shifting-demographic logic that both of you are playing with here. Overlapping with glam might also be the rise of bubblegum (indeed, the two are sometimes indistinguishable) – I don’t know how thorough this was in the UK versus the US, but I note glancing at the list that we have the Archies, the Edison Lighthouse, and (a little further on) Chicory Tip to look forward to. Young teens, maybe, but still teenage music in a way that some of these curious crossover fuddy-duddy hits are definitely not. I suppose we’ll get to those in time, so I’ll withhold my instinct to rave about “Son of My Father,” which I just heard for the first time the other night…

Marcello Carlin

13 September 2006 09:14

Anyone who doesn’t like Something In The Air or Je T’Aime doesn’t like, or even understand, pop music.

Tom

13 September 2006 10:01

Something In The Air is a rare example (for me) of where a song really genuinely has been spoiled by its use in an advert. But we’ll have this conversation in a week or so.

Oh No It's Dadaismus

13 September 2006 10:23

Oh my mum hated Andy Fairweather-Low! She used to say, “Why can’t he open his mouth when he’s singing?”

Marcello Carlin

13 September 2006 11:11

That technique worked well on “Wide Eyed And Legless,” though.

Erithian

13 September 2006 12:58

One of the joys of “Popular” is reading the reactions of North American contributors to UK hits they’d never come across before, and to see their perspectives on those unfamiliar records and their efforts to see them in context. I love the idea that Doctor Casino heard “Son Of My Father” for the first time the other night – envy you that new experience, Doc!

Looking back through earlier entries, it’s a pity that the conversion of the Freaky Trigger website has led to the loss of the old Haloscan comments for every Number 1 pre-Spring 1965. Is there no way of restoring them, Tom? I notice there’s one poster understandably puzzled as to why nobody seems to have commented on “She Loves You”!

As for this song, it’s not a patch on “Bend Me Shape Me”…

Marcello Carlin

13 September 2006 13:24

And Amen Corner’s “Bend Me Shape Me” isn’t a patch on American Breed’s “Bend Me Shape Me”…

Erithian

13 September 2006 13:28

Touché!

Tom

13 September 2006 13:32

The Haloscan comments weren’t lost in the conversion – sadly Haloscan comments vanish of their own accord after two months, and this is why we switched to Blogger when we realised. All the old Blogger ones got transferred when we converted, but sadly haloscan ones are lost for good 🙁

Pete

13 September 2006 14:01

Perhaps we can do a “best of Popular” for quiet days, linking back to them -thoguh I guess the comments stay quiet until wie hit the sixties anyway.

Oh No It's Dadaismus

13 September 2006 14:01

By the way, I think Tom is being a bit harsh on this song – him and my Mum obv. have a problem with the vocals. I like this period (1968-70) for pop songs – The Casuals, Honeybus ‘n’ shit like that

Doctor Casino

13 September 2006 14:43

Actually, I would love to see spotlight entries like that. At the risk of sounding dorky! I have a number of defenses I’m prepared to offer for “My Old Man’s A Dustman,” but I’m not going to bother starting that party if no one else will know to be there….

Doctor Casino

13 September 2006 14:44

Oh, and, yeah, “Son of My Father,” definitely never heard it before, downloaded it specifically because I saw it coming up in the list and was curious about it, when it first started up I was like “WTF is this?” Totally, totally unknown.

Tom

13 September 2006 14:55

Actually comments on old entries are more viable than you might think because on the Freaky Trigger front page the ‘recent comments’ shows anything that gets updated. That doesn’t mean everyone will see them but it does mean me, Pete, lord sukrat cunctor etc. probably will.

When our designer Alang returns from his honeymoon I will ask him if we could have a “Recent Comments” section on the side of Popular entries just for comments on Popular posts. At the same time as I ask him to change the Beatles picture at the top of the page, since we’re HURTLING towards the post-Beatles era now…

Oh No It's Dadaismus

13 September 2006 15:11

Of course “Son of My Father” was subsequently sung on football terraces all over the UK but using the words “Oh spot the looney” instead of “Son of my father” – “Spot the Looney” coming from a Monty Python sketch – IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ANYTHING TO BE MORE 70S BRITAIN THAN THAT?!??!?!?

Oh No It's Dadaismus

13 September 2006 15:13

… Chicory Tip, Monty Python and Football!

mark sinker

13 September 2006 15:14

was robin askwith involved at all?

Marcello Carlin

13 September 2006 15:31

Be nice if we could talk about “Son Of My Father” when Tom gets to “Son Of My Father.”

mark sinker

13 September 2006 15:58

MAKE HIM GO FASTER

Marcello Carlin

13 September 2006 16:18

Where’s the fire?

mark sinker

13 September 2006 16:42

i am overexcited by pop gone by and need to lie down

(i blame the REPORTED EXISTENCE of COVER VERSIONS of CHAS N DAVE by TORI AMOS)

Tom

13 September 2006 17:10

My current aim is to do a year a month, so to speak – this would put Chicory Tip in December. HOWEVER the arrival of the real actual son of a real actual father in November may well throw these plans into total disarray.

Erithian

13 September 2006 17:37

Congratulations and very best wishes then Tom – I’m in the same position re November, apart from not knowing the gender of the baby. From previous experience you can look forward to many a 4am session getting the baby back to sleep, so if you do these in front of the computer you’ll really be able to make progress!!

Off at another tangent re Chas and Dave – last year Time Out did a listing of London’s 100 greatest gigs, which included two mind-blowing double bills: Chas and Dave supporting The Libertines, and a pairing of Einsturzende Neubauten and Showaddywaddy.

Chris Brown

13 September 2006 22:34

This is one of those records I always think I like more than I actually do. If that makes sense. Listening back to it today, the vocals do get on your wick a bit.

Doctor Mod

14 September 2006 07:06

This made no impression stateside, but I’ve managed to hear it a number of times over the years. (For some reason, I have a persistent memory of seeing it performed on television by the Dave Clark Five–or some portion thereof–as a cover version and I know this MUST be WRONG, so I’m doubting my sanity at the moment . . . .)

As to the Amen Corner version, of which I have verifiable evidence of its existence, I find that the trouble in discussing it as that it’s too insipid to love and too inoffensive to hate.

intothefireuk

14 September 2006 15:58

Aren’t we still in the 60s – so here we have our protagonist being sent to Paradise & Heaven (admittedly though whilst still on Earth). Does this then qualify this record as an end of decade disc of impending doom ? Well not quite that’s a stretch. It sounds incredibly lazy from Lows’ vocals to the slurry brass sections and bereft of any real clout for a band purporting to be attached to the Mod movement (it was on Immediate as well). It is though a pleasant tune. Trivia fact : It was composed by an Italian songwriter and originally titled ‘Il Paradiso’. It was also covered by the Bay City Rollers & Aztec Camera.

ITF

bramble

14 September 2006 22:13

Maybe the lyrics suffered from the translation from Italian but they always struck me as a bit odd. “If paradise is half as nice as the heaven that you take me to, who needs paradise, I’d rather have you”. This is tautology, or speaking the bleeding obvious. If the first thing is only half as nice as the second, of course you would prefer the second. It would make more sense if paradise was twice as nice.

Marcello Carlin

15 September 2006 08:58

SINCE WHEN WAS POP SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT SENSE?

rosie

15 September 2006 09:24

If it’s true that comments on the old entries show up then it’s probably time for me to trawl through the back issues and wibble about them!

rosie

15 September 2006 09:33

By the way, I liked this one and I liked Andy Fairweather-Low but like Marcello I think Wide-eyed and Legless worked so much better.

And I’m glad to see P*nk Lord making the point I’ve been making before – this was the time the album started to become the significant medium in the record shops and the singles charts began to fill with what was recognisable even then as dross.

The rise of the album also meant a significantly different style of music-buying too. Instead of going into the local record shop and asking for your 45 from the rack behind the counter, you could browse through the racks of LPs and listen to samples in the booths. This was also a social activity – hang around the record department of the Welwyn Stores for long enough on a Saturday morning and sooner or later all your friends would pass through, and you could discuss the merits of various albums with them.

mark sinker

15 September 2006 09:52

rosie, i believe welwyn stores is the centre of the universe — my mum shopped there as a kid in the early 50s, and i still have books of hers with the little welwyn stores label in the front cover! i remember going there as a tiny myself

Tom

15 September 2006 10:05

Rosie don’t you think that the singles charts were always full of dross – as well as awesome stuff – though?

Last night I was looking over the next 5 years or so and getting hugely excited about all the amazing records coming up (as well as less excited by all the terrible ones).

rosie

15 September 2006 11:01

Pink Lord (I prefer this to Punk Lord, I think, and nothing else seems to make sense): Welwyn Stores became John Lewis Welwyn sometime in the 1970s and was never the same again.

Tom: Yes, there was always dross in the charts and quite a lot of it got to the top. But it does seem to me that there was a much higher proportion of it round about the time we are at. Grapevine notwithstanding, of course. Maybe it was something about growing up though.

Tom

15 September 2006 11:07

I think the chart-toppers from 68-70 were pretty erratic, there’s not much feeling of a direction or major trend happening (though Marcello’s comments on a “blacker” chart are very interesting) because the record labels didn’t have much of a singles market strategy I suppose. But I was surprised sitting down to write these entries how many of them I enjoy. And when glam comes along the charts get a lot of their energy back.

Marcello Carlin

15 September 2006 11:32

Also don’t forget that the Motown/Stax-friendly pirates had gone, leaving all to the mercy of Radios 1 and 2 and their hands-in-ears-I-can’t-hear-you-Donald-Peers-is-king remit.

Tim Hopkins

15 September 2006 12:04

Rosie, he’s actually called the PENK LORD S, as a result of having made an entire room in his flat into a massive shrine dedicated to Steve Penk.

mark sinker

15 September 2006 12:19

Today it is just a shrine — but one day soon and forever after it will be his TOMB!

all hail penkankhamun MONARCH OF SEDGE AND BEAN

rosie

15 September 2006 14:32

Whoops, my humble apogolies 😉

pink champale

18 March 2008 22:59

Dale’s favourite ever record, he was saying a couple of weeks ago.

Marcello Carlin

19 March 2008 10:04

I heard that as well.

Still can’t get with this record – AFL’s strangulated voice just puts me off, and my overall impression is one of pub rock trying to don teenpop clothes.

Margaret

27 April 2008 20:02

I would like to know who composed the lyrics. Does anyone know?

Margaret

27 April 2008 20:03

Does anyone know who composed the original lyrics?

DJ Punctum

28 April 2008 09:59

Lucio Battisti composed both the music and the original Italian lyrics; English lyrics by Jack Fishman.

Matthew

16 January 2009 05:56

Predictably, I really like this, not a perfect pop song by any means but it makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy and happy inside. I am actually liking 1969 so far, even if the greatest decade in the history of mankind is about to be over, and as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.

wpDiscuz

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AMEN CORNER – "(If Paradise Is) Half As Nice"

THE MOVE – "Blackberry Way"

PETER SARSTEDT – "Where Do You Go To My Lovely?"

Latest comments on Popular