FIRST HOUR
Love On A Mountain Top (Robert Knight)
(1973-74) ... his biggest hit as a singer in his own right, reaching the Top 10, having already enjoyed huge success as the writer of the much covered, ever popular Everlasting Love, a UK # 1 for Love Affair
Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen)
(1979).... unlikely as it may have seemed, a rockabilly song which Freddie Mercury in homage to Elvis Presley became one of the band's biggest hits
Move Over Darling (Doris Day)
... from the first of today's featured years ~ title song of the film in which she starred with James Garner. Very nearly 20 years later, Tracey Ullman matched the original's chart success, reaching the same peak of # 8
Traffic and travel
Driving In My Car (Madness)
(1982) ... The Nutty Boys' 13th in a run of 20 consecutive UK Top 20 hits was a stand-alone single which, nearly three decades later, was added as an extra track on the album The Rise And Fall. The 12-inch release of the single included Riding on My Bike, a pedal powered re-working of the A side, sung by Lee Thompson. The video for Driving In My Car featured the band as car mechanics larking about in their workshop, and in their normal suits driving around in their 'Maddiemobile' – a white 1959 model Morris Minor. Fun Boy Three make a brief appearance, trying (and failing) to hitch a ride to their home town of Coventry which the A45 - mentioned in the song - passes through [W]
Traffic Jam (Sailor)
(1973) ... very hummable, much-played turntable hit which failed to gain a foothold on the chart.Sailor finally made their UK breakthrough a couple of years later with Glass of Champagne
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How Bizarre (OMC)
(1996) ... only UK hit for the New Zealand band known by the initials OMC, short for 'Otara Millionaires' Club', a tongue-in-cheek choice of name, referring to Otara's status as one of Auckland's poorest suburbs [W]
Newsround pre-Tameside: 58 years ago ~ 1964
Walk On By (Dionne Warwick)
... in America it was her Top 10 follow-up to Anyone Who Had A Heart.and fared just as well here. Over the years Walk On By has been covered by The Stranglers, Average White Band, Sybil, Gabrielle and a few more besides
Baby Can I Take You Home (The Animals)
... first time on the chart for the North East-based rock / rhythm and blues band ~ just one release away from one of THE classic singles of the '60s, still much played, the # 1 House of The Rising Sun
Viva Las Vegas (Elvis Presley with The Jordanaires)
... from the film of the same name, widely considered to be one of Elvis's best big screen appearances. ZZ Top successfully revitalised the song in the early '90s
Stay Awhile (Dusty Springfield)
... follow-up to Dusty's mega-successful debut single I Only Want To Be With You in late '63, and also the title song of her first album
A World Without Love (Peter & Gordon)
... one of those Lennon and McCartney songs written for other artists, above and beyond the Fab Four's extensive repertoire. Peter Asher - brother of Paul's then-girlfriend Jane - and Gordon Waller were handed a surefire winner with A World Without Love, which quickly took them to the top of the chart
Mockingbird Hill (The Migil Five)
... the 'Five' started out in North London as the backing group of club singer Lennie Peters, who, nearly a decade later, went on to win TV's Opportunity Knocks and top the charts as the male half of Peters & Lee who reached # 1 in 1973 with Welcome Home
Anyone Who Had A Heart (Cilla Black)
... songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David gave Cilla her first of two No.1s just a few months apart . Anyone Who Had A Heart had recently been a US Top 10-er for Dionne Warwick who was about to make her UK debut with a different Bacharach and David song, played earlier
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SECOND HOUR
Substitute (Clout)
(1978)... power ballad by a all-girl group from South Africa, 'giving it some welly' – which might explain their choice of name?!
Big Sur (The Thrills)
(2003) ... band from Ireland who sounded a bit like The Beach Boys, name-checking The Monkees in a song named after a coastal region of California
Where Is The Love (Mica Paris & Will Downing)
... teaser track for our second featured year ~ a song that had previously been a hit for a different duo in a different decade ~ Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway (1972, # 29)
Absolutely Lyricless ~ the instrumental break
China Tea (Russ Conway)
(1959) .... popular piano player who enjoyed a long and successful career on TV and stage after clocking up a short but hugely successful run of hits including two consecutive #1s with Side Saddle and Roulette, also in '59
Swan Lager (Rick Wakeman)
(1979) ... tongue firmly in cheek, electro-reggae (did i just make that up?!) re-working of the most famous bit of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. It's from the album Rhapsodies, which also includes that very lively version of George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, well known to regular listeners over the past 'however many' years as my show theme
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You're Moving Out Today (Carole Bayer Sager)
(1977) having been a prolific songwriter * this was Carole's only chart success as a singer, co-written with Bette Midler and Bruce Roberts * One of her best known songs, A Groovy Kind of Love has been massively successful in different decades for The Mindbenders and Phil Collins
Rock Around The Clock (Bill Haley and His Comets)
(1954) ... the song which changed the course of popular music history at the dawning of the rock n'roll era. It was a UK No.1 in 1955 and subsequently returned to the chart several times over the next two decades as a re-entry or re-issue
Newsround Tameside: 33 years ago ~ 1989
I Beg Your Pardon (Kon Kan)
... Canadian synth-pop duo with a cleverly constructed single which takes a cutting from a Rose Garden - the country-pop crossover hit for Lynn Anderson way back in 1971 - and, tongue firmly in cheek. plants it in a completely different kind of song. Award yourself several bonus points if you also recognised Kon Kan's 'borrowed' title from the lyrics of Rose Garden
On And On (Aswad)
... continuing a run of Top 40 hits which had started in '88 with the chart-topping Don't Turn Around. The original version of On and On by Stephen Bishop, the guy who wrote it, had been a US hit in '77.
You've Got To Choose (The Darling Buds)
.... band from Newport, South Wales named after the novel by H.E. Bates, The Darling Buds of May ~ which was a phrase taken from one of Shakespeare's sonnets. These 'buds' had peaked at # 27 with Hit The Ground, at the start of 1989 and a few months on, had high hopes for this single which inexplicably just missed out on a Top 40 place
Your Mama Don't Dance (Poison)
... hard rocking revival of a '70s song by Kenny Loggins ~ the guy who went on to sing the theme song for top '80s film Footloose - and Jim Messina
The Beat(en) Generation (The The)
... one of the strangest group names ever to grace the Top 20. The The had an ever-changing line-up, with several well known names making one-off or occasional guest appearances
Help! (Bananarama / Lananeeneenoonoo)
... Comic Relief charity single released ahead of the second Red Nose Day. Lananeeneenoonoo?! You'll know them better as...French & Saunders. Like the other Bananarama hits in the late '80s era, Help! was a Stock Aitken Waterman production
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SHOW THEME:
Rhapsody In Blue (Rick Wakeman)
written by George Gershwin, arranged by Tony Visconti
from the album Rhapsodies (A&M Records, 1979)
[W]: Source: Wikipedia
Please bear in mind: it's a live show and so, occasionally I might need to change the running order, leave a song out, or play an unplanned extra song which will not be shown in this weekly music blog.
If you missed any of the show, you can catch up online after 15:00 on Sunday 24/04/2022:
