Not featuring Reginald Dwight

Artist: Mr. Bloe
Title: Groovin' With Mr. Bloe
Year: 1970
Chart peak: 2

It's amazing what a bit of detective work can uncover. There can't be many hit records with links to Tony Orlando, Elton John, Madness and 80s game show Treasure Hunt. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this is probably the only one. And yet its remarkable web of musical connections remains almost unknown.

First off, the bare facts: in 1970, a mysterious group called Mr. Bloe had a quirky instrumental hit with a song called "Groovin' With Mr. Bloe. Its origins were obscure, as were the identities of the group members. For years, most listeners (and most music historians) assumed that the titular Mr. Bloe was the chap playing the harmonica on the disc. Which would certainly make sense - but is wrong. Not least because the song wasn't named after the act, but rather the other way round.

And so we come to the Tony Orlando connection (no relation to the Andrea True Connection, whom I will cover in due course). Back in 1969, Orlando released a single titled "Make Believe", which made the US Top 30 but did nothing in Britain; his backing group in those pre-Dawn days was called Wind, and they also provided the single with an instrumental B-side. As you've no doubt already guessed, the instrumental in question was the original version of "Groovin' With Mr. Bloe". Wind released an LP - also called "Make Believe" - that year, but "Groovin' With Mr. Bloe" was such a throwaway that it didn't even appear on the album.



Elton John comes next. Music publisher Stephen James heard the original "Groovin' With Mr. Bloe", and smelling a potential UK hit, he attempted to acquire the British rights to the track. When his bid failed, he decided to have the track covered by a session group instead. On his return to the UK, he put together a group featuring Caleb Quaye (guitar), Dee Murray (bass), Roger Pope (drums), Ian Duck (harmonica) and Elton John, still a session musician, on piano. But James wasn't happy with the result and had it re-recorded with Zack Laurence replacing Elton, and Harry Pitch on harmonica. Pitch, incidentally, is another session legend. Remember Frank Ifield's "I Remember You"? Never mind the yodelling, the harmonica player was old Harry, who also provided backing for the likes of Cliff Richard, Des O'Connor and... well, anyone who needed a harmonica player, really. And I'm pleased to say that he's still going strong today.

Mr. Bloe's version wasn't the only one available in the UK. Co-writer Bernie Cochrane made his own version under the alias Humbug, and the Wind original was reissued too, now credited to Cool Heat. But it was the anonymous session musicians in Mr. Bloe who had the hit, possibly because the group name gave the erroneous impression that theirs was the original. The instrumental rose to number two in the charts, held off the top by Mungo Jerry's "In The Summertime". News of the hit came as quite a surprise to co-writer Kenny Laguna who claims that when he was told "Groovin' With Mr. Bloe" was a hit in Europe, he'd forgotten all about writing the track.

Subsequent singles failed to recapture the excitement of the hit. The immediate follow-up was "Curried Soul", but perhaps more interesting was the third single, "71-75 New Oxford", which was written by Elton John, and reputedly features his piano-playing too. (Though sources vary: nobody seems able to able on whether it was John or Laurence on the track.)

If you don't know what happened to Elton John then you surely shouldn't be reading a pop music blog. But what became of Zack Laurence? Well, he remained a top session musician and also had a successful sideline in writing library music for film and TV... including the theme to helicopter-based gameshow "Treasure Hunt". And the Madness connection? The B-side to their international megahit "Our House" was an instrumental titled in reference to "Groovin'...", "Walking With Mister Wheeze".

So there you go. One throwaway instrumental, barely remembered nowadays, but a whole set of connections. Aren't one hit wonders great?

Listen, I'm getting impatient

Yes folks, the blog returns. And I think that quite a long time ago, I promised a post on ace pop-punksters Splodgenessabounds, so here it is.

Artist: Splodgenessabounds
Title: Simon Templar / Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please
Year: 1980
Chart peak: 7

You can often tell a lot about a band by the stage names they choose to give themselves, and none more so than comedy punks Splodgenessabounds, who achieved their brief moment of fame with a line-up of Max Splodge (vocals), Baby Greensleeves (more vocals), Pat Thetic (guitar), Donkey Gut (keyboards), Robert Rodent (another guitar), Desert Island Joe (drums) and Wiffy Archer (paper & comb). Yes, they had a paper & comb player - the DIY punk ethic was very much alive here. Splodge and Thetic had previously performed as a duo called The Faber Brothers, briefly getting a residency at Butlin's holiday camp in Bognor Regis. Very briefly.

Anyway, the group started playing live in March 1979, and came third in a Melody Maker talent content, netting them £200 and an amplifier. Partly as a result of this, they were picked up by Decca Records for a £1000 advance.

You can't really say a lot about "Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please" as a song, because there's not a lot to it. Inspired by a real-life incident of struggling to get served in a pub (The Crown in Chislehurst, should you wish to recreate the magic for yourself), Splodge chants the title a lot, informs us that he even has the exact money ready (should he ever get served) and eventually has to give up when "time" is called. The song was relegated to being the second track on the B-side of "Simon Templar", a punky re-working of the the TV theme to "Return Of The Saint" (the first track on the B-side was a ditty called "Michael Booth's Talking Bum", of which the less said, the better). But in the way of such things, the other tracks on the single got passed over and it was the chant-along filler track that got all the airplay.



Splodge, it should be mentioned, was not entirely happy with the financial arrangements - he claims that he was paid just £240 for the publishing rights. And for some reason, when the BBC started a series called "Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps", named after the song, they didn't even use it as the theme music, preferring to commission a completely new song from another composer! Now that's a raw deal.

Anyway, on the "Whatever happened to...?" front, the follow-up was a raucous version of "Two Little Boys" and there was also an album, "Splodgenessabounds", which bombed spectacularly. An almost completely different line-up issued a second album under the truncated name "Splodge" in 1982 and there's still a version of Splodgenessabounds playing intermittently, but it's anyone's guess who's actually in the band now, or indeed five minutes from now. Whoever it is, at least with 24-hour licensing, they should be able to get a drink afterwards. If they're prepared to wait.

Gonna go to the place that's the best

Artist: Doctor and the Medics
Title: Spirit In The Sky
Year: 1986
Chart peak: 1

You can't say that one hit wonders aren't a mixed bunch. At one end of the scale, you have the Serious Artists who try doggedly for years to break through, and are disppointed when it only happens once. And then at the other, you have those acts are only in it for laugh anyway, whose success takes even them completely by surprise and who don't really care if they never have another hit - acts like Doctor and the Medics, in fact. Truly, they are the anti-Eric Carmen.

The Medics were initially formed in London (supposedly to win a £5 bet) by psychedelic club promoter and DJ Clive Jackson (vocals), Steve McGuire (guitar) and Gareth Thomas (bass) and released their debut single, "The Druids Are Here", in 1982. A clue to their not-entirely-serious outlook can be found in the title of the B side, "The Goats Are Trying To Kill Me". At the same time, Jackson was running a club called Alice In Wonderland, playing psychedelic rock.

Having failed to be assassinated by the caprine mafia, the band re-emerged in 1985, with Richard Searle replacing original bassist Thomas, issuing a brace of well-received indie singles, "Happy But Twisted" and "Miracle Of The Age". Taking their cue from glam rock and psychedelia, the group had a distinctive visual style (helped not only by a lorry-load of make-up but also by Jackson's towering 6'5" frame) and a manic air which in 1986 came together with the perfect song to propel them into the wider public consciousness.

That song was "Spirit In The Sky", a bonkers pseudo-Christian number originally written by maverick Jewish songsmith Norman Greenbaum, and a number one hit for him back in 1970. The idea for the Medics' cover came to Clive Jackson in a dream - John Lennon took him to see Marc Bolan playing in a pub, and what should the late T-Rex frontman be playing but... you've guessed it. Thus, The Medics' version gave the song a T-Rex-like arrangement with Tony Visconti-style strings. The result: "Spirit In The Sky" became the first song to be a number one hit for two different one hit wonders.



The group issued two albums in the 1980s, 1986's "Laughing At The Pieces", which included the hit, and 1988's "I Keep Thinking It's Tuesday". Their 70s retro trip extended to covering Abba's "Waterloo" as a single, recorded with glam rock legend Roy Wood.

For a bunch of psychedelia fanatics, Doctor and the Medics remained remarkably well-grounded. To their credit, the group never took success too seriously, just enjoying fame while it lasted. They went their separate ways in 1989 - Jackson to a snail farm in the Brecon Beacons (which went out of business when all the snails caught the gastropod equivalent of influenza and died!), McGuire became a dance music producer and latterly started a company hiring out vehicles to bands needing tour buses and lorries to carry all their gear around in, while Searle formed the no-hit-wonder band Corduroy.

A new version of the group (with only Jackson remaining from the original line-up) emerged in 1996, releasing an album called "Instant Heaven" on their own Madman Records label, and soon afterwards Doctor and the Medics became a touring band again. Recent years have seen them pop up on various retro TV programmes, even competing in the musical reality show "Hit Me Baby One More Time".

I've been with better-looking guys

Artist: Fern Kinney
Title: Together We Are Beautiful
Year: 1979
Chart peak: 1

In pop music, there is a thin line between being uplifting and being just plain cheesy. One disc which treads very close to this line but just about manages to avoid toppling over it, is the one and only UK top 20 hit by Fern Kinney.

Hailing from Jackson, Mississippi, Kinney's first big break was joining local girl group The Poppies. The trio had a minor US hit in 1966, reaching number 56 with the lush "Lullaby of Love". Subsequent singles failed to build on this success, though their final release "There's A Pain In My Heart" became a favourite on the northern soul scene.

After the group split, Kinney first attempted a solo career, but her 1968 debut "Your Love's Not Reliable" bombed, so instead she became a session singer, her clients including former bandmate (and fellow one hit wonder) Dorothy Moore, and King Floyd, for whom she sang backing vocals on the 1970 US number 6 hit "Groove Me".

After taking time out to start a family, Kinney returned to recording in 1978, remaking "Groove Me" in a disco style. It was a big hit in the clubs, and for a follow-up she turned to "Together We Are Beautiful", a song first recorded in 1977 by its writer Ken Leray.



There's something about "Together We Are Beautiful" that just makes it sound like happiness distilled. Kinney's high-pitched vocals soar above a bouncy disco backing as she, basically, goes on about how happy she is because she's found a man and she loves him and he loves her and it's beautiful, oh so beautiful... and while I'd usually be the first to tut and say that it won't last, in this case it seems a bit pointless because it's all about the moment - not just a moment in love, but a perfect pop moment to boot.

The trouble with perfect moments is that they're very hard to recreate, and nothing else Fern Kinney recorded ever had quite the same magic. A flop album later, she returned to singing back-up and never stepped into the limelight again.

One little kiss isn't anything

Artist: The Mock Turtles
Title: Can You Dig It?
Year: 1991
Chart peak: 18

There's long been something a little bit special in the air in Manchester. It's usually been something illegal, mind, but whatever it was at any given time, it's made the city one of the great centres of popular music in Britain, and indeed the world. And especially so during the golden years c.1989-92, when Manchester became Madchester, everybody was freaky dancing and getting a little bit baggy.

How the Mock Turtles fit into this is a moot point, because despite hailing from Manchester their musical bag wasn't so much the good-time style espoused by the likes of Happy Mondays, but a more thoughtful sort of approach. Perhaps they should have been Liverpudlians instead. But they weren't.

Frontman Martin Coogan comes from a talented family - his brothers are comedian Steve and TV presenter Brendan. Coogan's first taste of musical success came in 1985 when when his earlier band, Judge Happiness, won a Salford University talent contest, and got to cut a single called "Hey Judge". Judge Happiness evolved into the Mock Turtles, with Coogan joined by Andrew Stewardson (bass), Martin Glyn Murray (guitar), Joanne Gent (keyboards) and Steve Cowen (drums).

The group cut several singles and an album for Imaginary Records, also contributing to the label's tribute albums to the Kinks ("Big Sky"), the Byrds ("Why"), elvet Underground ("Pale Blue Eyes"), Captain Beefheart ("Big Eyed Beans From Venus") and Syd Barrett ("No Good Trying"). By 1990, they were getting a good deal of attention from the music press, and their single "Lay Me Down" saw them taking on some of the mannerisms of the Madchester scene (shuffle, shuffle), to great effect. On the flipside was a song called "Can You Dig It?". Written in half an hour (while Coogan was supposed to be hosting a dinner party!), it was purpose-made filler, but even in its rough form, it sounded like hit material. Both sides featured on the group's debut LP, "Turtle Soup".

At this point, fate intervened, in the shape of a Siren Records executive with a chequebook. The Manchester scene, they had belatedly noticed, was quite hot at the time, and the Mock Turtles seemed like a good bet. The Mock Turtles signed up and for their major-label debut made a much slicker reworking of "Can You Dig It?". Bingo!

Unfortunately, as the Madchester scene faded, so did Siren's interest in the band. An album of catchy melodic guitar pop, "Two Sides", emerged in 1991, but was hardly promoted and died a death. The group went their separate ways, got proper jobs... you know, all that boring malarkey. A partial reformation occured in 1995 when Coogan, Stewardson and Gent formed Ugli. In 1999, Martin Glyn Murray joined and Ugli turned back into The Mock Turtles.

And then in 2002, fate intervened in the shape of an advertising executive with a chequebook. "Can You Dig It?" was used in a TV advertising campaign for Vodaphone and enjoyed a new lease of life, returning to the top 20 and leading to the release of a "best of" CD containing not1not2not3not4not5not6not7but 8 (that's eight) new songs. That's almost a whole new album's worth. They've been silent ever since but there's been no official split, so who knows? There could be more Mock Turtle activity still to come. Can you dig it? Oh yeah.