Bradley's Buzz

What's That Sound?

The folks over at Collectibles Records are always up on the ball releasing these double album reissues of some fairly obscure little singers. Obscure singers I happen to love - in the past they've done the first two Josie Cotton albums and a double Rachel Sweet one with her 1981 album And Then He Kissed Me matched up with her followup Blame It On Love album, so imagine my complete surprise when I found out two new ones, I've just been itching to get have come out -

Nick Gilder is one of those obscure singers no one knows about except for me and the people who actually know who sang the song "Hot Child In The City." But I've always loved him, and not for just the one song. He's written some brilliant little pop songs and most of the best are found on his 1978 and 1979 Chrysalis albums City Nights and Frequency. I have a copy of City Nights which was released as an import from Canada a few years ago. The album is slightly more rock but contains "Hot Child..." plus his awesome single "Here Comes The Night" - not to mention a few more ditties of sex and angst. But Frequency has never been released on CD and I've been meaning to pick up a vinyl copy to make a Bubbatunes when those Collectibles dudes came to my rescue. Frequency is much more new wave than the previous album so I automatically love it more, of course his subject matter which is mostly sex and girls and the like is still there but it has that hasty late 70's bring on the 80's kind of feel to it and I love it, love it. The best tracks include "Time After Time" which Toni Basil ended up covering in 1982, with lines like "You're the great pretender/ a hero of your gender.." and when speaking of the girl's endless changes in personality he mentions she's a 'fake Monroe' I love it.



The second collection goes to the other extreme as Juice Newton, the country pop crooner who had Kenny of Knots Landing saying about Ciji, "She's going to be bigger than Juice Newton..." Juice had been making countrified pop for a few years when her 1981 album Juice yeilded the hit "Angel Of The Morning" followed by the mega-hit "Queen Of Hearts." For a few years, I've been thinking of buying an import copy of the CD which had put both Juice and her 1982 follow up Quiet Lies on one disc but it was like over $20, but luckily Collectibles did it for only $12! I had the vinyl copy of Juice when I was a kid and listened to it over and over again. I loved every single song even her Elton cover "Country Comfort". The album had both country and pop blended into it and her voice is super powerful and I love every little accent she throws in. So I was very excited to finally have it on CD.

Labels: City Nights, Collectibles, Juice, Juice Newton, Nick Gilder, Oldies.com, Quiet Lies

posted by swivek @ 2:11 PM 0 comments

Top 100 Singles Of The 70's - 10-6

THE TOP 10!
10-6
We have done it, we have gone through 90 songs from that decade of decadence the 70's; and here we are in the top 10 - the ten best reasons to love music from the 70's - according to me.


#10 – I Don’t Like Mondays – Boomtown Rats
(Bob Geldof)
Columbia single #11117 US / Ensign #30 UK
Chart Debut: US Pop 02/02/1980 #73 / UK 07/21/1979 #1
With “I Don’t Like Mondays” we end up with a story song that doesn’t really tell a story per se but is based upon a true story - a tragic true story if ever there was one. Long before Columbine which found disgruntled students shooting and killing their fellow classmates, On January 29th, 1979, the first day of school after Christmas break, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire on kids arriving at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego from her house across the street, killing two men and wounding eight students and a police officer. Principal Burton Wragg was attempting to rescue children in the line of fire when he was shot and killed, and custodian Mike Suchar was slain attempting to aid Wragg. The girl used a rifle her father had given her as a Christmas gift. As to what impelled her into this form of murderous madness, she told a reporter, ''I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day.'' The "Mondays" comment was not the only eyebrow-raising declaration to issue from Spencer that day. According to a report written by the police negotiators who spoke with her during the six-hour standoff, she made such comments to them as ''There was no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun''; ''It was just like shooting ducks in a pond''; and ''[the children ] looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings.'' The stand off eventually ended after 6 ½ hours with Brenda surrendering and she is still in prison, but the story doesn’t end there. Instead Bob Geldof wrote this keyboard laced cry about the girl, “The silicone chip inside her head gets switched to overload/ and no one’s gonna go to school today/ she’s gonna make them stay at home/ and Daddy doesn’t understand it/ he always said she was good as gold/ and he can see no reason/ casue there is no reason/ what reason do you need to know..” before a choir type vocal comes in for the chorus, “Tell me why!” and Bob’s answer, “I Don’t Like Mondays” “Tell Me Why!” “I Don’t Like Mondays/I wanna shoot/ oooh / the whole day down.” Intense subject matter for a song, and no doubt what the song is talking about, in fact it was banned in the US long before 2 Live Crew ever got that major distincition. By the early days of 1980 however, the song was being played on some radio stations and eventually cracked our top 100 but in the UK it was released in the summer of ’79, less than 6 months after the actual shooting and Brenda Spencer didn’t even go to trial until early October. The really strange thing about it all is the song is very catchy and sing songy. I love singing it and for some reason the subject matter doesn’t terrify me as I belt out the song. But isn’t art supposed to have a grain of truth and some actual substance and meaning behind it? For that “I Don’t Like Mondays” should be an automatic Best of in just about any music list.

#9 – Ballroom Blitz – Sweet
(Mike Chapman/Nicky Chinn)
Capitol single #4055 US / RCA single #2403 UK
Chart Debut: US Pop 06/14/1975 #5 / UK 09/22/1973 #2
I love me some high energy and Sweet certainly delivers that on “Ballroom Blitz”. Sure it’s a tad cheesy, it’s also a tad over the top but it is also a heaping help of fun. I love singing this song because of the different voices you get to use. The song begins with a crazed shout out to band mates before going slightly calm in the lyrics and then taking off again for the bridge before the awesome, “yeah/yeah/yeah” leads us to the rapid fire chorus, “And the man in the back said ‘everyone attack’/ and it turned into a ballroom blitz/ and the girl corner said ‘boy I wanna warn ya/ it’ll turn into a ballroom blitz” and then there’s the awesome drum breakdown in the middle that always gets me. I’ve been meaning to do a cover of this song for years and perhaps someday I’ll get to it, but for now I just bring the energy levels of Karaoke night up a few notches.

#8 – Hot Child In The City – Nick Gilder
(Nick Gilder/James McCulloch)
Chrysalis single #2226
Chart Debut: US Pop 06/10/1978 #1
“Hot Child In The City” was one of my favorite songs when I was a kid, though I always thought it was a woman singing. Of course all I could ever remember was the chorus so for all I knew it could’ve been a woman. As it turns out, Nick Gilder is not a girl but a slightly high voiced male who performed awesome new wave rock songs usually about sex. Nick was originally the singer of the band Sweeney Todd until he went off on his own. “Hot Child In The City” comes from his second album, 1978’s City Nights. The whole song is a huge homage to some seductive teenage runaway ruling the streets of the city. I love the imagery as I wanted to be that slutty teen running along the streets of Los Angeles. “Danger in the shape of something wild/ stranger dressed in black/ she’s a hungry child..” replace she with he and I tell you this was me! In recent years I’ve been able to get most of Nick’s great Chrysalis Records releases all of which contain some form of city slick teens running wild and sharing their sex, and I love every single one of them. Another killer track of his titled “Rated X” would end up on Pat Benatar’s debut album In The Heat Of The Night, another record full of stylistic seductiveness and Nick would also go on to write for others including “The Warrior” by Scandal, but “Hot Child In The City” is his most famous song and his one and only single to make it into the top 40 which if you ever heard “Here Comes The Night” proves to be a real shame.


#7 – Dreaming – Blondie
(Deborah Harry/ Chris Stein)
Chrysalis single #2379 US / #2350 UK
Chart Debut: US Pop 09/29/1979 #27 / UK 09/29/1979 #2
Blondie drummer Clem Burke has claimed “Dreaming” was just one long giant drum roll and in some aspects he may be right. The song starts with his drumming before the guitars and keyboards come in and the fact that the whole 3 minute song is one smashing drum hit after another makes it pack a whole hella punch. Of course it’s Blondie so every little musical aspect borders on genius, from that punching drum, to Jimmy’s too cool for the real world keyboards, Nigel’s bass and Chris and Frank etching out the guitar work, and of course not only do we get Debbie’s icy cool vocals but we also get her ambiguous lyrical workout. I love songs that talk of reflective dreaming, the type that walk you through how your dreams can come true, or even how daydreaming the day away can make your whole life seem a lot better. Debbie does a fantastic job with “Dreaming” by taking a lyric that could easily have played in a ballad and putting it into a jaugernat of a rock song. “When I met you in the restaurant/you could tell I was no debuante/ you asked me what’s my pleasure/ a movie or a measure/ I’ll have a cup of tea/ and tell you of my dreaming/ dreaming is free…” Oh Debbie, how your sometimes incoherent ramblings can turn the world on its ear, I’m not sure what a measure is, and Debbie probably doesn’t know anymore either but it makes for a very interesting line, and when we go to our next verse we get even more brilliant yet random thoughts, “I don’t want to live on charity/ pleasure’s real or is it fantasy/ reel to reel is living rarity/ people stop and stare at me/ we just walk on by/ we just keep on dreaming…” I love that line. Then Clem goes into hyper drive and the song shifts gears a bit, “Beep/beep/ walking a two mile/ meet/ meet/ meet me at the turstile/ never met him/ I’ll never forget him/ dream/ dream/ even for a little while/ dream/ dream/ filling up an idle hour/ fade away/ oooh / radiaaaaaaattee..” Which I always thought was such a cool line because well fade away, radiate is just an awesome line but it’s also a song from Blondie’s previous album so it’s kind of like a shout out to themselves. The song goes back to its original beat for our final and favorite verse, “I sit by and watch the traffic go/ I sit by and watch the river flow/ Imagine something of your very own/ something you can have and hold/ I’d build a road in gold/ just to have some dreaming…” and after Debbie informs us a few more times that Dreaming is free, we fade out with Jimmy’s keyboards coming up and taking over. A clever and classic little single of daydreaming, ethereal images, awesome musicianship and cooler than cool lyrics,“Dreaming” would hit #2 in the UK but only scored in the top 30 here, I guess we were too busy dreaming to pay attention to the brilliance.


#6 – You’re So Vain – Carly Simon
(Carly Simon)
Elektra single #45824 US / #12077 UK
Chart Debut: US Pop 12/02/1972 #1 / UK 12/16/1972 #3
In the past few months I have discovered that Carly Simon kicks ass. Perhaps not in the leather clad Joan Jett style but in a very real way nonetheless. After hearing a ton of her early albums and the chances she takes in both lyrics and music styles, she has now made me a life long fan, and it only took about 23 years to catch up. One song that didn’t need any reintroduction to the Carly canon is our #6 single “You’re So Vain.” The single is a song that is so famous it has its own urban legend. Of course perhaps it’s the urban legend that has made the single last so long in our concioussness. For all purposes, “You’re So Vain” is a piss off to someone from Carly and when it came out who exactly that someone was had everyone’s mind buzzin. Was it Carly’s boyfriend soon to be husband James Taylor that she was singing about? Was it Mick Jagger who sings a very audible appearance on the back up? Was it Warren Beatty who had dated our girl for a while? The question has never been answered and Carly liked it that way, stating in a not too long ago interview that if she told who it was about then the whole mystique of the song may be taken away. Finally, after over 30 years of prodding she did a fairly interesting thing by auctioning off to a high bidder who the song was really about. The deal was she would whisper in the winner’s ear who she wrote about and then perform the song for them. Of course they had to sign wavers as to not repeat the information. So some guy won and she did perform him and now there are at least two people who know who the real scheister is. As for us momo’s who can’t win auctions or have the ability to whip Carly into a corner at an exclusive party, we are left just imagining who she is singing about. But thanks to the power of the lyrics we could put just about anyone in the song, the theme that the person is a bastard in the night who is so vain he may actually think we’re singing about him can be fairly universal.
Perhaps it’s the appeal of the attitude behind the song that makes it so great. I know that it surely doesn’t hurt that Carly has a pretty cool reserve about her in her vocal performance and her lyrics are always three notches higher than the normal intellect, I mean just look at her rhymes, “You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht/ your hat strategically dipped below one eye/ your scarf it was apricot/ you had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte/ and all the girls were dreaming that you’d be their partner…” Who writes like that? I tell you who, Carly Simon. A woman who would seem above reproach to the lowlies who didn’t grow up in Manhattan or vacation in the Hamptons, but with her willingness to let us into her very personal feelings, she never seemed the hardened upper crust New Englander, instead she came off very folky, very mature, and very sexy. Add to the mix with that filtering bravado of a guitar at the beginning, her refrain about her dreams being clouds in her coffee and Mick Jagger’s incredible backing vocal and you have a song that will last long after Carly’s unable to even remember who she wrote the song about.

And so you have the first batch of our top 10 singles of the 70's - I hope I'm not terribly disappointing all of you with my somewhat prejudiced and eclectic tastes but these really are the songs I listen to over and over and deserve to be in the top 10 according to Bradley - oh and because I'm such a trivia buff here's a little trivia about our latest list - 3 of the 5 songs are produced by Mike Chapman, I know strange huh? And completely coincidental - Mike produced some of the best music ever from the 70's on up and on this list he produced and co-wrote Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz", and produced the Nick Gilder single "Hot Child In The City" and pretty much reinvented Blondie with his produced albums including Parallel Lines which has a few singles on our countdown and today's "Dreaming" which is from the Chapman produced Eat To The Beat album - okay, until next time when we have that long awaited post which will give you not only the top 5 singles of the 70's but the very best - the #1 single of the 70's - According to Bradley.

Labels: 70s, Blondie, Boomtown Rats, Bradley, Carly Simon, Nick Gilder, Retro songs, Sweet

posted by swivek @ 8:54 AM 1 comments

# 55-51

and here we are at the last 5 in the first 50 (??) of our TOP 100 SINGLES OF THE 1980s, so let's jump right in with numbers 55-51!

55. VACATION – Go-Gos
(Valentine/Caffey/Weidlin)
IRS single #9907
Chart Debut: June 18, 1982 US
Chart Position: #8 US

For some reason, the Go Gos just never did it for the UK clan, this song; arguably one of their best never even cracked the top 100 in England. But for me, it cracked a lot – I love the Go Gos, and always did from that very first song I heard in the summer of 1981. Speaking of 1981, when I was a kid we were one of the first families to have cable and you can just imagine how I spent my time – watching old reruns of 70s sitcoms on the Superstation and staying up all night watching MTV. Back then, MTV was a music video channel that played videos by everyone – not just the scattered video here and there by the current pop idols. They also had one of the coolest things and one that sparked intrigue in all of the MTV youth – the “World Premiere Video”. They would count down and talk about it all week long until they had the big premiere of the new video. As was the case with the Go-Gos “Vacation” video in the summer of 1982. Completely full of summer feeling, I still remember seeing that video premiere and every time I hear this great, and I mean great little pop song, I reflect on how cool I thought the world was in 1982. Watch the video here!

54. BREAK MY STRIDE – Matthew Wilder
(Matthew Wilder/Gregory Prestopino)
Private I/ Epic single #38-04113
Chart Debut: November 26, 1983 (US)/ January 21, 1984 (UK)
Chart Position: #5 US / #4 UK

The upbeat pop fun just doesn’t stop it does it? Here we have another little gem that I almost completely forgot about until I was going through my 80s songs to make up this list. I almost peed my pants in excitement when I realized I had this song! “Break My Stride” and Matthew Wilder’s follow up “The Kid’s American” were two songs I played over and over as a kid. How I loved them, and now that I found this gem again, I won’t ever let it go. Let’s all take a little rowboat to China cause nothing is gonna break my stride; nobody’s going to hold me down. On a side note, Matthew Wilder ended up on the other side of the recording system by producing a slew of huge albums including No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom. Watch a peformance from Solid Gold.

53. RUMORS – Timex Social Club
(Alex Hill/ Michael Marshall/ Marcus Thompson)
Jay/Cool Tempo single #1001
Chart Debut: July 12, 1986 (US)/ September 13, 1986 (UK)
Chart Position: #8 US / #13 UK

Are you all as surprised as I am about how high on the charts this song got? For some reason, I thought I was the only one who even knew it existed. I don’t know who or what the Timex Social Club was but they released this kick ass little song (fairly risqué for its time I would think) in 1986 just as I was going through the dramas, problems and rumors of the high school mill. “Did you hear that one about Tina? Some say she’s much too loose/ that comes straight from a guy who swears he’s tasted her juice…” or “Did you hear that one about Bradley, some say he must be gay, I try to argue but they said if he was straight he wouldn’t move that way…”

Okay, the song mentions Michael as being gay not Bradley, but you know what I am getting at. Every time I hear this song I think about the time I was walking home from school with my pal Keith Kennedy and some kid I had never met before. Soon the kid was going on and on about Bradley Jacobson and all the scandalous but fun things he had been up to.

I stopped Keith before saying anything and instead just asked the kid if he even knew who Brad Jacobson was. The kid, obviously fairly smart and honest admitted that he had no idea, so I introduced myself. Incidentally, all the things he was saying were true but that wasn’t the point now was it? Listen here.

52. MIDDLE OF THE ROAD – The Pretenders
(Chrissie Hynde)
Sire single #29444 (US)/ #ARE21 (UK)
Chart Debut: January 27, 1984 (US)
Chart Position: #19 US

I love me my pissy Chrissie Hynde and wish I could’ve included every single awesome Pretenders single that was released through the 80s. But as time would have it, and the list was so large already I had to settle for one, so I went with the biggie. This is not only one of my fav Pretenders songs ever, this is one great kick ass single. Taken from their biggest selling album Learning To Crawl, “Middle Of The Road” finds Chrissie more pissed off than usual as she sings about the injustices of the world. With its thumping beat, the boys backing “oh, oh, oh”s, Chrissie’s countdown at the bass break (1,2,3,4) and the mere mention of a cul-de-sac puts my little blonde head into a spin. See a live performance here.

51. THE WARRIOR – Scandal featuring Patty Smyth
(Holly Knight/Nick Gilder)
Columbia single #38-04424 (US) / CBS single #4367 (UK)
Chart Debut: July 21, 1984
Chart Position: #7 US

The other Patty Patty that ruled my world in the 80s, Patty Smyth and Zack Smith had led their band Scandal into fairly popular territory with their 1982 self titled EP, but it was this rock ditty co-written by my beloved Holly Knight, that secured the band their one and only top 40 hit. Set to the perfect 80s rock guitar riff and Patty’s salty slightly scratchy vocals we were all shooting out the walls of heartache in the summer of 1984. Admit it, who didn’t make the gun with your fingers whenever the lines “Bang, bang” came on? I still do and have almost caused numerous accidents while driving and listening to Scandal.

Incidentally, the guy who co-wrote this ditty with my Holly is none other than the Nick Gilder who scored huge in 1978 with his single “Hot Child In The City” and Mike Chapman, who produced a lot of my favorite female led bands including Blondie and our favorite Patty – Miss Benatar, produces the whole Warrior album including the next two singles “Beat Of A Heart” and “Hands Tied” which both strangely peaked at #41 on the top 100. Mike, like Holly Knight shows up a few more times on our list, so keep on the lookout. Watch the video!

We'll be shooting out the walls of the next 50 in our top 100 after I take a much needed rest...

Labels: Go Gos, Matthew Wilder, Mike Chapman, Nick Gilder, Scandal featuring Patty Smyth, The Pretenders, Timex Social Club, Top 100 Singles Of the 1980s

posted by swivek @ 4:00 PM 0 comments