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Jamie LePage (1953-2002)
http://www.spectropop.com/Jamie.htm
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There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: The Forum
From: Kingsley Abbott
2. Re: Mayo Thompson / Red Krayola
From: Stewart Mason
3. Re: Bobby Jameson / Catherine Spaak
From: Patrick Rands
4. Re: Mike Smith Returns
From: Lou B
5. Little Latin Lupe Lu
From: Justin McDevitt
6. Re: The Forum
From: Richard Williams
7. Songwriter Buddy Kaye / Little Latin Lupe Lu
From: Mick Patrick
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 16:01:29 -0000
From: Kingsley Abbott
Subject: Re: The Forum
The Forum's 'The River Is Wide' is from August 1967 when it peaked # 45 on
Billboard. Their album, together with 9 bonus tracks has just come onto CD
for the first time here in the UK on Revola (Rev 14). This includes three
different arrangements of the hit title song, and a song called 'We Can
Make It' which was co-written by Smokey Roberds.
This is a different song to the fine one of the same title that crops up on
the new Ruby & The Romantics double collection (RPM 247) which features
notes from Mick 'n' Malc....are you all keeping up? Both are interesting
and welcome issues.
So Mick...HMV have Ace stuff at 3 for £20!! That's gotta to be the offer of
the year! Hope you've got a big shopping bag! Should you go again, could you
tell us how long this promotion may go on? Thanks!
Kingsley
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 13:08:07 -0500
From: Stewart Mason
Subject: Re: Mayo Thompson / Red Krayola
Stewart:
> The first couple of Fugs albums are better than anything on the
> International Artists label that doesn't have Roky Erickson or Mayo
> Thompson's name on the back cover...
Dan:
> Stewart, who's Mayo Thompson? Besides the Elevators, I enjoyed the Red
> Krayola and Lost & Found and even Bubble Puppy on IA.
Mayo Thompson was (is, in fact! They're still around and recording!) the
Red Krayola's leader.
I love the Krayola's IA albums, PARABLE OF ARABLE LAND and GOD BLESS THE
RED KRAYOLA AND ALL WHO SAIL WITH IT, but I give the edge to the latter:
shorter, more structured songs that are nonetheless defiantly, profoundly
odd. The opening track, "Say Hello To Jamie Jones," is rather brilliant in
how it constructs a rather catchy pop song out of three elements (voice,
bass, drums) with the added limitation of having only two of the three
playing at the same time! (That is, it's either the voice and the bass or
the drums and the bass, never the voice, the drums and the bass.)
Fans of this era of Red Krayola should also check out the IA compilation
EPITAPH FOR A LEGEND, with some fascinating early demos that are much more
"normal" than either of the two IA albums, and the 1995 release (on Drag
City) of COCONUT HOTEL, which was supposed to be the Krayola's second album
but International Artists rejected it for being too weird. Which it is --
36 songs lasting one second each? -- but it's the Krayola at their most
purely experimental.
And just to throw out one of my favorite trivia tidbits: Rick Barthelme,
the drummer on PARABLE OF ARABLE LAND and COCONUT HOTEL, grew up to be
novelist Frederick Barthelme, a personal favorite of mine.
S
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 18:05:27 -0000
From: Patrick Rands
Subject: Re: Bobby Jameson / Catherine Spaak
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the information on the Bobby Jameson single "Gotta Find My
Roogalator". You and Joe have been doing a great job on the Rev-ola
reissues - I even made some converts this year! Here's hoping you can get
one "working" for Bobby Jameson too - :)
I just wanted to say that you can hear the Bobby Jameson song and a bunch
of others (including ones he recorded as Chris Lucey) from a radio show I
did which is archived here: http://www.zbconline.com/tp-archive.php
Just keep in mind only a certain amount of people can access the site at
once so keep checking back if you get an error message.
Also for those in the Boston area - this Friday night (Feb 7) from 6 to 7
pm I will be spotlighting Catherine Spaak - singer/actress/the next
Brigitte Bardot - on WZBC 90.3 FM - it should be very exciting. I'm not
sure if I created any fans when I posted about her before - but you can
still here a soundfile of hers here: http://prands.kity.nu/catherine.spaak/
Sadly, it appears they are no longer archiving the shows after they have
been broadcast and we no longer have our stream because of ...well most of
you probably know why I'm sure - so only locals will be able to tune in.
This is too bad because I'm sure quite a few of her fans in Japan would
love to hear the show.
:Patrick
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 12:24:10 -0500
From: Lou B
Subject: Re: Mike Smith Returns
> ...possibly the most prolific "winker" of the 60's. I remember all
> those Ed Sullivan appearances (well most - 18 in all!) and Smith was
> the prime attraction. Girls of the Raleigh, North Carolina variety
> thought him cuter than any of the Beatles. He also helped make the
> Vox Continental the most popular keyboard for a bit. Though I wonder
> how many casual observers assumed Smith was the Dave Clark. I mean
> who in hell names the band after the drummer???
Just the mention of the "Ace R&R shouter" sent me to my video collection to
pull out the extremely moody , not for the kiddie, "Having A Wild Weekend"
for a viewing. Still as odd as it was when it first came out. Unfortunately
the rest of the 5 get very little on screen time but the few moments they
have are gems. Mike dressed in drag as Jean Harlow and the scene were Dave
(as Steve) walks in a on a bunch of "Beats" who are squatting in an abandon
village, which now gets used by the army for training exercises, and gets
asked if he has "pot" & "H" is way beyond anything B. Epstein would let The
Beatles be involved with on film. (Yeah , John held a coke bottle to his
nose in "A Hard Day's Night" but no one picked up on it till the '70s).
I agree with Michael, when I was 5 or 6 years old The Beatles were a band
for the girls to scream over; the DC5 were for the guys. I remember drawing
pictures of the band for the babysitter. BIG DRUM sound , FOOT STOMPIN' and
Mike's RAW SHOUTING. Back in the early days of the Brit Invasion, the DC5
got my vote!
- Lou B
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 16:14:52 -0600
From: Justin McDevitt
Subject: Little Latin Lupe Lu
Hello Spectropop friends,
Where can I find out the peak chart position and date for Little Latin
Lupe Lu, specifically the version performed by Mitch Ryder and the
Detroit Wheels? I would imagine that Billboard would have this
information, though a search identifies the Righteous Bros treatment
of this song.
Justin McDevitt
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 23:24:02 +0000
From: Richard Williams
Subject: Re: The Forum
bnbnk wrote:
> I recently inherited a 45 on Mira Records by a group called The Forum
> (The River Is Wide b/w I Fall in Love ) produced by Norm Ratner,
> engineered by John Haeny. Don't know when it was released. It's a decent
> single. ;Any idea on the year?
Spectropop really is amazing. I've been winding myself up for weeks to send
a request for information on the Forum's single, more or less identical to
bnbnk's. A year or two ago I acquired the UK 45, on London American; then,
a few months later, I found a promo copy on the same label. I've been
playing both sides constantly ever since. Why didn't I hear it when it came
out? To me it sounds like the best Bacharach record Bacharach never made:
the same combination of uptown smoothness and R&B intensity. And yet each
side is so different from the other. I Fall In Love has the most swooningly
romantic fade-out of all time; The River Is Wide is just deliriously crazy.
They capture a certain moment when adventurousness was what pop music was
all about. So now, thanks to Spectropop, I discover that they made an album,
and it's my next target.
Richard Williams
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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2003 21:41:52 -0000
From: Mick Patrick
Subject: Songwriter Buddy Kaye / Little Latin Lupe Lu
I just read in Discoveries magazine that the lyricist Buddy Kaye has
died. I suspect many S'pop types will have some of his songs in their
collections. Dusty Springfield, for example, recorded quite a few of
his numbers: "All Cried Out", "Little By Little" and "In The Middle Of
Nowhere" for starters. Buddy's song catalogue also includes many
popular TV themes, such as "I Dream Of Jeannie", which he wrote with
Hugo Montenegro, one of his many collaborators. He penned most of his
famous 1960s songs with Philip Springer or Bea Verdi. He had actually
been on the Tin Pan Alley scene since the 1940s, "A, You're Adorable"
being one of his unforgettable vintage songs. Buddy's biggest ever hit
composition was probably Pat Boone's "Speedy Gonzales". He died on
November 21st 2002, aged 84.
Justin asked:
> Where can I find out the peak chart position and date for Little
> Latin Lupe Lu, specifically the version performed by Mitch Ryder and
> the Detroit Wheels? I would imagine that Billboard would have this
> information, though a search identifies the Righteous Bros treatment
> of this song.
"Little Latin Lupe Lu" by Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels entered the
Billboard Hot 100 on March 5th 1966. It peaked at # 17 and remained on
the chart for nine weeks. The Righteous Brothers' version first showed
on the chart on May 11th 1963, eventually reaching # 49.
This information comes from the book Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles,
published by Record Research Inc. I love chart books and the Whitburn
doorstops cannot be beaten for facts and information. Record Research
have a website: http://www.recordresearch.com
MICK PATRICK
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