+ 4 - 7 | § ¶The Gay History of Pop
Remember all the palaver about ‘gender bending’ in the 1980s? Not only were pop stars from Boy George to Tasty Tim slapping on the makeup by the bucketload but we even had some overly gay stars such as Tom Robinson and Holly Johnson and gay-themed songs ranging from Bronski Beat’s Small-town Boy to just about everything ever recorded by The Petshop Boys. Anyone would think the ‘80s discovered gayness.Ah no, not at all. There were quite a few overtly gay songs in the ‘70s, a few as far back as the ‘60s. Heck, if you count Al Jolson’s recording of “I’m Just Wild About Harry”, you could go right back to the roaring ‘20s...
Anyway, without getting too obscure about this, I decided to take a quick ramble through the YouTube archives to try to find some of the seminal songs which, often years before ‘gay’ was OK, laid down the groundwork for the somewhat more gay-friendly pop charts of the 1980s. To get this series started, here are two recommendations from the 1970s...
If you only know the Rubettes from their high-pitched, up-tempo teenybop numbers such as Sugar Baby Love and Juke Box Jive, treat yourself to an altogether different side of the group with their truly wonderful, country-style ballad, Under One Roof - a startlingly gay-themed song from 1976. Besides which, the singer’s rather tasty...
Watch Under One Roof
One of my very favourite ‘70s groups was Fox. Even to this day, lead-singer Noosha Fox’s vocals send tingles racing up and down my spine. Fox had hits with Only You Can, Imagine Me, Imagine You and S-S-S-Single Bed. But maybe the best of all was Noosha Fox’s ‘solo’ minor hit (only 31 in the charts) - 1977’s gloriously gay Georgina Bailey.
Watch Georgina Bailey
Ah, what great songs! I’ll be back with more recommendations shortly...
+ 9 - 3 | § ¶Bucks Fizz Skirt-Ripping Revelations
Remember Mike Nolan ripping off Jay and Cheryl's skirts in the Bucks Fizz Eurovision song, Making Your Mind Up? In a new interview for the BBC, Mike reveals a little know problem he has with this routine..."It's hard because if you pull with both arms at the same time you kind of grunt involuntarily. So you can't sing."
Read it all over on The Beeb...
+ 10 - 4 | § ¶Sweet Day Break on YouTube
YouTube continues to yield up all kinds of unexpected treasures. One recently discovered treat is a truly fabulous 1986 version of The Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz featuring the very wonderful Paul Mario Day on vocals.
Now, as far as I can recall, The Sweet - indeed all the great ‘70s glam bands - were deeply unfashionable by the mid ‘80s, which may explain why I’d never even heard of Paul Mario Day until I chanced upon this splendid video while browsing around on YouTube.
In this video, he looks like a strange blend of Adam Ant and Frank N. Furter - but never mind that - just listen to the voice! The thing that I really love about this performance is that it isn’t just a rehash of the ‘70s version of the song. Paul Mario Day neither looks nor sounds anything like the Sweet’s original vocalist, Brian Connolly. This is no mere ‘tribute’ - it’s a total reinvention of the song. And I love it.
Mind you, the original version isn’t too scabby either. For the sake of comparison, watch it HERE.
I have to say that, for the last thirty years or so (ah, how time flies!) I have been unfairly prejudiced against The Sweet. I associates them with all those daft songs from the early ‘70s such as Alexander Graham Bell, Wig Wam Bam and the teenybop song with the strangest lyrics ever, Little Willy.
Back in the days when I used to write for the ‘80s pop magazine, Number One, a chap who worked in the office was forever going on about how great Sweet were. What struck me as odd was that this chap was a Heavy Metal devotee; what struck me as odder was that he would have me believe that Sweet were Heavy Metal Gods. “What, the group that sang Little Willy?” I would gasp in astonishment. “Yup,” he’d say, “The very same. Only they got heavier after that...”
Thanks to YouTube I can now verify that he was not telling me fibs. For example, try out the vid of Sweet performing Turn It Down. I must admit that until I found them again on YouTube, I never realised they were such a good band.
Sadly, Brian Connolly is no longer alive, nor is the drummer, Mick Tucker. Andy Scott is the only original Sweet member still performing and Andy Scott’s Sweet tours regularly. It is Andy Scott’s Sweet which features Paul Mario Day in the ‘80s YouTube video I mentioned earlier (back in the ‘80s Brian Connolly was touring with a different version of Sweet).
Paul Mario Day, I discover, was the original singer with Iron Maiden and later went on to sing with other mental bands. He now lives in Australia and has a band called Gringos.
Funny thing is, looking at that vid of Paul singing with Andy Scott’s Sweet, I keep asking myself why wasn’t that band with that singer a bigger success? The answer, of course, is fashion, my dear...
