Pierre Cour - Letter To A Teenage Bride/ Love Letter

Label: Charisma

Year of Release: 1975

Oh dear. Readers, I try to be as generous and magnanimous as possible on this blog, frequently not bothering to upload or comment on crap records. There are plenty of other folk online who will happily lob their invective towards unsuccessful targets, some brilliantly, some just for cheap and easy laughs. Nobody really needs my added input, and anyway, there are far too many good records out there which have gone largely unheard. Sometimes, though, I encounter something so gobsmackingly awful that I almost feel I have to share it just as a discussion point - and this is one example of how even the most atrocious, inappropriate work can slip through the music industry net and into the world at large.

"Letter To A Teenage Bride" really is an example of a single that manages to get absolutely everything wrong. Sticking rigidly to a tedious orchestral melody that offers no melodic progression or surprises, it wouldn't even be passable as an instrumental. The whimpered female backing vocals of "Oh my Daddy! Oh Daddy, Oh Mama!" also repeat every five seconds and continue for the full four minutes of its playing time. In terms of songwriting alone, then, it's a deeply irritating dud.

That's not really my main area of concern, though. Throughout this track, Pierre Cour decides to rival Peter Wyngarde in the "bad taste lyrics" stakes, with a spoken word tale of how frustrated an older lover is by his teenage wife's demands to see her family. He implores her to understand how much fun they have together without the interference of these unwanted interlopers, chiding, snapping and sneering coldly as he does so. The record then steadily works itself to a dreadful climax (of more than one kind) with Cour making vocal demands about his conjugal rights, turning the track into some kind of sophisticated vintage wine drinker's take on The Specials' "The Boiler". 

Initially, it's tempting to be charitable and assume that Cour is trying to satirise the behaviour of grown adult men with teenage lovers, but if that's the case, it really isn't clear. All we hear about is the man's frustration with the girl's immaturity, with added hints of manipulation within the relationship. The arrangement appears to be suggesting we should side with him - the man is, after all, sophisticated and mature, whereas the girl is a constantly protesting, whining alarm call throughout without any character to speak of. At least with a song like "Come Outside", you had a sense that you knew both characters reasonably well by the time the needle left the groove. Here, the girl is just a prop for Cour's frustrated narrative.

And by God, his narrative is also poorly delivered. He can't speak fluent English, and his mutterings and murmurings slop and slick their way across the record incomprehensibly, being ponderously delivered and in places ridiculously over-acted. Even Tommy Wiseau would weep at his effort. The whole single is a total horrorshow, managing to be offensive, badly written and poorly delivered. It's utterly impossible to even pinpoint one area where it manages to get something right (it's particularly surprising that someone as skilled as Zack Laurence would be involved with this dreck). 

We've become fond of saying "the past was a foreign country" in the UK, using it to explain away the casual acceptance of all kinds of perverse (and criminal) behaviour. This isn't always true, though. In 1975, this single was apparently greeted with huge hostility by the women in the press department at Charisma Records, who refused to promote it. Faced with poor airplay and PR staff who weren't prepared to work on the single, Charisma allegedly ended up stuffing a large number of stock copies of this disc into a cupboard, never to see the light of day (though melting the lot down and recycling the vinyl towards a more worthwhile cause would have been a better response). The copy in my hand appears to be one that did manage to drift into the real world, purchased by me for the princely sum of 50p despite its scarcity. Some would argue that's at least fifty pence too much. 

Pierre Cour was a highly successful French songwriter who had penned numerous tracks for his country at Eurovision, and had embarked on a rewarding working partnership (for both parties) with Roger Whittaker by the seventies. His songs had also previously been recorded by many luminaries, such as Petula Clark, Nana Mouskouri, and Paul Mauriat. Why he needed to blot his copybook with this creepy mess is a good question, and one we will probably never get an answer to. 

Kenny Everett eventually span this on his radio show as an example of one of the worst records of all time, and that's a judgement I really don't have a quarrel with. The only thing I might debate is whether it should actually be named the worst record ever, not "one of" the worst. 

Sorry for the pops and crackles on the mp3s below, though to be perfectly honest they should be the least of your worries (and I doubt you'll want to listen to this more than once). 

Second Hand Record Dip Part 64 - Topol Sings Israeli Freedom Songs

Who: Topol
What: Sings Israeli Freedom Songs
Label: Ember
When: 1967
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street
Cost: One pound

If popular culture myths are to be believed, 1967 was the year the world went wonky, LSD fell into the reservoirs, and everyone wigged out.  Nonsense, of course.  Somebody genuinely would have had to spike the water supplies of every major town and city on Earth to have inspired such a seachange, and in reality, life for most people simply rolled on as usual.  The closest my father came to witnessing the psychedelic underground up close was when Peter Starstedt popped into his Peckham local for a pint - and let's be honest, Starstedt wasn't really any underground hero, and apparently came quite close to being given a thorough drubbing.  Wherever his lovely went to, it clearly wasn't pubs off the Old Kent Road.

So then, whereas 1967 to some people may involve Pink Floyd, The Beatles going ker-azy, the UFO club, and all manner of absurdities besides, in reality for other people it might have meant Ken Dodd and Engelbert Humperdinck (saleswise, Eng was something of a runaway victor in that year).  And whilst others dictated peace and love, other recording artists were going quite berserk with other more militant concerns, which finally brings us on to Topol, star of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof".  When the 1967 Israel-Syria conflict came to a head, he decided to down tools as a performer and fight for his country.  Not only that, he produced a concept album of songs about it.

Originally, I was tempted to post the sleeve of this record up for public viewing and leave it at that.  Extra comment seemed somehow superfluous.  This entire album is not in English, so it's impossible to hear exactly what he's telling us, but with song titles like "The Canon Song", "World's End", "One Hundred and Twenty Men" and "We Are Coming To You", it's perfectly possible to fill in some of the blanks yourself.  The accompanying sleeve notes written by Benny Green of The Observer newspaper also give us some background: "...when his homeland was threatened, he stopped fiddling on the roof and returned to what was in effect a beleaguered Nation, fulfilling the first duty of every citizen of that astounding country, which is to die for it before seeing it destroyed... The songs he sings on this album, seen in the context of the national crisis which inspired them are an inspiration not only to Israelis but to everyone who believes that fundamental human rights are worth any sacrifice".

I don't want to get sucked into a debate about the moral rights or wrongs of this record, but I don't think it's remotely unfair to say that in peacetime (if not before) the sleeve image of Topol hollering into a hand grenade instead of a microphone isn't so much of a powerful image as a truly preposterous one.  Even the worst, bargain basement Clash-inspired punk band would have turned down such a sleeve art suggestion.  It doesn't cause one to stop and think, it just immediately suggests that the poor bastard may have had a bit of a funny turn when it came to the photo session.  Nor should it surprise anyone to learn that in Britain at least, this album did not sell, but just you try seeing it in the reduced racks of a second hand record store and looking the other way... It's just a shame I can't find any English translations of the lyrics anywhere.

Sorry for not uploading the whole album, by the way.  I couldn't face it.  If enough people desperately need to hear the rest I may reconsider.

Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record Show

Label: Yuk/ K-Tel
Year of Release: 1978

If Kenny Everett were still alive, I'd be delighted to find out - hope against hope, perhaps - that he was a reader of this blog.  Certainly, if he gave his nod of approval, it would be like being awarded a gold star from the master professor of the topic of record industry flotsam and jetsam.  The "World's Worst Wireless Show", originally broadcast on Capital Radio in London in 1977, was an incredibly popular piece of programming which filled the airwaves with nothing but flop madness from the history of recorded sound.  Well-meaning but ultimately obnoxiously awful Christian country songs featured, as did dirges, bad taste tragidiscs, out-of-tune singers, and people who thought they were being radical and breaking new ground but were actually making themselves look rather silly.

I used to have all the recorded shows on an old hard drive of mine (which sadly got wiped when the disc became damaged some years ago) and Kenny was as scathing as you'd expect about these records, but there was an unsuppressed glee in his tone of voice as well, and you could sense his sheer delight that this material even existed, almost a sense of pride that he worked within an industry so democratic that any bum-note wonder got a chance to have their say.  And of course, for as trivial as a topic like this is in the grand scheme of things, I'd like to think that some of these ridiculous and bold failings highlight the history of popular music just as effectively as the biggest smashes do.  Somewhere in all the mess of fumbling around you can hear the earliest attempts to allow members of the public to press their own discs, attempts to stun and shock with unacceptable content long before punk broke, and even soap stars trying to use their on-screen popularity to sell below-par records.

This compilation consists of the twenty least popular tracks Everett played (or actually nineteen - I've wiped "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen off because it's still very much commercially available, and I actually always thought it was a baffling inclusion anyway).  Listening to it in one shot is actually spectacularly ill-advised, as some of it is teeth-grittingly bad, and there are pieces of mind-numbing awfulness in there too.  For instance, whilst I have no respect whatsoever for Jess Conrad, I'd argue his work would be dull and average were it not for the pathetic lyrical content of his singles.  Despite the fact that he was largely lauded as a massive, up-and-coming British star in the early sixties - something it's easy to forget even if he's keen not to let us do so - in reality he was a sub-Cliff Richard figure, a man who made the Rock and Roll priest himself look positively dangerous.  Astonishingly, he has retained many fans over the years, but not enough to have kept him out of Everett's bottom twenty, where he appeared three times, more than any other artist.

Elsewhere, "Crossroads" actor Steve Bent contributes his own tune "I'm Going To Spain", which I must confess I have a sneaking affection for - The Fall later covered this track on the "The Infotainment Scan" album, which doesn't seem entirely inappropriate as some of the lines such as "The factory floor presented me with some tapes of Elton John" seem not un-Smithlike in the first place.  Bent apparently chanced his arm on "Opportunity Knocks" to showcase his singer-songwriter talent, but so far nobody has uploaded his attempts to YouTube (he didn't win, but you shouldn't need to ask).

Then, some of the religious offerings on this album such as "The Deal" by Pat Campbell would probably turn a man on his deathbed to Satanism, so syrupy, artless and weedy are they in their construction.  Whatever point they were trying to make was cursed by their feeble, sub-daytime soap opera efforts at storytelling (and that's before we even talk about the cliched, anaemic musical backing).

Better almost than all of these put together are the tracks "I Want My Baby Back" (already featured on this blog before) and "Transfusion", which are deliberately milking the bad taste cow for all its worth, hoping in their hearts that they'll be hated and banned.  Such records are actually more rock and roll in spirit than most of the coked-up acts of defiance that pass for that description - if Oasis had a spine, they'd have recorded a single about post-car crash necrophilia as well.

Bosses at the compilation giant K-Tel were apparently proud of their achievements in getting all this material licensed, and getting the end product to chart within the Top 40.  Whilst I find it cheering that a major label put so much effort into something like this, I actually suspect that many boardroom high-fives were exchanged about the fact that they could shovel any old crap into a sleeve and get people to buy it.  If only they'd paused to think about the fact that actually, this material was always waiting for an audience.  It was far too absurd to remain in the shadows forever, and in those pre-Internet years this would have been a fantastic package, a real discussion piece.  Actually, it still is - I defy you not to have an opinion on the contents of any track on the record, or even whether it deserves a place in the tracklisting or not.  The only shame is that nobody has tried to update the project in any commercially visible way since.

Tracklisting:
1. Jimmy Cross - I Want My Baby Back
2. Zarah Leander - Wunderbar
3. The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralysed
4. Pat Campbell - The Deal
5. Nervous Norvus - Transfusion
6. Jess Conrad - This Pullover
7. Mel & Dave - Spinning Wheel
8. Dickie Lee - Laurie
9. Mrs Miller - A Lover's Concerto
10. Ferlin Husky - The Drunken Driver
11. Jess Conrad - Why Am I Living?
12. The Trashmen - Surfin' Bird (NOT INCLUDED IN THIS DOWNLOAD)
13. Steve Bent - I'm Going To Spain
14. Duncan Johnson - The Big Architect
15. Jess Conrad - Cherry Pie
16. Eamonn Andrews - The Shifting Whispering Sands
17. Tub Thumper - Kick Out The Jams
18. Adolph Babel - My Feet Start Tapping
19. Skip Jackson - The Greatest Star of All
20. Raphael - Going Out Of My Head

Download it Here

Second Hand Record Dip Part 53 - RB Greaves - Who's Watching The Baby (Marjie)

Who: RB Greaves

What: Who's Watching The Baby (Marjie) (b/w "The Gods Watch It All")

Label: Ember

When: 1977

Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street

Cost: 50p

I'm assured that this was a bit of a lucky second hand record dip in all, since this single frequently retails to collectors at much grander prices than 50p - the man on the till even questioned its pricing with the store manager when I bought it. Nonetheless, it's still the same faintly ridiculous fare we've come to know and love from this particular part of the blog.

RB Greaves is actually the nephew of Sam Cooke, and had a brief burst of success in America during the sixties with the number two hit "Take A Letter Maria" and its other chart-bound cousin "Always Something There To Remind Me". This particular tale of child neglect and debauchery failed to click with audiences at all, and that's none too surprising - soul songs about families worthy of a Jerry Springer appearance have never really been popular with the public. "Who's Watching The Baby (Marjie)" is full of drama, beginning when Greaves walks into a bar to find "a couple in the corner making love to each other/ the woman was my wife". Unsurprisingly, he's infuriated - but not just by the fact that she's having an affair, but by the fact that their baby has been left unaccompanied at home. He flies into an indignant rage and does some nasty damage with a glass which causes him to become imprisoned for murder. Oh, the terribly damaging flickers of temper that adultery provokes. In France he'd have had a much shorter sentence, mark my words.

To be fair to Greaves, the B-side "The Gods Watch It All" is a much classier affair, being a smooth and slick burst of political righteousness. "Marjie" is, on the other hand, a career oddment. Sadly, due to the fact that both tracks are amazingly available commercially on iTunes, I can only really give you sample edits below. I don't intend to make a habit of this kind of thing, but on occasion it may happen.

British label fans may also like to note that this appears to have been the final release on stalwart indie Ember Records, unless anyone can inform me otherwise.

6TX4JB8CK55C

Second Hand Record Dip Part 49 - Buster Gobsmack Eats Filth - We Wanna Be Famous

Who: Buster Gobsmack Eats Filth (aka Grant Baynham and Adrian Mills off TV's "That's Life")

What: We Wanna Be Famous

Label: BBC

Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street, London

When: 1988

Cost: One pound

Ah, BBC Records and Tapes... so much to answer for...

Readers of a non-British origin may require me to brief them with some background about this single, and I'll do my best. "That's Life" was a British consumer programme which thrived in the seventies and eighties with its absurd and jarring approach of highlighting members of the public who had been wronged by bogus companies, spivs and ne'er-do-wells, then juxtaposing them with "light hearted" segments where they'd show clips of talking dogs or old ladies yodelling in the street. I'm not making any of this up or exaggerating for effect, incidentally - they really did. The shades of light and dark within the show were so extreme that it was a wonder the format succeeded for one series, much less the countless numbers which were eventually commissioned. Clearly somewhere out there a demographic existed for people who wanted to hear stories about people who had been left brain damaged after being run over by an articulated supermarket lorry and watch meerkats do some skateboarding. In essence, the show occupied the same kind of territory that the numerous oddball 50p grief-magazines which occupy newsagents shelves do now, and it's actually quite surprising that it hasn't been revamped and relaunched on that basis.

In 1988, towards the show's twilight years, one of their investigative items focussed on a dubious character who was apparently ripping off bands in Manchester by directing appalling videos for them for unreasonable amounts of cash (and in case you're wondering, the videos for The Inspiral Carpets "Joe" and The Stone Roses "She Bangs The Drums" were self-produced band efforts, so whoever he was, we can't blame him for those). To show the gentleman up for the rogue he was, presenters Grant Baynham and Adrian Mills promptly went forth and formed a dreadful punk band to highlight his activities. "Eats Filth" were born (being an anagram of "That's Life", in case this needs to be highlighted), a terrible video was created, and the man was humiliated and shamed on national television, with John Peel joining in by making his annoyance known. Job done. Or so we thought...

The story didn't quite end there, although it really should have done. It would seem that somebody at BBC Records and Tapes decided that the deliberately dreadful record - all one and a half minutes of it - should be issued as a charity single for MENCAP. As executive decisions go, the weakness of this one should not be understated. "Buster Gobsmack Eats Filth" were essentially a satirical parody of a struggling punk band, which in terms of humour was ten years out of date by 1988. A modern equivalent would be a joke band set up to parody the Teen C movement now. It's true to say that the "That's Life" audience still seemed to find punks disproportionately hilarious in the late eighties - the shrieks of laughter from the studio audience whenever a London punk was vox popped by Mills or one of his cohorts proved a baffling noise to hear - but they really weren't going to bother their stereograms with this nonsense. It sold next to no copies, and as in my opinion this is probably one of the worst songs ever committed to vinyl, it deserved to, charity or no charity. After all, there are very few people who would even give a homeless man making this sort of noise any cash.

Because let's not forget that the song in question is so utterly, mindlessly bad that it may be a work of genius. It's a squawking piece of drivel with scattergun lyrics a petulant six year old could have penned which starts and stops very quickly and without having made any particular kind of melodic point. To all intents and purposes, this is the celebrity equivalent of The Legend's singles for Creation Records - it's that atrocious.

The B-side "The Toreador From Japan" takes a different tack, but seems quaintly racist instead - you sense that all concerned probably thought they were having a light-hearted laugh, and that no harm was done, but ultimately the fake "Japano Spanish vocals" will cause people who dwell in the year 2010 to cringe (indeed, they probably caused quite a few people living in 1988 to blush as well). And please don't ask me what the B-side was connected to in the world of "That's Life", if indeed anything. I don't know, and I don't know if I want to know.

Still though - at least you can all now see what I meant when I said a few entries back that Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record Show should probably be updated and relaunched by someone.

Driver 67 - Headlights

Label: Logo

Year of Release: 1979

If you're British and of a certain generation, the mention of the track "Car 67" by Driver 67 will automatically cause a smile of recognition to flicker across your face. Often written off as a 'novelty' single, the track in fact had a certain amount of charm and care most throwaway ditties lack. The fact that Paul Phillips, the artist behind the record, sat in a taxi singing into the radio for his Top of the Pops appearance also showed a Bill Drummond-esque attention to detail. I was only six years old when that was transmitted, but I didn't even need to check it out on YouTube to remind me what the performance looked like - now there's memorable presentation in action.

Less is really heard about the flop follow-up track "Headlights" and that, my friends, is because it was banned. "Car 67" may have been all fluff and innocence about relationship woes and tears before bedtime, but "Headlights" was - and I'm a liberal minded person as you'll hopefully by now realise - just wrong. Not even wrong in the way that vaguely sexist songs about women belonging in the kitchen are wrong, but outright, out-scoring Lou Reed-circa-Berlin type wrong. In the track, Paul Phillips adopts a sinister gravelly voice, and unveils his tale of sexually harassing and stalking young ladies on the highway at night - "I can see your fear in my headlights" he growls. It's an obvious thing to say, but it's no wonder the woman who chose to reside at Royal Gardens got rid of him. This particular track certainly puts a new spin on things. Or perhaps he had some kind of breakdown after being dumped and began taking revenge on womankind - mine is not to question why.

Unsurprisingly, this wasn't a follow-up smash, and apparently generated enough complaints on the only occasion it was ever played on Radio One never to be touched by a DJ there ever again. As for Paul Phillips, one can only assume he was attempting to play up to the darker side of country music and trucker rock, and the joke just got lost in translation. If nothing else, he surely must come close to taking the prize for one of the most questionable and absurd follow-ups to a hit single ever.

The B-side "Tail Lights", on the other hand, periodically has a vague resemblance to the "South Park" theme tune, which is surely a coincidence.

Second Hand Record Dip Part 47 - Jimmy Cross - I Want My Baby Back

Who: Jimmy Cross
What: I Want My Baby Back (b/w "Play the Other Side" - cuh, thanks chaps...)

Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street, London
When: 1965 (this reissue 1978)
Label: Wanted (original label Tollie)
Cost: One pound

Another very obvious choice for a blog of this nature, but one I make few apologies for. After all, this is the Ben Hur of novelty awfulness, the bad taste record by which all other bad taste records must be judged, and certainly an education to those who think they've heard it all before.

This single was originally a very minor hit in America for Jimmy Cross, getting into the lower reaches of the Hot 100 back in 1965. Recorded as a very heavy-handed parody of the numerous death tunes (such as "Leader of the Pack") which were stinking up the charts like rotting corpses in a morgue during a gravedigger's strike, it took the concept as far as it could conceivably go. The sleeve art on display here should give you an idea of how the story for this tune develops, if it could be indeed called a tune - at times it more closely resembles a parodical comedy sketch. Key line: "Well I wasn't about to slam on the brakes, 'cos I didn't have none to start with".

Leaving aside any questions anyone may have about taste, the record appeared to grow in notoriety over the years, a situation which finally peaked when Kenny Everett played it on his "World's Worst Wireless Show" on Capital Radio in 1977. Inviting the public to vote for the worst song of all time after he broadcast several shows of outlandish cuts and outright drivel, the public responded to take this right to number one - hence the etching on the tombstone you can see on the sleeve.

There were numerous rumours at the time that Jimmy Cross was simply Harry Nilsson moonlighting under another name, and whilst that's an enjoyable thought, it's sadly untrue. Confusion does still surround the singer's identity, however, and the most realistic explanation I've read so far is that he was a radio producer who happened to have the right kind of Southern accent for the song's narrative parts, but otherwise had little creative input into the disc's contents.

As for the song's much-envied position of being the worst record of all time, I could certainly think of one or two singles which have emerged since which may deserve the title more, although admittedly not many more than that. Perhaps it's time for an update of Everett's concept on British radio. And perhaps some of the challengers are another topic for another time....