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.

In fact it was a little bit frightening

Artist: Carl Douglas
Title: Kung Fu Fighting
Year: 1974
Chart peak: 1

It's amazing how many famous songs were actually written in a hurry as filler tracks. The history of one hit wonders is littered with them, from "Tequila" by The Champs to The Mock Turtles' "Can You Dig It?" - and here's another, and one of the most popular of all.

The intended A-side was actually a soul track called "I Want To Give You My Everything". Indian-born, London-based producer Biddu had discovered the song (written by Larry Weiss, who'd also penned "Rhinestone Cowboy" for Glen Campbell) and sought out someone to record it. Remembering a Jamaican singer he'd worked with on the soundtrack to the film "Embassy" a couple of years earlier, he put in a call to Carl Douglas. The session went well, and both men reckoned they had a hit in their hands, one that could launch Douglas as a major star. They needed something for the B-side though, and Douglas suggested a song he'd written, inspired by the kung fu films of Bruce Lee. It didn't take long for Biddu to work up a backing track with lots of "hoo!"s and "hah!"s, and the track was rattled off in ten minutes.

What neither Biddu or Douglas expected was that when they took it to A&R at Pye Records, was that it would be the b-side that got picked up as the potential hit. Biddu was unconvinced, and with good reason: the novelty sat in record store racks for weeks on end before finally starting to catch on in the clubs. But when it belatedly started selling, there was no stopping it. It climbed all the way to the top of the charts, sitting proudly at number one for three weeks before being replaced by, as it happens, another one hit wonder, John Denver with "Annie's Song". The same week that "Kung Fu Fighting" dropped from number one here, it entered the US hot hundred, where it once again proceeded to climb all the way to the top.


It was a massive hit, but it also seemed to be the kiss of death for Carl Douglas' ambitions of being accepted as a quality soul singer. Pye insisted on him recording a similarly-themed follow-up, "Dance The Fung Fu", which was a minor hit, and a "serious" song called "Run Back" nearly returned him to the top 20 (it topped out at 25) but despite going on to record several LPs, ultimately he never really had the material to break through as a serious artist. Nowadays he lives in Germany and runs a publishing company, and seems to be quite happy with his one hit wonder status. Biddu went to become a one hit wonder in his own right (with the 1975 single "Summer of '42") and also produced several hits for Brit disco diva Tina Charles, including a number one hit, "I Love To Love".

Meanwhile, the song itself has taken on a life of its own. As a highly memorable international smash, it's turned up in countless TV shows, films and computer games, and even spawned a further novelty dance hit courtesy of Bus Stop, who sampled it on their own 1998 success, also called "Kung Fu Fighting". What's more, when Channel 4 ran a poll in 2006 to find Britain's 50 favourite one hit wonders, it was "Kung Fu Fighting" that came in at number one, the nation's favourite, top of the pops. And all from a rushed-off B-side. Say what you like about Pye's A&R, but they could certainly pick a hit.

Get it: The Best of Carl Douglas

Hopeless, alone with my song

Act: Nicole
Title: A Little Peace
Year: 1982
Chart peak: 1

And how else to end a week of war songs than with a plea for peace?

Nicole Hohloch was born Saarbruken, Germany, in 1964 and first tried to qualify for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1981 with a song called "Flieg Nicht So Hoch, Mein Kleiner Freund". It didn't get selected, but it did become a big hit in Gemrany, reaching number two in the German singles chart, and also making the top ten in Switzerland. Buoyed up by this success, she entered the German selection contest again the following year, and this time was successful. Thus it was that 17-year-old Nicole got to sing "Ein bißchen Frieden" at the Eurovision Song Contest which, following Bucks Fizz's win the previous year, was being held in a highly prestigious location... Harrogate. For any non-Brits reading this, just trust me: Harrogate is not the sort of place anyone would think of holding a major international event, be it Eurovision or anything else. Still, someone obviously thought it was a good idea. Fish may have changed hands.

Anyway, the song was a runaway winner and for the encore Nicole performed it in a multilingual version that no doubt helped its chances considerably when it came to actually selling records. It went to number one in at least seven countries, including the UK where it was the 500th chart-topper recognised by the Guinness chart books, and also completed a hat-trick of consecutive Eurovision winners topping the UK singles chart (in 1980 it was Johnny Logan with "What's Another Year" and then in 1981 the mighty Bucks Fizz with "Making Your Mind Up"). It actually entered the chart at number eight as well, which was mightily impressive in 1982, especially for a previously unknown act.

I'm afraid I couldn't find a clip of her singing this in English, so here instead is the original Eurovision performance in German.



Nicole became a bit of a TV star in Germany, but she never had another hit on the same scale. She did go on to have a few further hits in Germany (the biggest, "Ich hab dich doch lieb", was a collaboration with Trio of "Da Da Da" fame). She's still grinding them out, though: more than 20 studio albums in the last quarter of a century, and that's not including the multitude of "best of", "greatest hits" and themed collections she's also released, or indeed the various live LPs. For a one hit wonder, her discography is enormous, as is her trophy cabinet - she's won no fewer than 11 Golden Tuning Forks (the German equivalent of a Brit award), the most recent in 2001.

And she married her childhood sweetheart in 1984 and is still happily married - which isn't hugely relevant, but lovely to know anyway.

The sword of time will pierce our skins

After doing yesterday's entry, it struck me that I'd inadvertently created a little run of themed songs about war: a fictional nuclear war, WW1 and Vietnam. So I thought I'd carry on the theme today, and Splodgenessabounds will just have to wait a little longer!

Act: The Mash
Title: Theme From M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless)
Year: 1980
Chart peak: 1

Richard Hooker's novel about the staff of a US field hospital during the Korean war provided the source material for one of 1970's more surprising hit movies. The black comedy M*A*S*H (with asterisks originally added purely to grab people's attention on the movie poster) not only made a star of its director Robert Altman, but also spawned a long-running TV series, a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

The series was at the height of its popularity when Radio 1 DJ Noel Edmonds started playing the original movie theme song. The version used on the TV series was an instrumental remake and as most viewers had never seen the original film, the melodramatic lyric (written by Robert Altman's son Mike, just 14 at the time) made quite an impression. The resulting public demand swiftly led to the song's (re-)release as a single. As the track was recorded by a group of session musicians, it was credited simply to The MASH.



Musically, it's quite a clever song - it's obviously in the tradition of folky protest songs (which were pretty big at the time) but it also has a bit of an easy-listening vibe (dig those finger bells!) that makes the morbid lyric all the more startling. All in all, the ideal soundtrack to a film full of black humour, which used the Korean War to make a not-so-oblique point about Vietnam (in fact, Robert Altman deliberately didn't have the setting stated in the film, so as to blur the boundaries even more).

The song, incidentally, refers to a character in the film known as "Painless Pole" (he's a really good dentist) who attempts to commit suicide, but his bid fails because the pills he obtains for the purpose are actually placebos. The character never appeared in the TV series.

The song returned to the charts in 1992 when a beefed-up but otherwise quite faithful version by Welsh angst-rockers Manic Street Preachers became their first top ten hit. It's also been covered by Marilyn Manson.

1, 2, 3, 4, I love the marine corps

Artist: Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding
Title: Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)
Year: 1987
Chart peak: 2

If you went to see Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam war movie Full Metal Jacket in 1987, on the soundtrack you would have heard a number of classic 60s cuts, among them "Chapel Of Love" by the Dixie Cups, "Wooly Bully" by Sam The Sham and the Pharoahs, and "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones. You would also have heard a number of haunting, specially-composed synth pieces by one Abigail Mead. You would not, however, have heard this track.

That's because "I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor" was neither sixties nostalgia, nor eerie atmospherics. Instead, Abigail Mead and Nigel Goulding took the chants of brutal drill sergeant Hartman (played by R Lee Ermey) and mixed them with a catchy hip-hop beat and a few licks from guitarist Phil Palmer to create a montage not entirely unlike the sort of thing The Art Of Noise had been doing for the last few years.

Released to promote the movie, "I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor" raced to number two in the UK charts but strangely did nothing in the USA. The soundtrack LP was a rather disjointed affair, opening with the full 12" version of this not-actually-in-the-movie single, followed by the sixties classics (though "Paint It Black" is a glaring omission) and then the original synth score.

But just who was this musical maverick Abigail Mead? Actually, it was none other than a pseudonymous Vivien Kubrick, daughter of Stanley. The one-off nom de guerre (so to speak) was adapted and adopted from a former Kubrick family home, Abbot's Mead. She's still involved with running her late father's estate. I have not been able to disover Nigel Goulding's whereabouts.

Both, incidentally, made appearances as extras in the movie: Goulding as a recruit in the training camp and Kubrick a.k.a. Mead as a TV camerawoman.

Eighty men tried and eighty men died

Artist: Royal Guardsmen
Tile: Snoopy Vs The Red Baron
Year: 1967
Chart peak: 8

Gimmicks are often a double-edged sword. A gimmick can certainly help to get a group noticed, but repeat it too often and it can just as easily be your band's undoing. And whether they liked it or not, the Royal Guardsmen could never quite shake off their gimmick - they were the "Snoopy" band.

To a certain extent, they were lucky to be in the right place at the right time. The six-piece from Ocala, Florida, were originally handed the lyrics to "Snoopy Vs The Red Baron" by local impressario Phil Gernhard, who (correctly) reckoned he had a hit on his bands and was looking for the band who would give it the best treatment. With a sprightly arrangement (inspired by the "English Invasion" bands that the group adored), plus singer Chris Nunley's inspired German intro and interjection of "Curses! Foiled again!", the Royal Guardsmen took the honours. The other members of the group were Tom Richards (lead guitar), Barry Winslow (rhythm guitar), Bill Balogh (guitar), Billy Taylor (organ) and John Burdette (drums).

Even at that stage, the group were aware of the dangers of being pigeonholed as a "novelty" group, and insisted on issuing a self-penned "proper song" as their debut. "Baby Let's Wait" came out in Florida, and did nothing. Hot on its heels came "Snoopy Vs The Red Baron".

Now, pop music has never been on particularly close terms with historical truth (was Ra-Ra-Rasputin really Russia's greatest love machine? I rather think not) but Snoopy Vs The Red Baron was pure fantasy. Inspired by Snoopy's "World War I Flying Ace" persona in the "Peanuts" cartoon, the song had the "funny looking dog with a big black nose" challenging the German ace Baron Von Richthofen to a "real dogfight". Which Snoopy wins. Well, obviously.

This bizarre cartoon-strip reworking of military history was a major hit - number two in the USA and number eight over here. Unfortunately, it just led to the Guardsmen being forced to record more and more "Snoopy" songs - "Return of the Red Baron", "Snoopy's Christmas", "Snoopy For President" (which was withdrawn after the assassionation of Robert Kennedy) and the weirdest of the lot, "The Smallest Astronaut", which had Snoopy helping the Apollo programme by leading a decoy mission to confuse the Russkies (but didn't mention him by name, since Charles Schultz had by then decided that all these Snoopy songs were diluting the brand). They did get to put serious songs on their albums, but as the record company got to choose the singles, and felt that The Royal Guardsmen should continue to be marketed as a novelty band, the group were never able to shake off the "Snoopy" tag. Interestingly, they were originally offered the song "Abraham, Martin and John", which potentially could have turned things around for them - but then songwriter Dick Holler changed his mind and gave it to Dion instead. (On this side of the Atlantic, the more famous version was by Marvin Gaye.) The band fell apart around the second half of 1969.

The band have reformed a couple of times since. In the late 1970s they became a disco covers band. Shortly after the group split for a second time, Tom Richards was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. He died in September 1979.

The remaining Guardsmen reformed again in 2004, and have recorded a new single called "Snoopy vs Osama" - so I think we can assume they've come to terms with being pigeonholed. Their four sixties LPs have been re-issued on CD, so you can assess for yourself whether they were better than their novelty reputation suggests. In all honesty, it's hard to see them as anything special; they were clearly a competent covers band, and there's plenty to be said for a competent covers band but probably not "wow, you oughta be huge!".

Get it: Snoopy Vs The Red Baron / Snoopy And His Friends - two albums on one CD, probably more Royal Guardsmen than you'll ever need!

This is it boys, this is war

Act: Nena
Title: 99 Red Balloons
Year: 1984
Chart peak: 1

It's surely no accident that on the international league-table of UK hitmakers, Germans come a long way down the list. There's just something about Germanic vowels that sounds wrong to Anglophone ears, and there are really only two ways of getting around it: either go for an air of detached teutonic cool (Kraftwerk, Propaganda), or shout a lot (Wagner). But what's this? Step forward, Gabrielle "Nena" Kerner, a German singer who somehow made those Germanic vowels sound rather good.

Nena-the-singer formed Nena-the-band in 1981 after her previous group, The Stripes, disbanded. Joining her were her boyfriend Rolf Brendel (drums), Joern-Uwe Fahrenkrog-Peterson (keyboards), Carlo Karges (guitar) and Jurgen Dehmel (bass). Their sprightly new-wave sound (rather like a deutsche Blondie) was an immediate success in their native Germany, their debut single "Nur geträumt" going to number one.

But "99 Red Balloons" - or rather, "99 Luftballons" - was the biggie. The first verse, a near-acapella, has Nena and her unnamed companion buying some balloons and letting them go - and then when they do, all hell breaks loose. The swarm of party acoutrements triggers a computer somewhere, the air force is scrambled, war ministers convene, the music switches back and forth between frantic keyboard riffs and a more sedate funky bass solo until the inevitable happens: the end of the world. And if the hairs on the back of your neck don't stand up when Nena sings "and here is a red balloon" in the coda, then you must be either bald or dead.

The scary thing is that the scenario wasn't even that far fetched, because in the early 80s the US military was placed on full-scale nuclear alert repeatedly for unidentifed flying things that turned out to completely innocent - weather balloons, model gliders, particularly well-fed geese, that sort of thing. How close did we actually come to an accidental nuclear war? Probably closer than we'll ever know. Don't have nightmares.



With so much power coming from the lyric, it seems bizarre that in most Anglophone nations, the song was a hit in its original German version. People were actually buying the record not understanding what it was about (though as the German version was more about UFOs attacking from outer space - hence, presumably, the Captain Kirk reference, which survived to the English translation - that's probably just as well). In the USA, it was issued with the German version on one side and the English version on the other, which seems a reasonable compromise though strangely not copied in the UK where the flipside was an unrelated song... in German! The UK album which followed had one side in English and the other in German, and included both versions of the hit, though the English one was included in a bizarre, very 1980s extended club mix.

Nena-the-band went on for another couple of years before splitting, and Nena-the-singer has released a whole load of albums in Europe, many of them for children. In 2003, she teamed up with Kim Wilde for a Euro hit "Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime" which failed to do anything in the UK. Her latest LP, a set of cover versions called "Cover Me", is to be released next month.

Sadly Carlo Karges, co-writer of "99 Luftballons", died in 2002 of liver failure, but the song will live on for a long time to come. Not only has Nena-the-singer remade it a few times, but it's been covered by countless other acts (albeit ones with even fewer hits to their credit!) and it's regularly held up as one of the definitive one hit wonders of all time - even making it into the title of Brent Mann's excellent book on US one-hitters, "99 Red Balloons... and 100 Other All Time Great One Hit Wonders". Hang on, shouldn't that be "99 Luftballons..."?

And more than two decades on, Nena-the-singer is still the epitome of German new-wave cool. And notice I didn't even mention her hairy armpi... damn.

So mysterious yet so incredibly real

Artist: Robin Beck
Title: The First Time
Year: 1988
Chart peak: 1

Poor Robin Beck. Despite a thirty-year career that includes an international number one hit single, still nobody remembers her. Even I struggled a bit...

Robin was born in 1957, grew up in Brooklyn, Noo Yawk, and started singing with local bands in her teens. Her first big break was singing in a group called Deep South which toured all over the States. After a spell in a Broadway musical, "Got To Go Disco", in 1979 she released her debut LP "Sweet Talk", from which the title track was a hit in US clubs - though it did little in terms of actually shifting vinyl. Interestingly, backing singers on the album included then-unknowns Irene Cara (latterly famed for the movie themes, "Fame" and "Flashdance") and Luther Vandross.

Beck would spend the next decade singing back-up for artists such as Melissa Manchester, Alvin Stardust, David Bowie, Chaka Khan and Cher, plus film soundtracks and advertising jingles. And so it was that in 1989 she was invited to record an advert for Coca-Cola. "The First Time" was a rather generic AOR number (sorry, but there's not a lot else to say about it), but the power of advertising was amply demonstrated when the single climbed up the charts, all the way to number one.



I can't, offhand, recall any act which has built a chart career off the back of an advertising hit - so it wasn't too surprising when, despite contributions from the likes of Diane Warren and KISS' Paul Stanley, Beck's album "Trouble Or Nothin'" flopped, along with its second single "Save Up All Your Tears". Ironically, said song would go on to be a major hit for Cher, whose career-reviving 1989 LP "Heart of Stone" had featured Beck's backing vocals on several tracks.

Although you might not be aware of it (and I certainly wasn't), Robin Beck has maintained a solo recording career ever since. In 2007, she released her seventh album, "Livin' On A Dream", which according to her, "kicks butt". She's also kept up the back-up work, with latterday clients including Richard Marx, Tina Turner, her old chum Cher and the rock group House Of Lords, whose lead singer James Christian is Beck's husband.

And in 2006, The First Time was in the charts for a second time, sampled on a dance single by Swedish outfit Sunblock. Beck sang with them on TV appearances, and the track reached number nine in the charts.

Bonus fact: The only previous Coca-Cola ad tune to top the British chart was "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" by The New Seekers, back in 1971.

Further reading...
Official Robin Beck website

Forget about the whinin' an' the cryin'

Artist: Bob Luman
Title: Let's Think About Living
Year: 1960
Chart peak: 6

As Mark Twain so sagely observed, there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. The Beatles aside, tax seems to be a rather overlooked subject for popular songs (and there's surely a gap in the market there, for any enterprising songwriters who happen to be reading this). But death, that's another matter. And despite this taboo subject pretty much automatically earning a radio ban, around the turn of the 1960s there was no shortage of "death discs" spinning on jukeboxes and climbing the charts. No wonder some folk thought it had all gone a little too far. Folk like country singer Bob Luman and songwriter Bodleaux Bryant.

Texas-born Luman had been recording country numbers with moderate success since 1955, while also moonlighting as a semi-pro baseball player. But after seeing Elvis Presley in concert, he decided his act needed updating. He adopted a rockabilly style and, in a musical climate where everyone was seeking the next Elvis, got signed to Imperial Records. His early discs didn't do as well as the label had hoped (they would have greater success with another "new Elvis", Ricky Nelson) and he was dropped, hopping briefly to Capitol Records and then to Warner Brothers where labelmates included The Everly Brothers - many of whose hits were penned by the husband-and-wife team of Bodleaux and Felice Bryant.

Bodleaux was a pretty shrewd operator, and when the "death discs" craze came along, he figured there must be a market for an answer song, one celebrating life rather than death. So he penned "Let's Think About Living", a witty response to the morbid trend which included digs at recent hits by Marty Robbins, Patti Page and even Bryant's clients, the Everlys (referring to "Cathy's Clown", one of their few hits penned not by Bodleaux but by Phil and Don themselves). According to the lyric, half the songs around in 1960 are about people dying, and the other half are about people so sad that they feel like they want to die. "If we keep on a-losin' our singers like that / I'll be the only one you can buy", jokes Luman.



Ironically, this amusing and zestful ditty fell foul of radio's self-appointed censors for the very same reason as the death discs it was satirising. By discussing the scenarios of these records, even if only to send them up, "Let's Think About Living" managed to get itself barred from radio playlists. This didn't seem to damage its chances, though, and the song still climbed into the top ten in both the UK and the USA.

Being basically a country singer, Luman never crossed over in the same way again, but enjoyed a consistent run of hits in the US country charts until his death from pneumonia in 1978. Fate dealt an ironic blow: the man best known for urging us to think about living died at the tragically early age of 41.

Every night, every day, in every possible way

Artist: R & J Stone
Title: We Do It
Year: 1976
Chart peak: 5

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. R & J Stone? It's amazing they had time to do anything else. Employing the sort of fnaar-fnaar euphemism that was so blatant, you wondered why they didn't just use a good old blunt anglo-saxon word instead (actually, most of those so-called "anglo-saxon" words came later via a mish-mash of other languages, but that's another story), husband and wife Russell (British) and Joanne (American) proclaimed their passion from the rooftops.

Gloating is not normally considered an attractive trait, but what else could you call it? "We've got a lot of real love and a deep affection / And we do it / Every night, every day, in every possible way". And what's more, you know they probably did. And we must assume that they weren't the only ones at it like rabbits in 1976, because the song clearly struck a chord with enough people that it raced up the charts to a very respectable peak of number five.

Alright, so I'm being a bit mean here - after all, what could be more sweet than two young(ish) people in love and not afraid to show it? Sweet and a bit sickly, I reckon, but then I've always been a cynic so don't mind me.



That this filth (I jest, of course... well, half-jest) made it onto the radio and into the charts in 1976 appears frankly baffling, but then you can get away with a lot if you look clean-cut enough. Having met in the James Last choir, Russ 'n' Jo had just the right "safe" credentials, and the sweet sound of "We Do It" wasn't too far removed from, say, The Carpenters. Besides, for some reason, even in 1976 you actually could get away with referring to "It", as if anyone wouldn't know what you meant. And there was clearly something in the air (raw animal passion, perhaps) in 1976 as if anything, Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight", a hit a few months later, was both more cloying and more graphic.

Sadly, R & J didn't get much opportunity to follow up their hit. The immediate follow-up was a song called "No Other Way", and they issued an LP of the same title which did nothing. Joanne died tragically young from a brain tumour in 1979, while Russell continued to sing back-up for other acts (his credits as a back-up artist include Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Adam Ant, Tony Bennett, Twisted Sister, Cliff Richard and Right Said Fred), until putting his musical career on hold in 1995 in order to become a counsellor. Nowadays he uses a musical technique called "Sounding" (a sort of random vocal improvisation) as part of his therapy, and has been working on new music as The Atman Project with film composer Craig Pruess ("Bend It Like Beckham", "Bride And Prejudice").

Further reading:
Russell Stone website
Russell writes about his life and career

Put his mask on back-to-front-o

Artist: Quantum Jump
Title: The Lone Ranger
Year: 1979
Chart peak: 5

Taumata-whaka-tangi-hanga-kuayuwo-tamate-aturi-
pukaku-piki-maunga-horonuku-pokaiawhen-uaka-tana-
tahu-mataku-atanganu-akawa-miki-tora. There, I've said it. And in 1979 everyone was having a go at this tongue-twister, thanks to Quantum Jump's lead singer Rupert Hine who launched into their hit single with an unmistakeable chant - the supposed Maori name of a hill in New Zealand and allegedly the longest place name in the world.

Comprising Hine (vocals and keyboards), Trevor Morais (ex-Peddlers, drums), John Perry (bass) and Mark Warner (lead guitar), Quantum Jump had been around for a while, releasing two well-recieved albums of arty, quirky white funk. "The Lone Ranger" had actually been their debut single, released in 1976 in support of their debut LP, simply titled "Quantum Jump", but had done nothing at the time - until it was picked up by Kenny Everett, its Maori chant being used extensively on his radio and TV shows. A quick remix later, the song became a belated hit and suddenly kids across the land were chanting that distinctive intro, even if it did come out more like "Tomato wacky tangy thingy curry oo-whoo" (though I bet there was always one kid who had learnt the whole thing!).

But while it was the chant that everyone remembers, what about the rest of the song? Here it gets a bit strange. In SF/fantasy fandom there is a term, "slash fiction", which refers to fan-produced fiction in which characters, um, "get it on" - the original manifestation being stories about (and I can hardly believe this either) Kirk and Spock from the original Star Trek. Hardly logical, captain, but there it is. And here's the thing: according to Quantum Jump, the Lone Ranger and Tonto might, just might, have been lovers. After all, "Kemo sabe never ever have a woman". Okayyyy...

It doesn't take much of a leap to suppose that this was still a bit outre in 1976, which may explain why the song didn't take off back then. Three years later, it was a post-Village People musical landscape, and after those high-camp songs about young men getting their kicks in the Navy and the YMCA, the Lone Ranger and Tonto having a fumble probably seemed rather tame in comparison. (Their implied drug use - let's face it, something in that peace pipe is getting them high - might have been a cause for concern, but it seems to have passed un-noticed by the powers that be at the BBC.)

Quantum Jump were already just about over by the time The Lone Ranger rode into the charts, and apart from a quickie cash-in album comprising remixed and overdubbed versions of old material, the band's story pretty much ended there. Hine went back to his production work (his credits include Tina Turner, Howard Jones, Suzanne Vega and the original incarnation of Underworld) and Morais became a top session drummer.

And somewhere in the West, the Lone Ranger and Tonto are still laughing.

Get it: Quantum Jump CD including both the original and remixed versions of "The Lone Ranger".

You and I, we had a dream to fly

Artist: Anne-Marie David
Title: Wonderful Dream
Year: 1973
Chart Peak: 13

There are some things that ensure that you will never be forgotten, but that you will also never live down. Playing Doctor Who, for example, or presenting Blue Peter (unless you're Romana D'Annunzio... who?). Or winning the Eurovision Song Contest. Even now there are fans of the annual cavalcade of kitsch who think of Celine Dion not as the multi-million-selling singer of that ballad about the Titanic, but as the dentally-challenged youth who once won the ESC for Switzerland (but then, I write a blog about one hit wonders, so I'm hardly in a position to mock). And those people definitely remember Anne-Marie David.

Before winning the ESC, Anne-Marie's main musical claim to fame was having playing Mary Magdalene in the French version of "Jesus Christ Superstar". Oddly enough she is not the only one hit wonder to have got a break in this show, and we will come to another (a group, in fact) in the weeks ahead. Bet you can't wait. Anyway, 1973 was the first year that competitors were permitted to sing in languages other than their own, though in the end it came down to a remarkably close three-way race between singers performing in their respective native tongues: Cliff Richard for the UK, performing "Power To All Our Friends" (3rd, 123 points), Mocedades for Spain, singing "Eres Tu" (2nd, 125 points) and Anne-Marie David for Luxembourg with "Tu Te Reconnaitras" (1st, 129 points). It was the second straight year that Luxembourg had won - in 1972 Vicky Leandros sang "Apres Toi" and won by a more convincing 14-point margin.



Anyway, along the way David had picked up maximum points from the UK jury, and it seems that the UK public agreed since it bought enough copies of the English-language version to send it into the top 20 (with the original French version on the B side). But is it any good? Well, to my ears it sounds like your typical Eurovision ballad, all platitudes and not a single note you weren't expecting. However, it would appear that in the world of Eurovision fandom, it's actually regarded quite highly - whether that's despite its predictability or because of it, I don't know.

And what became of Anne Marie David? Well, if you were living in Turkey in the mid-1970s you'd probably have been aware of her subsequent records because it would seem she actually became quite popular over there, for some reason, winning the Turkish equivalent of a Grammy and generally living it up. Other than that, it was the usual slide into obscurity, though she did return to Eurovision in 1979, this time representing her native France, singing "Je Suis L'Enfant-Soleil". She came third. Afterwards, well, she basically settled into the life of a former Eurovision Song Contest Winner, doing Eurovision galas, the odd charity concert and generally being wheeled out whenever a former Eurovision Song Contest winner was called for. There was a live album in 2004, and that's about it. But as long as there are fans of the Eurovision Song Contest, Anne-Marie David will always be remembered.

Further reading: Anne-Marie David fansite

Flying high on a rocket in the sky

Artist: Westworld
Title: Sonic Boom Boy
Year: 1987
Chart peak: 11

It's funny how the mind plays tricks. I'd always remembered this as a huge hit, and to find that it only reached number 11 came as a bit of a surprise. I think what wrong-footed me was the way that this song so perfectly captures the era. Just look at that sleeve, for starters: could that realistically have come from any decade other than the 1980s?

More importantly, "Sonic Boom Boy" sounds absolutely right as an eighties pop capsule - three minutes that say pretty much nothing lyrically, but with a catchy backing (a kind of rockabilly guitar riff over a very 80s beat) that invites you to get up and dance, or at least sit there with a big grin on your face.

And then there's the video - and what says 1980s more than a good live action / animation hybrid? It was made by Giblets (you'll recall their claymation vid for Jackie Wilson's "Reet Petite") and features the classic "people sitting around until animated whatsits do weird stuff to them" scenario. It's not as polished as, say, the vid for a-ha's "Take On Me" (oh, now there was a classic!) but it was perfect for showing on "The Chart Show" and the like. Like I said, it was the 80s. They were great.

The group comprised guitarist Bob Andrews, formerly Billy Idol's right-hand man in Generation X, drummer Nick Burton and singer Elizabeth Westwood (not Westworld... but close). They put out three albums in this guise (this came from their debut "Where The Action Is", re-titled "Rockulator" for the US market) before Andrews and Westwood relocated to Arizona and formed the more heavily-dance-oriented Moondogg, who have themselves released three albums to date, the most recent being 2007's "All The Love In The World".

Further reading...
Moondogg website

You great useless spawny-eyed parrot-faced wazzock

Artist: Tony Capstick
Title: Capstick Comes Home
Year: 1981
Chart peak: 3

Blame Ridley Scott. Back in 1974, as a jobbing young director, he made one of the most iconic British TV ads of all time, a sentimental sepia-tinted vision of a northern baker's lad in the early years of the 20th century, pushing his bike uphill on cobbled streets to deliver freshly-baked bread. Naturally, all was not what it seemed - the cobbled northern street was really in Dorset (Shaftesbury, to be exact), and the music that so effortlessly conjured up a northern childhood was actually written to suggest the culture of the Native Americans. When Antonin Dvorak wrote the second movement of his symphony "From The New World", he was thinking of Longfellow's epic poem "Song of Hiawatha", intending to some day use the theme in an opera or cantata based on the work. He never did get around to doing that, but the movement became one of Dvorak's most famous and popular works - even if in the UK most people hearing it think of cobblestones rather than prairies.

Anyway, by 1981 you would have needed to have been living in a cave for seven years (or been too middle class to bother with commercial television) not to have been exposed to the ad - and then along came Tony Capstick to send it up. A regular on the folk circuit and a frequent bit-part actor (you may remember him from such roles as brewer Harvey Nuttal in "Coronation Street" and one of the deply timid policemen in "Last of the Summer Wine") and radio presenter, Capstick gleefully ripped into the rose-tinted nostalgia of the original ad. With a hint of the classic "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch, Capstick told the tale of how he and his dad worked a 72-hour shift down t'pit then walked 48 miles home only for his mother to greet them with a less-than-substantial meal, resulting in his da' insulting his ma' and, er, throwing her on the fire. Capstick rounds off his tale with a bit of philosophising on how different things are now. "We had a lot of things then they don't have now. Rickets, diphtheria, Hitler...". One interesting thing about this record is that until recently, it provided the OED's earliest citation for the word "wazzock". (Actually, looking up the word in the online OED still yields a Capstick reference as the earliest use - from a "Melody Maker" review of the accompanying LP - though I'm pretty sure earlier references were turned up on "Balderdash and Piffle" a while back. Get the online edition updated, please!)

The disc was, incidentally, a true double A side, with both sides labelled "A" (not even "A" and "AA"!). The other side, "The Sheffield Grinder", was apparently the then-theme for BBC Radio Sheffield (presumably in an instrumental version) and was a non-comic song about people working in the Sheffield steel industry, grinding knives - which was, it would seem, a perilous occupation indeed, since you were always getting decapitated by loose grindstones and not being able to pay your debts and to cap it all you were considered old at 32, for some reason. Both sides featured brass backing by the Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band.

As for Capstick himself, a long career in local radio came to an end in January 2003 when he was sacked from Radio Sheffield after his drinking became a major problem. He died later the same year.

I am the one and only...

and this is my blog, dedicated to rediscovering the half-remembered one, two and no-hit wonders of years gone by. Hello!