#1067: Come Outside by Mike Sarne
Peak Month: July 1962
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Come Outside”
Lyrics: “Come Outside”
Michael Scheuer was born in London, UK, in 1940. He learned to become an actor and adopted a stage name. In 1961 Mike Sarne starred in a minor role in the film Invasion Quartet, a parody of The Guns of Navarone. The parody was about two wounded officers, one British and one French who are deemed unfit and surplus to requirements. They leave their hospital and together with an explosives expert suffering from mental illness, and a Colonel thought too old to serve in the Army, make their way to France to destroy a long range German artillery piece.
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#1070: Life Begins at the Hop by XTC
Peak Month: April 1980
8 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #12
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Life Begins At The Hop”
Lyrics: “Life Begins At The Hop”
In Swindon, UK, Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers invited Andy Partridge to be their guitar player and join Moulding on vocals. It was 1972 and the bands initial name was the Helium Kidz. The UK pop music magazine, New Musical Express, wrote an article about them. Swindon, in Wiltshire, England, was known for several other notable musicians including Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, Gilbert O’Sullivan (“Alone Again Naturally”), late 90s UK pop singles chart topper Billie Piper (“Because We Want To”, “Girlfriend”), and Josh Kumra who provided vocals on the #1 UK single, “Don’t Go” with Wretch 32 in 2011.
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#1076: Town Called Malice by The Jam
Peak Month: July 1982
10 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #16
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Town Called Malice”
Lyrics: “Town Called Malice”
John William “Paul” Weller Jr. was born on 25 May 1958 in Woking, Surrey, England. His love of music began with The Beatles, then The Who and Small Faces. By the time Weller was eleven and moving up to Sheerwater County Secondary school, music was the biggest part of his life, and he had started playing the guitar. Weller’s musical vocation was confirmed after seeing Status Quo in concert in 1972. He formed the first incarnation of The Jam in the same year, playing bass guitar with his best friends Steve Brookes (lead guitar) and Dave Waller (rhythm guitar). Paul Weller’s father, acting as their manager, began booking the band into local working men’s clubs. Joined by Rick Buckler on drums, and with Woking-born Bruce Foxton soon replacing Dave Waller on rhythm guitar, the four-piece band began to forge a local reputation, playing a mixture of Beatles covers and a number of compositions written by Weller and Brookes. Brookes left the band in 1976, and Weller and Foxton decided they would swap guitar roles, with Weller now the guitarist.
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#1087: Abergavenny by Shannon
Peak Month: August 1969
7 weeks on Vancouver’s CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #47
YouTube.com: “Abergavenny”
Lyrics: “Abergavenny”
Reginald Leonard Smith was born in Blackheath, London, UK, in 1939. At the age of 15 he left school and became a messenger boy in the city of London for a firm of brokers in Rood Lane, Eastcheap. Reginald formed a group with some of his local friends called Reg Smith and the Hound Dogs. This led to a series of local gigs in the South of England. At the age of 18 he took the pseudonym, Reg Patterson prior to performing at London’s Condor Club in 1957. While on stage he was noticed by impresario Larry Parnes. The recording acts that Parnes was manager for were all given stage names like Billy Fury, Duffy Power and Dickie Pride. He gave Reginal Leonard Smith a new name in 1957: Marty Wilde. The “Marty” came from the Oscar winning Best Picture of 1955, Marty, starring Earnest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. “Wilde,” like Fury and Power, was a surname intended to convey that the singer was edgy and charismatic.
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#1467: I Wanna Be A Flintstone by The Screaming Blue Messiahs
Peak Month: February 1988
7 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #19
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”
Lyrics: “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”
In 1980 Bill Carter and Chris Thompson were in a London, UK, band called The Small Brothers, with Tony Moon on vocals. They changed their name to the Motor Boys Motor and released a single in the UK called “Drive Friendly.” A line-up change followed with Tony Moon leaving the band and being replaced with Kenny Harris. By 1983 they billed themselves as The Screaming Blue Messiahs. Bill Carter played guitar and was the lead vocalist. Thompson was the backing singer and bass player, while Kenny Harris played drums. The group emerged in the wake of the pub rock and punk scenes that had been very predominant in London’s live music circuit from the late ’70’s into the early ’80’s. Pub rock was deliberately nasty, dirty and post-glam. Dress style of Pub Rockers was based around denim and plaid shirts, tatty jeans and droopy hair. The Screaming Blue Messiahs were a classic power trio. They performed in small venues and recorded three studio albums between 1983 and 1990. They toured extensively throughout Europe, North America and Australia and Asia. They were given stellar reviews by music critics throughout their years on tour and for their recordings. Critics especially liked the Screaming Blue Messiahs aggressive blend of rhythm and blues, punk and rockabilly. Bill Carter recalled later that the band’s name was arrived at when Ted Caroll, who played with Big Beat, gave the thumbs down to the band’s initial decision to bill themselves as The Blue Messiahs. Caroll felt the name sounded too pub rock.
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#1117: Suddenly You Love Me by The Tremeloes
Peak Month: April 1968
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #8
1 week Hitbound
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #44
YouTube.com: “Suddenly You Love Me”
Lyrics: “Suddenly You Love Me”
In 1956 at Park Modern Secondary School in Barking, Essex, two school mates, Brian Poole and Alan Blakley, started a band. On family holidays together, they’d tell their parents about their dreams of being on TV. They learned a couple of tunes by Buddy Holly and Everly Brothers, got two acoustic Hofner guitars, and asked their saxophone and bass playing school mate, Alan Howard to join them. Once they started performing at local parties, they met drummer Dave Munden, who soon joined them. Soon Alan Blakley, Dave Munden and Brian Poole found that they could harmonise any song they wanted to and developed a style of their own, with all of them singing and playing and Alan Howard on bass guitar. At this time they did not have a name but soon opted for Tremilos after the sound on the new amplifiers which they could not yet afford. In time, the lead guitarist from Joe & The Teems, Ricky West, was added to the band in 1960. They began touring and got a BBC spot on Saturday Club. Dave Munden, Brian Poole and Alan Blakley were also being hired on as a backing vocalists for session work by Decca Records on numerous hit records for Tommy Steele, Delbert McClinton, US Bonds, Clyde McPhatter, Jet Harris & Tony Meehan and the Vernon Girls and others.
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#1426: The Ice Cream Man by The Tornados
Peak Month: August 1963
8 weeks on CFUN chart
Peak Position #14
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com link: “The Ice Cream Man”
In 1937 Clemente Anselmo Arturo “Clem” Cattini was born in North London. At first he worked at his father’s Italian restaurant. He then joined Johnny Kidd & the Pirates playing on their hit “Shakin’ All Over”. Then he became producer Joe Meek’s in-house drummer, backing artists such as John Leyton and Don Charles, before helping found the Tornados in 1961, and playing on their international No. 1 hit “Telstar”. Over recording history in the United Kingdom, Cattini has been the drummer on hundreds of recordings by artists as diverse as Cliff Richard, The Kinks, The Yardbirds and Lou Reed. Cattini has been a session drummer on 44 different singles that reached #1 in the UK. Other members of The Tornados original line-up were Heinz Burt on bass guitar, George Bellamy on rhythm guitar, Alan Caddy on lead guitar and Roger La Vern on keyboards. They were the band that toured with UK teen idol Billy Fury.
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#1128: We Love You by Rolling Stones
Peak Month: September 1967
6 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #50
YouTube.com: “We Love You”
Lyrics: “We Love You”
Michael Philip Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent, England, in 1943, some 18 miles east of London. Though his father and grandfather were both teachers by profession, and he was encouraged to be a teacher, the boy had different aspirations. “I always sang as a child. I was one of those kids who just liked to sing. Some kids sing in choirs; others like to show off in front of the mirror. I was in the church choir and I also loved listening to singers on the radio–the BBC or Radio Luxembourg –or watching them on TV and in the movies.” In 1950 Mick Jagger met Keith Richards while attending primary school. They became good friends until the summer of 1954 when the Jagger family moved to the village of Wilmington, a mile south of Dartford. The pair bumped into each other at a train station in 1961 and resumed their friendship.
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#1131: Reflections of Charles Brown by Rupert’s People
Peak Month: November 1967
7 weeks on CKLG chart
Peak Position #7
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube.com: “Reflections Of Charles Brown”
Lyrics: “Reflections Of Charles Brown”
Rupert’s People sprang into confusing existence in 1967 although the seed was actually sown in 1964 when Rod Lynton (bass, acoustic and electric guitar) teamed up with Steve Brendall (drummer) to form The Extraverts. The reputation of Brit Sixties never-were’s, Rupert’s People, rests on two things: the stunning 1967 single “Reflections Of Charles Brown”, a “Whiter Shade of Pale” sound-alike, and it’s B-side, “Hold On,” a scorching slice of guitar-driven frenzy. Rupert’s People only released three singles in 1967-68. Prior to becoming Rupert’s People they were billed as The Sweet Feeling and issued one single under that name in 1966. So that’s eight tracks in total. Rupert’s People are now considered in Britain to be real Sixties stuff, “mods-gone-freaky, with touches of the Small Faces and Hendrix.”
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#1145: This Little Bird by Marianne Faithfull
Peak Month: July 1965
6 weeks on Vancouver’s CFUN chart
Peak Position #5
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #32
YouTube.com: “This Little Bird”
Lyrics: “This Little Bird”
Marianne Faithfull’s story has been well documented, not least in her insightful 1994 autobiography Faithfull. She was born in December, 1946, in Hampstead, a borough of Greater London. In 1964 she began appearing at coffeehouses in London as one of the acts on stage. She showed up at a launch party for the Rolling Stones. At the event she met Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones manager who was always on the lookout for new talent. Faithfull’s career as the crown princess of swinging London was launched with “As Tears Go By”. The song climbed to #9 in the UK and into the Top 30 in the USA and in Vancouver. At the time she was 16 years old. Her 1964 hit single was the first song ever written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Two folk albums, two pop albums and a singles collection followed. Marianne Faithfull also embarked on a parallel career as an actress, both on film in Girl On A Motorcycle (1968) and on stage in Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1967) and Hamlet (1969) By the end of the Sixties personal problems halted Marianne’s career and her drug addiction took over.
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