RECORD MIRROR Singles Reviews, 8th October 1966

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3K7XeJWVVvLbpP6XBb2oPL?si=1f8ee05356b2431a

YouTube:
Peter Fenton - Marble Breaks, Iron Bends
Keith And Billie - Swingin' Tight
Rolf Harris - Hey Yew Gotta Loight Boy
Bobby Goldsboro - It Hurts Me
John-John Ivan - Trouble Mountain
Wishful Thinking - Step By Step
Pat Boone - Love For Love

10 of these charted - peak positions as follows.

1 Four Tops - Reach Out I'll Be There
2 The Hollies - Stop Stop Stop
10 Cliff Richard - Time Drags By
18 Elvis Presley - All That I Am
18 The Temptations - Beauty Is Only Skin Deep
34 The Cream - Wrapping Paper (debut hit)
36 The Creation - Painter Man
37 ? (Question Mark) And The Mysterians - 96 Tears
46 Adam Faith - Cheryl's Going Home (final hit)
46 Peter Fenton - Marble Breaks, Iron Bends

This gives Jopling and Jones a success rate of 9/13 with their "Top Fifty Tips".

I love the Creation but I'm not especially smitten with 'Painter Man' as a song. It's a pretty deranged-sounding record for its time though - hard-panned instruments with just a bowed guitar wheezing away on the right channel including quite a skronky little solo.

Liking that Wolves song btw, hadn't heard it before. Last minute of it is awesome.

I have a soft spot for "In Our Time" by Nancy Sinatra, a Lee Hazlewood composition which went to #46 in the US. Hazlewood himself also recorded a version around this time. Nancy's version has a couple of Lee's drug lyrics toned down: Lee's "smoking funny cigarettes" becomes Nancy's "smoking filtered cigarettes." Lee sings "we take trips and never leave" while Nancy sings "some take trips and never leave." Funnily enough, immediately after this single Nancy had a bigger hit with "Sugar Town," a Hazlewood composition that is a straight up ode to the joys of LSD.

Voting for the Temptations song, though it's basically one long "negging" session:

"A pretty face you may not possess
But what I like about you is your tenderness"

The Hollies song is irritating (though I like a lot of their stuff), and the Cream song is junk.

Obvious I know, but it's got to be 96 Tears.

"96 Tears" is so good y'all

xp!

"Lust for Life" by The Wolves?

It can only be a disappointment.

The Homer Banks is a straight banger.

Can we get a higher-res scan of the column? I can’t read it.

Was gonna say

What I did was grab the image and enlarge it on my laptop

Hmm, it should open as 1111x792, which is the original size. It opens fine on my laptop. I'll embed it here and see what happens.

https://i.imgur.com/0hAwvmT.jpeg

Trini Lopez, as the subject of a Golden Girls joke I had to Google

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

This is not the 1966 you were looking for …

Another fascinating slice of the past, warty lumps and all. A lot of records that sound trite or mannered to my ears, and not just the British contingent. Was tempted to vote for Spike Milligan in sympathy. American R&B is a cut above, with The Philly Freeze being a nice discovery. But in the end I voted for Keith and Billie’s Swingin’ Tight, which wears its US influence much more attractively than some others. I previously knew Billie Davis from a Decca Girls’ Scene compilation (the terrific Nobody’s Home to Go Home to). This isn’t quite up to that but I still enjoyed it enough to pick it over 96 Tears, which I guess is just a little overfamiliar.

I think Nancy Sinatra is missing from both the Spotify playlist and the YouTube links, btw. Here she is on YT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8de_rtc8gbw

THE GREAT
Nancy Sinatra - In Our Time (yes, it vanished from UK Spotify during the past week, ta for the YT)
? (Question Mark) And The Mysterians - 96 Tears (along with "Reach Out I'll Be There", the only one I've ever owned on 7", bought as a late-70s reissue following its revival by Eddie & The Hot Rods)
Beverley - Happy New Year (as I suspected, this is Beverley Martyn, with a Randy Newman song, selling for around £50 on Discogs)
Homer Banks - A Lot Of Love (I know this total banger from my two year stint as a Soul/Motown/Northern DJ)
The Wolves - Lust For Life (also sells for around £50 on Discogs)
Jimmy Holiday - Baby I Love You (the RM review pretty much nails it)

THE GOOD
The Creation - Painter Man (as covered by Boney M!)
The Temptations - Beauty Is Only Skin Deep (as someone said above, one long negging session, which keeps it from the Great pile)
Cliff Richard - Time Drags By (way, way better than I would have expected from 1967 Cliff)
The Hollies - Stop Stop Stop
Peter, Paul And Mary - The Other Side Of This Life
Tuesday's Children - High On A Hill

THE OK
Peter Fenton - Marble Breaks, Iron Bends
Keith And Billie - Swingin' Tight (just a bit too derivative for the Good pile, like Sonny & Cher doing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling"; Billie Davis did much better in 1968 with the absolutely FANTASTIC "I Want You To Be My Baby")
Bobby Goldsboro - It Hurts Me
John-John Ivan - Trouble Mountain
Adam Faith - Cheryl's Going Home
Tony Bennett - A Time For Love
Lou Christie - If My Car Could Only Talk
The Cream - Wrapping Paper (their debut release)
Belfast Gypsies - Gloria's Dream (a post-Them splinter group, produced and co-written by Kim Fowley, and a shameless grab of Van Morrison's song, for which he is not credited on the label)
Michael Alred - Just Around The Corner
Alvin Cash And The Registers - The Philly Freeze

THE IFFY
The Four Pennies - No Sad Songs For Me (I remember their singer Lionel Morton as a Play School presenter)
Elvis Presley - All That I Am
Duane Eddy - Daydream
Mighty Sam - Fannie Mae
Wishful Thinking - Step By Step

THE GARBAGE
Rolf Harris - Hey Yew Gotta Loight Boy
Trini Lopez - Pancho Lopez
Spike Milligan - Purple Aeroplane
Pat Boone - Love For Love

96 Tears

I found a copy of "Black Girl" by the Four Pennies, last year. If it's not quite the searing performance that Nirvana's is, it's closer than you'd expect.

After a nail-biting final round, I have decided to vote for Beverley Martyn's masterful "Happy New Year". It was nearly The Wolves, but the chorus very slightly lets it down.

Enjoyed this thorough entry on The Wolves on the Brumbeat website. Bobby Holt putting me in mind of Slade In Residence here:

In July, the Midland Beat newspaper published an enthusiastic almost full-page "MEET THE GROUP" feature on The Wolves that included detailed bios of each band member. For example, Midland Beat wrote that Bobby Holt liked; "Chinese food, chips, lying in bed, a pint of bitter, and dislikes girls with heavy make-up"

http://www.brumbeat.net/wolves.htm

96 Tears

Same here

"96 Tears" has to be the favourite to win. I've played it countless times over the years, and although a little blunted by over-familiarity, it never gets old.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Ha, well, quite.

That Hollies song is kinda weird, not the song as such but the arrangement, it's based around an echoplexed banjo! The Hollies are a band I've never paid the slightest attention to, I never recognize the titles of their famous songs but as soon as I hear them I know them and I often, maybe mostly, like them.

I did try to vote Cliff "Times drag by" because its great, but I'd already voted Hollies. Both deserve being in the voted for section.

The artwork for the Beverley single includes a great Aubrey Beardsley pastiche - the epitome of 1966; so would have voted for that.

Enjoyed the look of incredulity on Ginger Baker's face that I saw on a recent BBC 4 Clapton doc when he was talking about 'Wrapping Paper".

Here we go again, five years later:

RECORD MIRROR singles reviews, 9th October 1971

Is this an oblique TS: Jon Savage (1966) vs David Hepworth (1971)?