D-Sides, Orphans, and Oddities
Episodes
Thursday Jun 04, 2020
Thursday Jun 04, 2020
Brotherhood of Man - Where Are You Going To, My Love (1970)
Brotherhood of Man - Love One Another (1970)
Brotherhood of Man - This Boy (1970) Not a cover of The Beatles. This is more of a war song. More of a war song than "This Boy" by The Beatles. But only slightly.
Hillside Singers - Old-Fashioned Love Song (1971)
Paul Williams - Old-Fashioned Love Song (1971)
Brotherhood of Man - Reach Out Your Hand (1972) Of all the fake wannabe Four Tops impersonations....this was pretty horrible.
From Wikipedia:
In early 1976, Hiller [the leader of the group] was keen for Brotherhood of Man to make an impact in the UK and decided to put "Save Your Kisses for Me" forward to the A Song for Europe competition. This year saw a change to the contest in that, since 1964, one specific artist had performed all the songs, but 1976 saw the return to the format in which any artist was eligible to enter. "Save Your Kisses for Me" made it to the final twelve songs and on 25 February, Brotherhood of Man took the title, beating the second placed act, Co-Co by two points. Now signed to Pye Records, "Save Your Kisses for Me" was released as a single in March and hit the No.1 spot two weeks before the Contest final. On 3 April, the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest was staged in the Netherlands and Brotherhood of Man performed the song, dressed in red, white and black with simple choreography devised by Guy Lutman. "Save Your Kisses for Me" took the title with an overwhelming victory. As manager Hiller stated;
"..."Kiss Me Kiss Your Baby" was a hit all over Europe in '75. I firmly believe it opened the door for us a year later and helped us do well because they knew us – every weekend we'd travel to do TV spots in France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland".
The song became a major hit around the world and made No.1 in many countries and returned the group to the US Charts. The song eventually sold six million copies worldwide and is still the highest selling Eurovision winner ever. In the UK, it stayed at No.1 for six weeks and earned them a platinum disc. It ended up the top selling single of the year and is still one of the few UK singles to sell a million.
[This is the same Eurovision contest where my Les Humphries Singers, Germany's entry, finished 15th with "Sing Sang Song", effectively ending the group. Quitters.]
Hillside Singers - We're Together (1971) If you're of a certain age, you recall this melody being indelibly stamped on your psyche.
Arthur Brown and Kingdom Come - Sunrise (1971)
Arthur Brown and Vincent Crane - Storm (1980)
Arthur Brown - Helen With The Sun (1975)
The Alan Parsons Project - The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980)
The Meditation Singers - A Change Is Gonna Come (1971)
Zoot Money - Just a Passing Phase (1968)
Average White Band - Work To Do (1974)
Be Bop Deluxe - New Precision (1978)
The Beach Boys - Rolling Up To Heaven (1975)
Dino, Desi, Billy, and Stu Phillips - Prologue: Thru Spray-Colored Glasses (1969) Co-written by David Gates, who would go on to be in Bread, with all those feel-good hits. He also wrote "Icicles" for The Murmaids. I love that song.
Gary Paxton - Fat, Fat Christians (1978)
Gary Lewis and the Playboys - Doin' The Flake (1965) A promotion for Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
Gary Lewis and the Playboys - New In Town (1967)
Annette Peacock - I'm The One (1972)