Off Beat - You Don't Bring Me Flowers

Here's an amazing performance of a song with an amazing history.

You Don't Bring Me Flowers was originally intended as a theme song for a Norman Lear television show. It never came to be, but Neil Diamond came across the tune, added a couple of verses and put it out in 1977. Around the same time Barbara Streisand released a version of the same song. A radio Program Director in Louisville Kentucky combined the two versions and began airing the "virtual" duet. The song was so popular Diamond and Streisand recorded the real thing and it shot to #1.

While the Diamond/Streisand version is the definitive one - although it's a little too syrupy for my tastes - my favourite performance of the song has got to be by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. If you enjoy this bit, look up the UOGB on You Tube. You won't be disappointed. They're a hoot. Their performances of Shaft and Teen Spirit, for example, are a riot.

Off Beat - I'm Fed Up

I don't know what this is, who Alizee is, how she ever got to be as popular as she is, and why she doesn't seem to own any regular clothes. But the whole package made me laugh. The lip-syncing, the lyrics, the little nymph/Lolita act...well you get the picture. And, hey, It's a catchy tune!

Alizee is from France and apparently she's had quite the international hit with I'm Fed Up. Here she sings the French version (with subtitles), J'en ai marre. Boy, I love the French people.

Bubbles and water
Legs up for hours
My goldfish is under me
To bathe for hours
Makes my mouth water
I’m “foamely” ecstatic

It’s not a problem
I lazy ‘round
Bubbly and stubborn
I lazy ‘round
Melon and water
Is just a dream
It makes me wonder
Is it a “sin” ?

Bubbles and water
Legs up for hours
“Bombs”, you keep away from me!
Today lying low
Twisting up my toes
I swim in such harmony
So what bothers me:

Chorus :
I’m fed up with loneliness
With my uncle overstressed
Fumbling, crawling for something
That never shows, just a dream.
I’m fed up with creeps crying
Over the past, such a sin
Not to be cool, but a fool
If I could mess up their rules.
I’m fed up with your complaints
Baby, well I’m not a saint!
Fed up with the rain, the plane…
That makes me throw up again.
I’m fed up with all cynics
Bathing caps and all critics
I’m fed up with being
fed up! Poor me !

Bubbles and water
Legs up for hours
My goldfish still under me!
Delight of pleasures
Aquatic treasures
A place out of misery, my fantasy

Hang On Sloopy

In the mid 60s, a group called the Strangeloves were riding high with a song called I Want Candy. They'd been touring with the Dave Clark Five and had been playing a tune called Hang On Sloopy. The Dave Clark Five liked it so much they were about to record it. But the Strangeloves had other ideas. They gave it to an outfit called Rick and the Raiders, led by 17 year-old Rick Zehringer - later known as Rick Derringer - and they put it out under the name of The McCoys. In October 1965, it hit #1.

Of course Derringer went on to play with the Johnny and Edgar Winter bands, had a decent solo career marked by the hit Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo and has been an in-demand session guitarist, perhaps most notably with Steely Dan.

The song has since been adopted as the football fighting song of Ohio State University. And it's played at home games of the Cincinnati Bengals, the Cleveland Browns, Cavaliers and Indians, not to mention the Columbus Blue Jackets.

In 1985, the Ohio General Assembly designated Hang On Sloopy as the official rock song of Ohio.

Love Potion #9

The Searchers apparently took their name from the 1956 John Wayne film of the same name, directed by John Ford. The group formed in the late 50s and went through various line-ups before they achieved hit records in the 60s.

At one point they gave the Beatles a run for their money on the English pop charts and were the second Liverpool group after the fab four to chart a hit in the States with Needles and Pins in 1964.

Love Potion No. 9 was written by Leiber and Stoller and originally recorded by the Clovers in 1959. In 1965 The Searchers' version reached #3 in the States.

Massachusetts

The Gibb Brothers were born in England and moved to Australia where they grew up. Their early success, such as it was, was achieved down under before returning to England in the mid-60s. This is the period of the Bee Gees career that I like. They may have been more popular at the forefront of the disco scene, earned more money and sold more records but Barry, Maurice and Robin could sure write and perform pop hits in the decade beginning in the mid-60s.

In 1967, the Bee Gees burst upon the scene with such hits as New York Mining Disaster 1941 and To Love Somebody both from the erroneously titled 3rd album Bee Gees 1st. But one of my favourite early Bee Gees songs appeared on their next album - Horizontal - Massachusetts. Massachusetts was the Bee Gees first #1 hit and it was the second song to be played on BBC1 when it went on the air in September 1967 in response to such pirate radio stations as Radio Caroline being formally outlawed by Britain's Parliament.

While written by the Gibb Brothers, the song was originally intended for The Seekers. However, they turned it down.

Lonely Teardrops

He influenced a considerable number of artists - Van Morrison and Michael Jackson among them - and his spirited performances earned him the nickname "Mr. Excitement". Jackie Wilson is often cited as a key artist in the transition of rhythm and blues to soul. He started out in the mid to late 50s as a member of the R&B group the Dominoes, but he's far better known for an almost 20 year solo career that ended abruptly in 1975.

In a tragic circumstance, Wilson suffered a massive heart attack while performing in a Dick Clark show, while singing his 1958 hit Lonely Teardrops. As he reached the line "...my heart is crying..." he fell head-first to the stage. The blow left him comatose for eight and-a-half years and he eventually passed away in 1984 at the age of 49.

Need Your Love So Bad

When someone says Fleetwood Mac, one's thoughts immediately go to the killer supergroup of the mid-70s with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But Mac was a very successful blues band a decade earlier in Britain formed by guitarist Peter Green and his former John Mayall Blues Band mates drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, after whom the band was named.

Mac's self-titled first album was released 1968. They'd release 9 more albums as a blues outfit before the release of their second eponymous release in 1975 after Buckingham and Nicks joined Fleetwood, McVie and McVie's wife Christine who had been the band's organist since 1970.

After dallying with LSD and following bouts of schizophrenia, in 1970 Peter Green left the group he had founded.

In an obviously lip-synced performance, here's Green and a very young looking Fleetwood and Mac performing a Ray Charles-inspired arrangement of Need Your Love So Bad...