images from the invasion day march 26 january 2016

Late 1979, the wrap up

Ultimately my feelings about Summer Gold and late 1979 are mixed and colourful (you can have colourful feelings, right? Well, you can’t tell me I don’t). I do feel that you can sift out the album in all kinds of weird and wonderful categories, if you’re of a mind, into for instance disco pop, rock (there’s not much of that really – maybe three tracks), novelty (if you count ‘Up There Cazaly’, you’ve got at least two; except you might also count ‘Money’, although as we saw this was regarded as a ‘disco’ track at the time of its release at least in some quarters; you might also count ‘Twist A Saint Tropez’, I don’t know, you tell me). Then there are sublime ballads – about three of those – and, well, some outright shit that should be destroyed, but not much. I’ve made much of how surprised I am by the extensive lack of hits on the album, despite the extensive provision of artists who just had hits and/or were just about to have more, but not this time. So weird. That, in itself, doesn’t speak to the quality of the work. No album that features ‘Who Were You With in the Moonlight’ could ever actually be a bad album. And that song wasn’t a hit in Australia (by the way, I bought ‘Who Were You With in the Moonlight’ on iTunes a few days ago so I could play it on the radio, and I just want to say the rerecorded version of that song is one of the poxiest pieces of succulent pox I have ever had the displeasure of vomiting in response to. What a turd of a record. An absolute and utter turd. It’s always so strange when people don’t realise the value of what they’ve done, and seek to remake it for no good purpose whatsoever. Of course it's the fact that it's so good the first time, that makes it so bad the second time).

What kind of culture were we looking at in late 1979? I suppose the first thing to realise, and yes this was ‘my day’ in the sense of (whether I was listening to radio or not) there were very few songs in the top 40 at this point that I’m not extremely familiar with, and in various ways pretty positive about. There are a lot more drum machines and synthesisers in use than we were necessarily aware of in the moment, and a lot more studio experimentation on various records than was acknowledged. The lyrics were often highly dodgy, sticky stinky brown dodgy, and the sentiments and assumptions within and amongst them were shockingly awful, oppressive and dunderheaded garbage.

My high school, John Gardiner HS. A truly disgusting place and time. Photo credit: Fuck Off

I was 14 in late 1979, it was a highly horrible time to be growing up in Hawthorn going to the really, really bad high school and doing neither poorly nor well academically and essentially just wanting to get it over with. I may or may not have been listening to the radio 1979 but it wasn’t long before I really embraced pop music, at the edgy end. I note that the Pretenders’ ‘Brass in Pocket’, which I adored (and still have a super soft spot for) was a hit in early 1980. I spent a whole day willing that fucking song to come on the radio. I was so thrilled when I bought my copy of that single.

So maybe 1979 is not inherently interesting but interesting only to me. It seems like so much more! Probs not. That’s OK too. In fact, I sort of prefer it not being so perfect. Not least because it’s all dead and over now.

To finish up, a song that has nothing whatsoever to do with Summer Gold but which came out at the same time, I bought it a couple of weeks ago entirely on spec. Mick Drennan made a record and disappeared. Why couldn't more people do that?!*

* Perhaps even without the 'made a record' bit

Summer Gold: Two Man Band, 'Up there Cazaly'

I can't tell you how tempting it was to completely omit this, the last track on Summer Gold, from this overview. Not because I hate the song (at least, I recognise its genius) but just... because.

It's plain that whoever put together the track listing for Summer Gold, the artist formerly known as as muggins, threw zher hands in the air when it came to this track: it just has to go on the end, if for no other reason that a lot of people are likely to want to take the needle off the record at this point (or perhaps to try, with a hot pin, to make a new track right through this one to the label). Whatever it musters in catchiness, 'Up there Cazaly' is also a frustratingly irritating stadium chant that everyone knows and few would seriously want to sit down and listen to like, on a record. Apart from anything else, it's in most (I'm going to guess 70-80%) Victorians' and many (30-40%?) Australians' brains and cannot be purged, even with a strong dose of 'C'Mon Aussie C'Mon'.* 

With the subtitle 'Seven's Footy Theme' (this is omitted on the Summer Gold sleeve) this song was, essentially, a clever bit of doggerel calculated to generate a rush of blood to the head/penis at the mention of aussie rules football, a sport that apparently someone in 1979 thought needed a bit of promotion (not sure why). There are a few things that I do find amusing here, mainly lyrical; the suggestion early in the piece that football spectatorship is something a man does as a, well, turn on or mind-clearing (what's good about that?! Should I try it?) experience. I also recall the slightly askew way Mike Brady sings 'Me, I like football' as I recall a fellow student at my high school at the time this song was popular, singing this particular line many, many times as a kind of absurdist pop culture quote during the school day, and then proving it was true by going to have a forty year (so far) career writing about football in the media. 

To their credit, although Two Man Band (also known as 'Two-Man Band' - don't get confused) released five singles between 1979-1984 each with a song aside, they never tried to cobble together a cheap and nasty album out of their ten extant songs. Respect that. 

* Kudos to Mike Brady and Peter Sullivan for actually going into the studio and recording a fully crafted song here. The Mojo Singers' 'C'mon Aussie C'mon' is a shoddily-edited tape loop, in which someone has just said - 'put this... on a record? This... on a record? Well, ok, I'll just run it a few times till it fills up a side.' 'Up There Cazaly' is actually structured and smart, a bold pop culture (if not outright pop) statement. 

Summer Gold: Mona Lisa and Terry Young 'I Wanna Make It With You Tonight'

As mentioned a few days ago, Karen Dewey's Marcia Hines biography gives Ooh Child pretty short shrift but does mention tension generated by Robie Porter's attempts to put Mona Lisa and Terry at a comparable billing to Marcia. This went as far as the unusual step of putting at least one song featuring the duo on Marcia's album and then releasing it under their names as a single, released mid-79 and hitting the top 20 (this youtube clip says number 19, my source - the Barnes/Scanes Top 40 Research - says 14).

I note without interest that the wikipedia entry for the album omits the single's chart status.

Apart from the odd politicking behind its release, what can we say about the song? Only that it cunningly combines two things every teenager in 1979 adored - sex and drugs - in a confusing metaphor that produced symptoms of dizziness and bafflement not dissimilar to a toke backstage at the blue light disco. I wonder if they ever done it. Terry's enigmatic smile suggests maybe yes.

Summer Gold: Precious Wilson 'Hold On, I'm Coming'

You will note from the cover of Summer Gold that it’s got a few song titles but no artists – which is the kind of thing you do when you don’t actually have the license to the tracks by the original artists, isn’t it. Yet here we have the original artists and no real recognition of the star factor involved. It’s odd.

Relatedly, the 16^th and 17^th tracks on Summer Gold have something in common which is most peculiar. Although both were singles, the first by Precious Wilson and the second by Mona Lisa and Terry Young, the albums both songs originally appeared on were actually released attributed to different artists: Precious Wilson’s cover of Sam and Dave’s ‘Hold On I’m Coming’ appears as a track on Boney M’s fourth album, Oceans of Fantasy and Mona Lisa* and Terry Young’s ‘I Wanna Make it With You’ is a track on Marcia Hines’ Ooh Child. Go figure. Go fuckin’ figure.

Precious Wilson – her real name is Precocious** and her middle name is Pearlina*** – worked her way up through the ranks in the British group Eruption (from backing singer to front left and centre for a couple of big hits with sixties covers). Notwithstanding that her 'Hold On I'm Coming' is a cover of a well-known and pretty superior song, it's not a bad piece of disco pop and better than most of the stuff Boney M were generally credited with (btw Wikipedia suggests that Oceans of Fantasy was the only Boney M album which shocked fans by revealing, through some numbskull's accidental track-by-track listing of vocalists, that only two of the four BMers actually sang on the records; and, you know, two of the songs were also sung by Precious Wilson, so... everyone was scratching their head about what actually constituted Boney M, I guess). 

Precious Wilson has a big eastern bloc (is it still called that) following as is revealed on her website which is worth a read if only to see what constitutes a blog post in her world. Discogs tells us additionally that she is also known both as Gracious Wilson (really?!) and as Прешъс Уилсън. I think we should forget about the hype, and just enjoy a great rendition of a great song, greatly. 

* Or Monalisa, I can't keep track
** Untrue at time of writing
*** Apparently true

Summer Gold: Ruth Waters 'Never Gonna Be The Same'

What can I tell you about Ruth Waters? That she sometimes goes by the name Ruth 'Silky' Waters, that she can be directly emailed at silkywaters@aol.com? Both of those things, I suppose... also that she has a Facebook fan page which 44 people like and 46 people follow. 

It would appear (other information is scant to be honest) that 'Never Gonna Be the Same' was Waters' biggest hit, and it's a vibrant, upbeat beefy bit of beltin' that, like the Dollar video mentioned a few days ago f'rinstance is crazily happy for such a sad story. 

Not a hit in Australia but goes to making Summer Gold one of the sharpest and sassiest disco collections around. 

Summer Gold: Andy Forray 'Drac's Back'

Now this is a fascinating piece of work. I note that it was a hit in Australia, after its appearance on this album (so, early 1980 - it was something like the 52nd biggest selling single of that year)  God life was so much more complicated back then, in a less innocent time! It was a hit in Victoria and it was on the 3XY chart but it was totally not a national hit in Australia (at least not according to the Barnes-Scanes Top 40 Research book). OK back to normal service... though I for one don't remember it at all, and I even suspect it might not have got much radio airplay because of its suggestive nature (though also I don't recall how much I was listening to the radio in 1979/80 tbh). There also doesn't seem to have been a video made - which is so ridiculous, given the way the song begs to be played out in a video, with Forray of course starring because he was primarily an actor (and an early cast member of Hair but perhaps more importantly for this kind of thing, a comedy actor for instance he was 'Second Christian' in Up Pompeii - don't laugh!)

The weirdest thing about 'Drac's Back' I guess is that when we hear it now it sounds like, well, AIDS comedy. We got very used to the idea of vampires and gayness (possibly via The Fearless Vampire Killers, I'm not entirely sure) and then much later tropes about AIDS and blood and nightclubs. This record came out two years before the first actual AIDS diagnosis, and so any interpretation along those lines is with hindsight. There are probably other associations that are just so much part of pop culture I can't see them anymore. What We Do in the Shadows was following the same kind of schtick though (and is a really, really funny film - if you didn't know that)

It's a clever little record, a lot of satisfying punchlines and on the whole a good music hall spirit to it. I'd like to find out more about Andy Forray but I've lived this long knowing very little so I suppose I can keep going without the knowledge.

One thing that bothers me. Drac's back. I want to suck your oooh... Dracula WHAT? What is that last word? Driving me crazy.

Something else occurred to me after writing the above: I wonder how many people used albums like Summer Gold for cover. If you thought your parents (for instance) or friends would deride you for having a song like 'Drac's Back' in your collection, but you really wanted it, you could purchase it on Summer Gold and say that you merely tolerated it because it was inalienably a part of the collection. I'm thinking about 'Drac's Back' in particularly because it is pretty darn gay, or at least, pretty sexually suggestive, which I'm sure stopped it being played on 2SM in Sydney, for instance. 

23/1/18 MORE MORE MORE: The redoubtable Paul Fleckney has suggested this is 'a song about the recreational drug Mandrax (aka Quaaludes or ludes). He points out that Drac's victims are left 'feeling like a wreck' and 'wake up all wasted' and that his 'drinks are all free' ('During the '90s,' says Paul, 'many clubs complained that ecstasy was killing their business because no one drank any more. I imagine there was a similar reaction to Mandrax in the 70s' He also notes that of course the second syllable of 'Mandrax' and 'Drac's' are, um, the same thing: 'I wonder if this song is a bit of an advertorial announcing Mandrax's return to the dance floor in the late '70s?' 

I think so. In fact, I'm sure so. It makes Forray - who as far as I'm aware never wrote another song - a particularly clever lyricist, particularly as the tiredness Drac's victims feel is as easily ascribed to having your blood drained as it is to taking disco drugs. (That said, he could have made a play on words between 'lewd' and 'dude', couldn't he? Do I need to write this guy's schtick for him?!).