Music
The Undisputed Truth were Norman Whitfield’s Motown laboratory for his psychedelic soul constructions, testing out songs that would end up with The Temptations. This was their only hit.
When it comes to emotionally intense vocal performances, you don’t need to look much further than James Brown singing The Bells.
This should be terrible. It’s a cover of a rock’n’roll standard by a one-hit-wonder known only for a novelty song half a century ago.
There are few aural pleasures greater than accidentally stumbling across an old song you used to love that had somehow slipped from your memory. That’s what happened this weekend when I found an album comprising the early recordings of Kimmie Rhodes.
Country music was so uncool in the Seventies that I never went near it in my youth. Until I came across Joe Ely. There was something about his debut album in 1977 that struck the same sort of chord as the ramshackle thrashings of punk. But in an American way – specifically a Texan way.
Few figures from the music world personified the drug-fuelled excesses of the Sixties more than David Crosby, who has died at the age of 81.
The first time I heard this song was when The Clash did it as the lead track on their Cost Of Living EP in 1979. Before long it sent me back to this, the original hit by the Bobby Fuller Four.
Returning to Seventies schmaltz, here’s another oldie from another husband-and-wife duo, Captain & Tennille. It’s not their debut single, Love Will Keep Us Together, and not the peculiar Muskrat Love, but their comeback song after a stint hosting their own TV show.
On the surface this Seventies oldie is the epitome of clean-cut middle-of-the-road soft rock schmaltz. Pause for a moment, though, and the words beneath those blissful harmonies are pure filth.