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SPECTROPOP - Spectacular! Retro! Pop!
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There are 14 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Orphelia McFall / Ophelia McCall
From: Martin Roberts
2. Re: Mousie & the Traps
From: Mick Patrick
3. Re: Mousie & the Traps
From: Simon White
4. Re: Top 10 Classic Rock Christmas Albums ???
From: Regina Litman
5. Re: Concert Room / Saturn
From: Hasse Huss
6. Re: Mod v. Motown
From: Simon White
7. "Baby I Love You" by Andy Kim
From: Regina Litman
8. Searching
From: Artie Wayne
9. Beach Boys
From: Mike Edwards
10. Motown covers . . . good 'n' bad
From: Regina Litman
11. Rub online elbows with those who made the music of our generation
From: Artie Wayne
12. Re: "Childhood Friends"
From: Davie Gordon
13. Re: WABC
From: Bob Radil
14. Cedit where credit is due
From: Gary Myers
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 21:04:17 -0000
From: Martin Roberts
Subject: Orphelia McFall / Ophelia McCall
Thanks to Hasse Huss for his interesting letter to S'pop re
Orphelia McFall's "He's Never There" (Saturn 403). I was
surprised to hear of another release of the 45. Which came first,
who knows, who cares? I do!
I've found one other release on the label, Concert Room CR 371
by Dick Dale & His Deltones, "We'll Never Hear The End Of It" /
"Fairest Of Them All", apparently released on yellow vinyl.
Interestingly this was also released on Saturn 401 and Yes 7014,
with a pic sleeve. All released in '63. The record was originally
released on Cupid 106 in '60. (Information from Pete Hoppula's
site (very good, especially if you like tits and arse):
http://www.wangdangdula.com/
Does this info offer any further insight? Not really, unless it
shows Concert Room and Saturn were related.
I am aware but have not heard Ophelia McCall's Little Star
release and would assume the two ladies are related. I did hope
my ROTW review would prompt a musica playing of it! Still time if
anyone has a copy they'd like to share.
Dorothy Berry's 'The Girl Who Stopped The Duke Of Earl', is a
previous ROTW and another Ron Barrett related disc:
http://www.spectropop.com/JackNitzsche/pastrotw2.htm#dorothyberry
Martin
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 21:39:22 -0000
From: Mick Patrick
Subject: Re: Mousie & the Traps
James Holvay:
> I wrote and produced the group back in 1965. Mousie and The
> Traps were Latino girls from the north side of Chicago. The
> group consisted of 2 sisters and their cousin. The "B Side"
> was "How About You". I do have a picture of the group. It
> blows my mind that 40 years later, it ends re-issued in the
> UK.
Thanks for the info, James. Can you remember how the record
came about? Or the members' names? Or how they acquired the
moniker Mousie & the Traps? They arrived on the scene at the
same time as Mouse & the Traps on the nearby Fraternity label
of Cincinnati - coincidence? What studio did you use? Did you
work with any other Chicago girl groups? Or solo females?
Hey la,
Mick Patrick
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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 08:38:30 +0000
From: Simon White
Subject: Re: Mousie & the Traps
James Holvay wrote:
> Mick: I wrote and produced the group back in 1965. Mousie and
> The Traps were Latino girls from the north side of Chicago.
> The group consisted of 2 sisters and their cousin. The "B Side"
> was "How About You". I do have a picture of the group. It blows
> my mind that 40 years later, it ends re-issued in the UK.
James, it blows my mind that here you are telling us about the
group! It has to be said though that the record is one of the
reasons I slowed down on collecting the "Toddlin Town" label
releases because it's a relatively expensive record here in the
UK. Therefore I never got the 45. But one day....
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Message: 4
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 00:58:32 -0000
From: Regina Litman
Subject: Re: Top 10 Classic Rock Christmas Albums ???
Bill Smith wrote:
> It can be safely said, the only thing rock critics agree on is
> Spector's "A Christmas Gift To You" is the best Christmas album.
> Not to this guy:
> http://holidays.about.com/od/entertainment/tp/top10_christmas.htm
I don't think the acts represented on "A Christmas Gift to You" fit
under the definition of "class rock", as understood by many critics.
The designation "classic rock" tends to refer to the acts who were
played on Album Oriented Rock stations (mainly on the FM dial) in
the time period starting around late 1967, not those played only on
Top 40 and/or soul/r&b stations in the time period starting around
1955.
I was pleasantly surprised to see "Christmas Joy" by the Ventures
in this list, though. This album was released around 2002. They
also have another great Christmas album, released in the mid-1960s.
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Message: 5
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 01:29:56 -0800 (PST)
From: Hasse Huss
Subject: Re: Concert Room / Saturn
Martin Roberts wrote:
> I've found one other release on the label, Concert Room
> (CR 371) by Dick Dale & His Deltones, "We'll Never Hear
> The End Of It" / "Fairest Of Them All", apparently released
> on yellow vinyl. Interestingly this was also released on
> Saturn 401 and Yes 7014 [...] Does this info offer any
> further insight? Not really, unless it shows Concert Room
> and Saturn were related.
I'll post a pic the Orphelia McFall single on Concert Room to the Photos
section as soon as I get a chance to scan it. It would seem the labels
were related, the matrix numbers are the same.
A quick Google search reveals that the newly revised, 2005 edition
of Stak-O-Wax's "Directory of American 45 RPM Records" includes a
Concert Room discography. Does anyone have the updated edition?
http://hometown.aol.com/waxntoys/main/directory_info.htm
By the way, has Dorothy Berry's 'The Girl Who Stopped The Duke
Of Earl' ever been compiled? The original single seems unbelievably
scarce.
Hasse Huss
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Message: 6
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 08:57:31 +0000
From: Simon White
Subject: Re: Mod v. Motown
Howard Earnshaw wrote:
> Continuing the posts on whether there are decent cover versions
> of Motown songs (on not) I thought it might be interesting to
> view Spectropop members ideas of their best and worst (or good
> and bad) covers? I'll start the ball rolling with:
> 1. Good .. Let's Go Somewhere - Beryl Mardsen
> 2. Bad .. Where Did Our Love Go - Peter Jay & The Jaywalkers
The mind boggles a bit at the thought of Beryl doing the song, Howard!
One from me is something that's been discussed briefly here before:
Val Palmer -- Back In My Arms Again (Twin Hits)
Val is obviously an accomplished singer, and the version is interesting.
She keeps up with the personalised "How can Mary tell me what to do /
Flo, she don't know" lines even though, errrr ... she's not not The
Supremes. And she sounds nothing like Diana Ross, either. If there's
room I will play it to musica, as they say in these parts.
Simon White
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Message: 7
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 01:03:17 -0000
From: Regina Litman
Subject: "Baby I Love You" by Andy Kim
Pres wrote:
> While the Ronettes' record is what I meant, I must say that
> Andy Kim's version is another record that I cherish. But there
> is something about this SONG that really works for me because I
> love the Dave Edmunds version, the Cher version AND the Ramones
> version. With three out of five produced by Spector, it's not
> too surprising, I guess.
The Andy Kim version was produced by Jeff Barry (possibly co-produced
by Barry and Kim), who was one of the writers of the song (along with
Ellie Greenwich, with Spector also getting a songwriting credit). I always
figured that Barry wanted to bring one of his own compositions to the
forefront again, with a production mimicking the one by Spector that
he must have admired.
Andy Kim did another charting remake of a Barry-Greenwich-Spector
tune that had been a hit as produced by Spector by the Ronettes --
"Be My Baby".
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Message: 8
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 07:09:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Artie Wayne
Subject: Searching
How ya' doin'? Does anybody have an e-mail address for my old
pals Van Dyke Parks, Bruce Johnson or Ronnie Haffkine.
Thanks and regards, Artie Wayne http://artiewayne.com
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Message: 9
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:22:19 -0000
From: Mike Edwards
Subject: Beach Boys
This article appeared in Sunday's Providence Journal, written to
coincide with the Beach Boys' visit to the City next Sunday. I'm
looking forward to the show as the pics seem to indicate that
Adrian Baker is in the line up. Also it will be awesome to see a
live big harmony performance of "Little Saint Nick" - it's 41
years old this Christmas. The piece was accompanied with a pic of
Mike Love, taken during his performance on a recent NBC "Today"
show.
It's a fascinating read but sad to see that Mike and Brian Wilson
seem to be as far apart as ever. It's a Christmas show but, on
reading this, you don't get the impression that this version of
the Beach Boys will be doing any of the newer material from
Brian's current release, "What I Really Want For Christmas".
Here's the article:
"The Beach Boys, the kings of the old-school summer sound, may be
an unusual choice for a holiday pops concert, but the group's
soaring, swooping harmonies should be a good fit for holiday
material. Singer Mike Love says next Sunday's PPAC show with the
Rhode Island Philharmonic will consist of the Beach Boys' regular
set, with evergreen songs such as "I Get Around," "Help Me Rhonda,"
"Surfin' USA" and more, along with about eight holiday songs,
including chestnuts such as "Jingle Bell Rock" and selections from
the group's 1964 Christmas album, including "Little St. Nick" and
"Santa's Beard."
After more than 40 years, Love says, the group is still doing
well. They still draw good crowds on the road, and their latest
greatest-hits compilation, The Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of
the Beach Boys, was recently certified double platinum -- the
biggest-selling Beach Boys compilation ever, Love says. The Boys
have about a zillion repackages out, but Love says that The
Sounds of Summer is the first one that he sat down and sequenced
himself to replicate the Beach Boys live-concert experience --
"what song sets up and complements the next song in terms of mood
or tempo. . . .
"Some of the [other] compilations are just a hodgepodge -- they
just throw them together by titles, or years, and it doesn't make
any sense musically -- to me, anyway. . . . It'll go from '409'
into 'In My Room' into 'Poppa Ooom Mow Mow' or something like
that. . . . "Before it was just a laissez-faire attitude -- 'OK,
whatever.' Or they just didn't ask us."
Love sounds like a nice enough guy on the phone -- soft-spoken,
willing to talk about pretty much anything. At the same time, he
has a bone to pick with history. "The Beach Boys' music is a sonic
oasis, I've often called it. . . . But certainly, our personal
ives have not been idyllic." The story of the Beach Boys isa long,
contentious one, and he's been cast as the villain -- the guy who
cared only about selling as many records as possible, who squashed
Brian Wilson's ambitious Smile project, who flogs the Beach Boys
name ceaselessly through a numbing, never-ending, predictable
series of oldies concerts.
Naturally, he doesn't see it that way. And he seems a little
touchy about the issue of credit: For example, he not only
reminds you that he co-wrote "Good Vibrations"; he reminds you
that he co-wrote "Good Vibrations," "a Grammy-nominated song, our
biggest-selling single of the '60s, surpassed only by 'Kokomo' in
1988."
If Love is cast as the villain, his cousin Brian Wilson is the
hero -- the solitary songwriting genius who suffered through at
least one nervous breakdown under the relentless commercial
pressure of the group (and his father, who managed them early on)
and triumphantly released his masterpiece, Smile, this year after
laboring over it and abandoning it for more than 30 years.
It's hard to know what really happened if you weren't there in
1962, but the relationship between Love and Wilson is as
complicated as ever.
Love sued Wilson last month over the free distribution in London's
newspaper The Mail on Sunday of a CD credited to "Brian Wilson and
the Beach Boys." For one thing, Love's Brother Records owns the
Beach Boys name; for another, the CD included songs such as "Good
Vibrations" that Love co-wrote.
Love says that the suit is nothing personal. "Brian has been named
in the lawsuit, but he hasn't been served yet. We're serving all
the other people (such as Wilson's management), and we're trying
to work out something where the culprits who did this project,
unbeknownst to us and to the Beach Boys' detriment, can be called
to task without actually harming Brian. . . .
"Brian has mental issues. He's been diagnosed as paranoid
schizophrenic; he was on the Larry King show talking about auditory
delusions -- he hears voices. People around his management got him
into something that wasn't done right. They didn't go about it the
right way."
As for the finally-released Smile record, Love says, "I'm partial
to the original recordings. Although Brian has said things
different to what I'm about to say, I think that Brian at the top
of his game, Carl [Wilson], Alan --[Jardine], myself -- I don't
think you're going to get a better vocal group than that."
The commonly accepted history is that Love didn't like Wilson's
original Smile project, and that that was one of the reasons
Wilson couldn't finish it until this year. Love sees it
differently.
"Brian took some drugs at the time -- I think it was LSD -- and he
became very reclusive. He blew his mind, is what happened. Brian's
publicist managed to say that it never came out in part because I
didn't want it to. And that's . . . just a lie. And I even told
Brian, at the meeting we had about a month ago, I love the music.
But I don't know about all the words. Because I'm a lyricist, and
I'm sensitive to words and their meanings."
The record was "not necessarily my cup of tea," Love says. "But
[that opinion] didn't go over too well with the people who were
doing drugs with Brian. So there was a them-and-us kind of culture
that was created: Brian, Dennis and Carl were involved in drugs at
that time, and Al, myself and Bruce weren't."
Wilson wrote most of the lyrics to Smile with longtime
collaborator Van Dyke Parks. Love calls Parks "a nice guy and a
brilliant musician," but calls some of Parks' lyrics "acid
alliteration."
"And I didn't think some of the lyrics were relating to the public
like I felt we had done with 'Good Vibrations.' 'Good Vibrations'
is extremely unique musically, but the lyrics connected because
'I'm picking up good vibrations/ She's giving me excitations' --
who doesn't understand that? Boy-girl."
Love says he last spoke with Wilson at a meeting about a month ago,
before filing the lawsuit. "He's in better shape mentally and
emotionally, but I think he could be doing better."
"He and his father cheated me out of recognition -- I wrote all
the words to 'California Girls,' 'I Get Around,' 'Help Me Rhonda,'
but I was given no credit whatsoever. So Brian took the credit and
the money for writing those songs and about 30 others. And I don't
like that one bit.
"But then, I do have enough compassion -- if your cousin's
mentally ill, you have to cut him some slack. But there comes a
time when, irrespective of all that, you have to do what's right
for yourself and your family. And that's what I've had to do a few
times over these years."
He's most likely also referring to a number of disputes
surrounding the Beach Boys in recent years. Love currently tours
under the Beach Boys name with longtime member Bruce Johnston,
while former member Al Jardine tours playing Beach Boys material
under a different name.
Still, Love says that he'd be willing to work with Wilson anytime.
"Brian and I go back to DNA," Love says, remembering singing with
Brian and the other kids at holiday family gatherings.
The Beach Boys have become the go-to band for all-American
functions such as Fourth of July celebrations in Washington, D.C.,
and Philadelphia, as well as presidential inaugurations (they've
played four of them).
It's not a surprise to Love: "Our music represents some real
positive stuff about growing up and experiencing totally neat
things in America. . . . And we're just one of the musical
components of that culture, along with blues and rock 'n' roll
and anything else you might think of."
Love says the hassles never got to the point where the band
wasn't worth it. "When you look at the audience response, and
the amount of play we get on oldies radio . . . "If you're a
musician, people don't have to force you at gunpoint to go on
stage -- the natural inclination is to want to sing, and in our
case we're just making harmony.""
Mike Edwards
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Message: 10
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 01:12:42 -0000
From: Regina Litman
Subject: Motown covers . . . good 'n' bad
Howard Earnshaw wrote:
> Continuing the posts on whether there are decent cover versions
> of Motown songs (on not) I thought it might be interesting to
> view Spectropop members ideas of their best & worst (or good &
> bad) covers?
Good:
Jr. Walker & the All-Stars with an in-house remake of Marvin
Gaye's hit, "How Sweet It Is".
Jr. Walker & the All-Stars with another in-house remake, "Come
See About Me"
Not-as-good:
James Taylor's remake of "How Sweet It Is".
Good:
Vanilla Fudge's remake of one of the Supremes' 1966 "Yuke" songs,
"YouK eep Me Hanging On".
Not-as-good:
Phil Collins' remake of the Supremes' other 1966 "Yuke" song,
"YouC an't Hurray Love".
Good:
The Beatles or the Carpenters doing "Please Mr. Postman".
The Beatles doing "You Really got a Hold on Me".
Not-so-good:
The Beatles or the Flying Lizards doing "Money" (don't really
like this song much by anyone, including Barrett Strong).
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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 05:46:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Artie Wayne
Subject: Rub online elbows with those who made the music of our generation
How ya'Doin'? Last week many of my old pals in the music buisness
dropped by my 40 page updated website to sign my new guestbook.
I'd like to invite all of my new Spectropop pals to come by, rub
online elbows with those who made the music of our generation, and
leave your mark as well. Just click on to http://artiewayne.com
Thanks and regards, Artie Wayne
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Message: 12
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 14:57:47 -0000
From: Davie Gordon
Subject: Re: "Childhood Friends"
Mike Dugo wrote:
> "Childood Friends" was actually recorded by Teddy & the Pandas,
> not Teddy & the Patches.
Quite right, Mike - my brain must've been full of the green fuzz
when I typed that post :)
Davie
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Message: 13
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 17:06:39 -0000
From: Bob Radil
Subject: Re: WABC
Marc Miller wrote:
> Mark my words, within 6 months WABC will be playing alot more
> music!
Consider your words marked! Every Saturday night, starting 2
nights ago (12/3/05), they're doing an oldies show from 6P to 10P.
http://musicradio.computer.net/wabcboard/wwwboard/wabcboard1.html
Bob Radil
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Message: 14
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 14:02:54 -0800
From: Gary Myers
Subject: Cedit where credit is due
Martin Roberts:
> Information from Pete Hoppula's site
I only with Hoppula would give credit where credit is due. I asked
him if he would please credit the info he got from my book and he
said it would too much of a project to go through and credit
everyone. He did ask if I wanted him to take it down, but I said OK,
go ahead and leave it up.
gem
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