Old Enough to Forget

By rights The Dave Clark Five should be mentioned in the same sentence as The Beatles and Rolling Stones when it comes to the best bands to ever come out of England. There was a time Dave Clark had managed to do what his contemporaries had failed to do. Control their publishing. From the earliest days of the Dave Clark Five, Dave Clark was the band's manager, producer and publisher. Every song, whether he was part of the song's creation or not, he was listed as co-writer and publisher. While The Dave Clark Five was in name a band, it was Dave Clark and four salaried employees. However, as time marched on, and make no mistake it marches along whether you keep in step or not ... The Dave Clark Five slowly faded from the public eye. When the burgeoning market for CDs was starting to take hold, and bands were re-issuing their back catalogues Dave Clark was being a hold out waiting to cash in on the CD boom ... meanwhile The Beatles who held out for a while started releasing their m...

I really can't say I've ever listened to Marianne Faithfull. The first thing that really jumped out at me, aside from the nearly horrific condition of the record, was her voice. Particularly her vibrato. I know this was something of a hallmark in the early '60s among some folk singers but dang it, it just makes me think of running my finger up and down my Adam's apple while trying to sing. Of course the Germans have a word for this. They seem to have a word for everything to describe any situation. So off to the internet I went. Originally I was looking for a word my mum used to use that sounded a bit like "hecka" that she said described the sound a chicken made just before you chopped off its head. As you'd expect that search came up with a lot, A LOT of unusable trivia. However, eventually I settled on Die Schwebung , which roughly translates to a "floating" or "hovering" vibrato. In German acoustic terms, a Schwebung happens when two...

Kids today have no idea that once upon a time, not that long ago, cable television was a luxury, and it wasn't until the mid-'70s that most of us had a colour TV. The channels that came in with the rabbit ears were the ones we watched. There was Gunsmoke , The Beachcombers , and on Saturday* it was The Tommy Hunter Show that I watched with my parents. Despite not being a country fan, I sure did like the guitar players. Wilf Carter seemed to be a staple, but chances are I only saw him a handful of times. I also remember a big deal being made out of fiddle player Al Cherney whenever he was on ... but I don't think he has a Christmas album. Wilf Carter was one of the first Canadian country stars in the classic cowboy tradition. Apparently, in the States, he was known as Montana Slim. Something I was this many years old when I found out. I was out to lunch the other day with my mum and mentioned I'd found Wilf Carter's Christmas album, and she told me how he was her da...

As a kid I loved the song "Downtown" and I knew it was by Petula Clark (pronounced pe-CHOO-la) and that's as far as it went. I probably saw her on TV and that's where I was exposed to the song. I'm pretty sure that I didn't hear it on the radio back in '65. It's always interesting to read up on an artist who'd been well established in other parts of the world, when they're introduced into the North American market. Downtown is described as her debut hit album, although she'd been around since the mid '50s amassing an impressive list of hits in Europe. According to the short essay on the back cover she'd sold an astounding 20,000,000 records before debuting over here with "Downtown" back in '65. The album was produced by Tony Hatch, who conducted and wrote many of the songs on the album. Musically this is that strange mid '60s pop that was more an extension of the '50s. The vocals are drenched in cavernous reve...

It's Epiphany, and the last of the gifts have been given. We are at the end of the Christmas season. So what do you do when there's nothing really left to say about the holidays? You play an instrumental album - and who better exemplifies instrumental rock than The Ventures, the best-selling instrumental band of all time. When I found this, my inner kid was overjoyed. I loved "Walk Don't Run" and, of course, their version of the Hawaii Five-O theme. I had never heard a full album by the band, and didn't really know much about them other than they were early guitar heroes. The Ventures Christmas Album was released in 1965 and it hit the charts, landing on the charts again in 1966, 1967, and 1968. A pretty cool feat. The Ventures, for a period of time, had their guitars made for them by Mosrite, and these are the guitars featured on the cover of the album. Signature models, before signature models were really a thing - not counting the Les Paul, of course. It wo...