Tuesday Tunes 290: Some More Numbers

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Having brought back the theme of songs with numbers in their title last week I thought I’d add in a few more from the long list I compiled for this. These are a pretty mixed bunch, but I hope you’ll enjoy one, some or all of them.

I’m starting with a band who were massive here in the UK for a couple of years. This is their second UK #1:

 

Frankie Goes To Hollywood released Two Tribes as single in June 1984, and it followed their debut record from the previous year, Relax, to the top of the UK Singles chart. It also went to #1 in several other European countries and in New Zealand, but only made #43 in the US. The track then featured on their first (of two) albums, Welcome To The Pleasuredome, which came out in October 1984 and also went to #1 in the UK, making #33 in the US. They took the country by storm, only making two albums and seven singles in just about three years, and then they were gone. Their UK sales were fantastic, though: Two Tribes went Platinum for 1.6m copies sold, following on from the 2.1m achieved by Relax. The album – which was a double – went Triple Platinum in the UK for 1.1m, and Gold in the US for 500,000. You couldn’t switch on a radio without hearing them!

Their record company, ZTT, aggressively marketed the single in terms of its topical political angle, promoting it with images of the group wearing American military combat dress, as well as Soviet-style army uniforms set against an American urban backdrop. In case you were wondering, the video depicted a wrestling match between then-US President Ronald Reagan and Konstantin Chernenko, then Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in front of group members and an assembly of representatives from the world’s nations. The match eventually degenerates into global destruction. Certain violent moments (“Reagan” is seen, for example, biting “Chernenko’s” ear) were edited from the version shown on MTV. Needless to say, this is an anti-war protest song, still relevant today, though the sides may be shaping up slightly differently!

Last week I played a Beatles song, and remarked that it probably wasn’t the most obvious of theirs that I could have chosen. That would be this one:

The Beatles with, of course, When I’m Sixty-Four. The song was released on 26 May 1967 on the Sgt Pepper album, and has become a firm favourite of theirs. Need I tell you about the album? It has sold 32m worldwide, including 11m in the US (11x Platinum) and 5.3m in the UK (18x Platinum), and is widely regarded as a landmark in pop music history. I can still remember rushing home from school two weeks prior on the day that one of the pirate stations – Radio London – devoted a whole show to the record, as they had been given the first chance to play it. If memory serves me correctly, it was a Friday, the DJ was Kenny Everett, a fellow Liverpudlian, and if you didn’t hear it you had nothing to talk about at school on the Monday!

Paul McCartney wrote the melody to When I’m Sixty-Four when he was about 14, probably in April or May 1956. In 1974, he recalled, “I wrote a lot of stuff thinking I was going to end up in the cabaret, not realising that rock and roll was going to happen. When I was fourteen there wasn’t much of a clue that it was.” But it did, and rock music’s gain was cabaret’s loss! If you’re wondering, this clip is taken from the animated Yellow Submarine movie, in which this was one of the featured songs.

One of the things I like about music is that it can be fun. This next one fits that bill perfectly:

Lou Bega with, as he tells us at the beginning, Mambo No.5. This is the first time I’ve ever played anything by him and may well be the last, so make the most of it! I’ve always liked this one, though. David Lubega Balemezi, to give him his full name, was born in Germany to a Ugandan father and a Sicilian mother. He released this in April 1999, a remake of a 1949 instrumental piece by Pérez Prado, and it reached no. 1 in many European countries, including the UK, and #3 in the US. It was nominated for a Grammy Award, but didn’t win. Bega added words to the song and sampled the original version extensively: his regular style consists of combining musical elements of the 1940s and 1950s with modern beats and grooves, so this was made for him! Sales figures are phenomenal for a debut record: 3.1m in the US, 850,000 in the UK  first time round and 1.8m for a 2010 re-release, and 1.5m in France, where it spent twenty weeks at #1. The track was included on his first album, A Little Bit Of Mambo, which came out in July 1999 and also did well, #3 in both Germany and the US, a few #1s across Europe, but only #50 in the UK. Perhaps it doesn’t come as a surprise that he couldn’t really follow that success: he has several subsequent recordings to his name, most of which have performed far less well in the charts. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

Going right back to the Sixties for this one, a long time favourite band of mine:

The Lovin’ Spoonful, with Six O’Clock. As I have said before when I have played them, I loved the band but they never did remotely as well here as they did in the US, which always surprised me. This track is a case in point: released as a single in April 1967 in N America and May in the UK, it peaked at #18 in the US and #12 in Canada, but didn’t make the UK charts. Many of their songs were released here on EPs, which I think reduced their chart chances. I had a couple of compilation albums, which were released on a budget label (roughly the price of two singles) and played them to bits. This was on one of them, and they were great value for a fan like me!

I’m closing today with a true classic. This is a Bob Marley song, but I’m playing the version by the excellent Playing For Change organisation:

That was One Love, which was originally released by Bob Marley and The Wailers in 1965 on their debut album, The Wailing Wailers. It was re-recorded as part of the 1970 medley All in One, which contained reggae reworkings of their early ska songs. The famous version of One Love that appears on their June 1977 album Exodus was recorded under the title of One Love/People Get Ready: this version credits Curtis Mayfield to avoid copyright problems, and it gives co-authorship credits to both Marley and Mayfield as it contains an interpolation of the Impressions’ song People Get Ready, written by Mayfield.

The song wasn’t released as a single until 16 April 1984, to promote the forthcoming greatest hits album Legend. However, the single became one of Bob’s biggest hits (UK #5) and has been included on many subsequent compilation albums. Legend is, simply, legendary: it is the best-selling reggae album of all time, with 25m worldwide, 18m of those in the US and 4.5m in the UK, and it is currently in the album charts of both countries, with non-consecutive runs of 924 weeks in the US and 1,224 weeks in the UK. This week it is at #80 in the UK, with a current run of 146 weeks as part of that phenomenal total.

Music is universal, and I don’t think we have ever needed the message of this song more than we do now, which makes this a fitting song to close with this week, and Playing For Change give it their usual superb treatment.

That’s this week’s set of five all done and dusted, and I hope you enjoyed them. As I said, they were a bit of a mixture, but that’s all part of the fun for me and, I hope, for you. I’ll see you again in a few days, and until then stay safe and warm 😊

45 thoughts on “Tuesday Tunes 290: Some More Numbers”

  3. No real standout to me today, Clive. The Lovin’ Spoonful was one of the first bands I discovered when I began listening to music. I vaguely remember the Frankie Goes to Hollywood tune, an underrated band. When I turned 64, my brother made a video of me from different periods of my life.

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    • I hope you enjoyed them, though! I have been a Spoonful fan since I first heard them, and don’t understand why they were never that big here. FGTH were phenomenal, for a brief period.

      A nice 64th birthday gift!

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  5. As you note, the issues highlighted in Two Tribes have reared their ugly heads again. I liked the song; whatever happened to the band?

    I’ve always liked the whimsical sound of When I’m 64. 64 used to seem like such a long way off, now I’m a few years past it…

    I though I had never heard Mambo No. 5, and as I was listening, that thought was confirmed until I got to the lyrics “a little bit of…”. I agree, a fun song.

    Not familiar with Six O’clock – that was way before my time 🙂

    Nice version of One Love. Amazing how popular the album still is…

    I like the eclectic collection of songs this week!

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  6. Frankie was always going to rankle a few in the USA, as a country musically(?) at least they don’t seem to embrace change that quickly. On the other side it seems odd the UK didn’t take to the Spoonful that much, they always struck me as superior songs wrapped up in catchy melodies.

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    • Having two gay men fronting the band would have held FGTH back in the US – I bet they didn’t sell many records in southern states! And a video in which their president bit the ear of the Soviet leader probably didn’t help!

      I’ve never understood why the Spoonful never took off here either. I put it down to poor marketing – the insistence on putting most of their music out on EPs was, simply, stupid. But I loved them anyway!

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  12. Excellent tunes to wake up to. I haven’t heard these songs in ages, with the exception of “When I’m 64” and that’s only because it’s the ringtone I set for a friend who lives at #64 on my street! Frankie Goes to Hollywood got a bad rap here in the US; I think their music is actually quite good. Happy Tuesday, Clive! 🎶

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