for those who never gave up their turntables
THIS IS THE SEVENTH in a series of ten articles listing and addressing the #1 records of the year as they appeared on Cash Box magazine’s Top 100 chart from 1960 through 1969. It was originally published as “You Keep Me Hanging On The Poor Side Of Town” on my publication Tell It Like It Was on Medium on July 5, 2019. [Continue reading]
THERE ARE LOADS OF STUFF on the Internet about the Moody Blues, the super-successful, much beloved group fabgear pop-rock that critics just can’t seem to stop hating! Yet there is almost nothing on the origins of the group’s first music video for their Go Now single of 1964. A piece [Continue reading]
WAY BACK ON JULY 31, 2014, Bill Tobelman of Good Humor Smile fame (if not fortune) posted a link to a promotional video that the Troggs had made for their single Love Is All Around in 1966 on his Facebook page. He noted that this was “Another cool promo film from these guys.” [Continue reading]
WAY BACK IN 1979, nerdish singer Trevor Horn and his band Buggles released single titled Video Killed The Radio Star. (It had been recorded earlier by Bruce Woolley and Camera Club.) The song’s theme was promotion of technology while worrying about its effects. This song relates to concerns about mixed attitudes towards 20th century inventions and machines for the media arts. [Continue reading]
PROCOL HARUM MADE A VIDEO of their worldwide hit A Whiter Shade Of Pale in 1967. It was shot in some spectacular ruins in Witley Court in Worcestershire, England, once one of the great houses of the Midlands, but by then a spectacular ruin devastated by fire thirty years earlier. [Continue reading]
SCOPITONE IS A TYPE OF JUKEBOX featuring a musical and visual performance on 16-millimeter film. The first Scopitone films were made in France by Cameca, among them was Serge Gainsbourg’s Le Poinçonneur Des Lilas filmed in 1958. Scopitones spread to West Germany, and went on to appear in bars in England, where the Tornados’ Telstar was a favorite, vying with such local huts as Pussycat A Go-Go! [Continue reading]