Label: Philips
Year of Release: 1971
Giorgio Moroder's "Looky Looky" was a million-seller in Europe in 1969, an unashamedly bubblegum smash overloaded with Beach Boys-esque harmonies and that unusual braying and mooing the stripy topped surfing lads loved to do. For whatever reason, British audiences really didn't take to it, though, and it remains largely unplayed and unloved on UK airwaves.
Understandably, some individuals obviously saw an opening a couple of years later. This record seems to be a somewhat cynical, calculated answer to the riddle "What if 'Looky Looky' could have been a hit in the UK, but MCA just screwed up the plugging and marketing?" The Easybeats manager Mike Vaughan stepped up to answer the riddle with his best shot, assembled what I'm 99% sure was a session group in the form of The Cleveland People, and sat back and waited for Philips to do a better job of things.
We all know what happened, of course - it flopped all over again and everyone was presumably forced to conclude that the Brits possibly just weren't into something so intensely sugary after all. Nonetheless, it's a well-produced version, though perhaps would have performed better with a few scuffs around the edges and bigger, bolder driving rhythms.
Of more interest to most readers will probably be "Sands Of Time" on the flip, penned by Carolin Gunston and Peter James Wilson (aka Dove). Soulful, faintly progressive and whiffing of mods trying to find a new direction in the new decade, it may fade far too early, but it's got a mellow maturity which is utterly at odds with the A-side.
