70s List Friday: Ten Songs That Should Never Have Been Released

This is by no means a list of 70s songs that suck, or even a “Worst Songs Of the 70s” list, simply a list of songs that we wish no one had released for some reason or another. Usually it’s because it has turned us against something that we would otherwise have liked, or simply scarred our childhood so much, we either remember exactly where we were when we first heard it, or we’ve erased the incident completely from our memory with nothing but scotch and drugs. So, starting at 10, here’s your Pick Of The Pops countdown…

10. Judy Collins: Send In the Clowns

That’s right, we’re going there. To be perfectly honest, this is a really great song that no one under Heaven has yet been able to do justice. Ethel Merman’s version can restart flatlined hearts, Shirley Bassey’s version can pop car tires, but Judy Collins’ version is so bland and banal that it doesn’t just encourage clowns to start interpretative dancing, it’s forcing them to do it outside of their own free will. Send In The Clowns is also probably the primary cause of coulrophobia (it’s the 21st Century! Google it!) in those of us from the age of 25-38.

What to listen to instead: Leo Sayer: The Show Must Go On

9. Jimmy Osmond: Long Haired Lover From Liverpool

I can’t say too much about this one as I had to stop it 35 seconds into the song, it really does make me think of dark winter days rolling naked down hill after hill of broken glass. Were this a real Top Ten, rather than just a list, this would probably be number 1. Press play above, force your eyes open with matchsticks, and dream of what luxurious lives are led in Guantanamo Bay.

What to listen to instead: Donny Osmond: Puppy Love

8. Michael Jackson: Ben

It’s so long ago now that it’s hard to remember that this song was actually about a boy’s love for his pet rat, Ben, for the movie of the same title. Ben is the sequel to the 1971 horror movie Willard, about a man who trains his pet rat Socrates to enact his vengeance, but the lone rat soon becomes just one of a team of other trained rats lead by the bigger and more intelligent Ben. Socrates eventually turns on his master and kills him, and all the super-intelligent rats escape. In Ben, a boy takes Ben to be his pet, and Ben’s awesome powers protect him from bullies, but eventually Ben starts to take control and the rest of the rats start killing people and the police have to come in and contain the swarm. Ben gets away, but unfortunately does not get as far as a third movie, which would have made a wicked cute rats destroy mankind to childish love songs trilogy. So, yeah. Despite being nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1972, this song bears absolutely no resemblance to the source material it’s based on.

What to listen to instead: Paul McCartney & Wings: Live And Let Die (Nominated for Best Original Song Oscar in 1973)

7. Debby Boone: You Light Up My Life

I never saw the movie that this song comes from, but for those who did, I’m truly, deeply, sorry. I did, however, see the trailer for it when I went to see Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo for some kids birthday, which was essentially this 4 minute version from the film intercut with other scenes from the movie. Needless to say, to this day, I have yet to subject myself to it. the only thing I can be happy for, in my own selfish way, is that we in the UK got the Sex Pistols in 1977, while you poor buggers in the US had two full months of this insipid dross as number one. Actually, while you were forced to hear that everywhere, we had four number ones which could could be considered either better or worse, depending on your tastes:-

1. David Soul: Silver Lady – A beautiful song sung by a beautiful man
2. Baccara: Yes Sir, I Can Boogie – The kind of Eurodisco that turns normal people into serial killers
3. ABBA: The Name Of The Game – Arguably the greatest ABBA song of all time
4. Paul McCartney & Wings: Mull Of Kintyre – My family anthem, apparently.

Then Mull of Kintyre proceded to wreak holy vengeance upon us Brits by staying there at number 1 for 9 weeks. 9 full weeks of bagpipe solos. Thinks about it. What makes it worse is that my sister actually bought the damn thing. She’s responsible.

But anyway, yes. You Light Up My Life should never have been released.

What to listen to instead: Meco: Star Wars Theme – Cantina Band - This is what was number 1 in the US the week before Debby Boone got there…

6. Brotherhood Of Man: Save Your Kisses For Me

It’s 1976, and this is my first real Eurovision Song Contest. We in Britain realized that if we ever wanted to win, we needed a singing group that reminded everyone of ABBA, and had a catchy dance gimmick. In 76, Brotherhood of Man stuck their thumbs behind their oversized belt buckles and bounced their hips in a non-sexual circular motion (in 81, Bucks Fizz did the same thing only the two girls ripped their skirts off to reveal slightly shorter skirts). Surprisingly, it worked, and BoM won that year. Save Your Kisses For Me was also the biggest selling single in the UK that year. Outside of the Euro-sphere, however, you have probably never been subjected to this strange love song with the ‘surprise’ Jackson-Approved ending, so I’m including here just for you. Bear in mind, this was the first dance routine I ever learned, and I was trotted out to perform it just about every time it came on at weddings, parties and wakes all throughout the later 70s. Thank God, no one remembers it now.

Okay, maybe next time it’s played, you’ll get me to do it one more time, just for old time’s sake.

What to listen to instead: Brotherhood of Man: Figaro – Much more fun, and you feel less icky for enjoying it.

5. Styx: Babe

In just over 4 minutes, Styx invent the Power Ballad, and ruin pretty much any enjoyment I can get out of a regular rock album for the whole of the 80s. Every rock band has to have their version of Babe in their otherwise excellent album somewhere. I’m left crying in the closet as child, wondering what the hell I’ve spent my pocket money on. This one song is directly responsible for Bryan Adams’ career. Well, that and the Canadian Content laws that virtually guarantee anyone with a record contract airtime. Screw you, Dennis De Young. Your band sucks. Thanks for nothing!

What to listen to instead: Typically Tropical: Barbados – Because despite the knowledge that it’s sung by a white guy in an overtly racist Caribbean accent, it still totally erases my memory of that shite song above. Ah… Bliss…

4. Ray Stevens: Everything Is Beautiful

Quite simply, there’s nothing wrong with this song. But he sold it to an advertising company, who used to sell wood sealant. So, yeah, whenever I hear it now, I do hear “Everything is beautiful, in it’s own way… Ronseal keeps wood beautiful, beauty that will stay!” Nice way to remember a happy song about God and kids and stuff, right?

What to listen to instead: David Dundas: Jeans On - The proper way to sell your song out to advertisers. At least jeans are cool…

3. Maureen McGovern: Can You Read My Mind?

Ignore the weird karaoke-club video that goes with this. Astute readers will realize that this is the love theme from 1978′s Superman. It’s a lovely, almost haunting piece until OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE THEY DONE! Yep, they’ve taken that crap poem Lois Lane has going through her head as she flies with Superman, definitely the lamest part of an otherwise awesome movie, and set it to music. I don’t know what’s worse, the original scene with the poem, or the sung version with the dolphins and orcas. Either way, I need to scrub my brain with a Brillo pad. Nurse!

What to listen to instead: John Williams: Cavatina – Harrowing movie, beautiful piece of music, no stupid lyrics.

2. The Bellamy Brothers: If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?

This song has, as it’s title, such a ridiculous pick-up line, that I can’t even use it in an ironic fashion. Plus, it’s terrible, weak, and features far too much pedal-steel slide guitar. The word here, though really is weak. They spend the whole time asking if they can say this or call her that. It’s the most passive-aggressive love song ever written. You can tell they’re from Florida. These two guys really need to grow a pair… each this time.

Oh, the only song worse in this category of stupid trick titles is Dr. Hook’s When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman. Seriously, guys, just stop.

What to listen to instead: The Bellamy Brothers: Let Your Love Flow - It’s like a completely separate group, intelligent, poppy, and doesn’t sound like something Sondra Locke would sing in one of those Any Which Way But Loose movies…

1. Manhattan Transfer: Chanson D’Amour

Ah the good old days of Gay Paris, sipping champagne in the cafe, Piaf reverberating from the 78rpm wind-up record player, Francois capitulating to the Nazis, zut alors! Les temps c’est fantastique! Oui, c’est vrai. Fantastique, indeed.

Someone out there was desperately trying to forget that it was 1977 and that punk was around the corner. Leo Sayer’s When I Need You was number the week before, ABBA’s Knowing Me Knowing You came after, but for three weeks the UK gave itself over to America’s jazz quartet Manhattan Transfer, who wanted to sing us in Franglais a love song about how they think of love songs every time they see you, or every time they hear a Thompson Submachinegun go ‘rat-tat-tat-tat-ta!” or something like that. So, yeah, it’s either a slow plodding paean to a 1930s love affair, or it’s an overlong cpdewrod for a French resistance operation. Take your pick…

What to listen to instead: Blondie: Denis – A much finer example of a song with a bit of French in it. And a video much more pleasant to the eye, too.

Scary 70s Thursday: Men in Giant Psychedelic Animal Suits

You’re being chased through the woods by a man-sized fuzzy blue lion, who sings psychedelic Beatles songs at you while you run. An orange monkey, a tiger with an eyepatch, and a green dog wearing a big brown hat capture you in a massive net, then implore the lion, whose name is Rory, to read aloud a story to you. If you’ve never woken up from either this particular nightmare in a pool of sweat, or anything like it, you probably didn’t grow up in the late 60s to early 70s, and completely missed out on the weekly (sometimes even daily) man-sized furry freakshows that were a mainstay of children’s television. You think you had it hard with the Teletubbies, and thought that baby in the sun thing was trippy… You haven’t seen what happens when the Teletubbies and the Wiggles get together and get laid while on horse tranquilizers…

Animal Kwackers sing Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

It’s a pretty simple rendition, actually, also found on their Animal Kwackers LP which I had as a child. Bongo, Rory, Twang and Boots play a happy melody written by the greatest rock and roll band ever in the world, and it just happens to be about being on LSD. I utterly loved this when I was a kid, and no amount of Just Say No campaigns later on as a teenager could remove the glory that was Animal Kwackers telling me to drop acid. None. So the good news is that when I finally do, I may actually be able to understand:

H. R. Pufnstuf

Technically this, and the following group of six-foot, two-legged monsters, were really made in the 60s, but their shows ran into the 70s and were on continual rerun throughout my decade. I never got to see the series of H. R. Pufnstuf, but did see the movie, and boy, between this, Hanna Barbera’s version of Alice In Wonderland (or What’s A Nice Kid Like You Doing In A Place Like This?), and The Phantom Tollbooth, you never actually have to say no to drugs. It’s all right there, on the screen, man!

Anyhoo. Pufnstuf’s name’s a complete give away. He lives on Living Island, where, you know, wow, everything’s alive, man, he calls everyone dude, dude. His friend Jimmy, the only true human on the show, is transported there by a magical talking flute. Not, you know, James Galway‘s magical golden flute, but one that talks, man. It’s all, you know, wow, man… etc.

Not this flute, the one that TALKS!

Also notice that the title sequence is one minute forty-nine seconds. That’s just for you guys at the back who zoned out halfway through the last show and couldn’t remember what the hell it was about, or had some fight about ‘bogarting’ or somesuch.

The Banana Splits

There ain’t much that can be said about this wacky foursome that hasn’t been said before. Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky are the godfathers of six-foot psychedelic critterdom. (Fun Banana Splits fact: All the outside scenes in series one were filmed at Six Flags Over Texas theme park, by future director of Superman, Richard Donner.) Essentially The Banana Splits, a combine of the talents from Hanna Barbera and Sid & Marty Krofft who also created Pufnstuf, was a live-action cartoon. It used all the well-known Hanna Barbera sound effects and sight gags, and what’s best is that there’s absolutely no attempt to make the character’s mouths move. So there’s a lot of talking by creatures who grin like stoners or run around with their tongues sticking out like wasted junkies. So, sit back and enjoy The Banana Splits in all their wonderfully wacky-backy glory.

Now, thanks to the internet, these guys would be considered the godfathers of furrydom and I’m surprised there isn’t some ultra-not-actually-sexy slash-fic written about them by basement bound 37 year-olds.

You know… Thinking about it… That doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all… Time to start flexing those slash-fingers!

Trippier in the 70s: Charly

Speaking of British Public Information Films…

We never know his name, but his cat is called Charly. His mother’s hair changes color every now and again, and he never really gets to have any actual fun with kids his own age. Or touch a teapot. Or go off with strange men to see their puppies. Shame that.

Years later, his cat is a codeword for cocaine, and Charly’s advice will be heard, yet probably not followed, by tripped-out, loved-up, glowstick-waving ravers all over the planet. This is Charly’s World, we just live in it.

Scary 1970s British Public Information Films

Yes. While most Americans have fond memories of the PSA’s that were shown on a Saturday morning (“I learned it from YOU, Dad!”), us Brits remember being scared poo-less by our Public Information Films.

Chilling stuff. Enjoy!

Creepier in the 70s: Follyfoot

If there’s one thing the 70s did to me, it’s the way the British TV Shows Follyfoot and Black Beauty have warped my mind against upper-middle-class girls who love horses. Take this episode of Follyfoot, for example. The opening titles are meant to be whimsical and perhaps a little haunting, but to me, they’re creepy. The horse in the title graphic looks like something Dali would have painted. I’m surprised there isn’t a melting clock there and a tree covered in ants. And the opening shot? Honestly, what the hell’s going there? It’s like that version of Animal Farm we weren’t supposed to see. And there’s Dora and and the old codger, Slugger, cheerily looking on. [Edit: That video has been removed, so I've switched it out for just the opening titles. Never thought I'd see something too weird for YouTube]

Growing up in a city, where the only live horses we ever saw had coppers on them carrying sticks, Follyfoot was about as far removed from real life as you could get. Probably to my detriment, rather than consider the rural life of hanging round the stables with a cute teen who likes horses as a kind of escapist fantasy world, I saw it as a nightmare vision of dull, drawn-out pain, somewhat akin to having a tooth pulled out by a wire tied to an exceptionally strong, yet still excruciatingly slow, snail. Also, I was the son of a working-class Scottish family, who, previous to moving to London, had been living in trailer parks for the most of the 60s, whereas Dora was the daughter of a diplomat, who complained about not getting a pony for her 10th birthday and getting really expensive dresses instead.

Worth watching this until the end, though, just to discover that it was directed by a guy called Stephen Frears, who is probably best known now for directing The Queen.

Thin White Duke Learns Karate

There’s something really cute about this clip. Check Bowie’s reaction to the karate guy when he fakes punching David in the testicles. Poor Bowie just loses it.

And then there’s the

Wait a minute. That’s David Bowie! And they’re teaching him karate moves! It just doesn’t get cooler than that!

Super Hero Shows

Okay, so we know that cop shows were cooler, with the exception of Hawaii Five-0, which had a great theme tune, but was essentially pants. But something else we had in the 70s was live-action superhero shows. Shows like Wonder Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk and the short-lived SpiderMan series.

Wonder Woman
I may have been a little young to fully appreciate Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, but I remember being extremely confused by the show. Back then, British television (and US television, to be honest) didn’t care much about running episodes in order. The problem was that it was really made up of two shows. The first was set during WW2, and Wonder Woman is fighting Nazis. The second is set in the 70s with Wonder Woman fighting terrorists and sinister rock stars and such. She had an invisible plane, which was technically useless, as it didn’t make her invisible. So anyone looking up would see this woman in a spangly costume floating at high speed in a sitting position through the sky. Very silly. Very 70s. It does have the best theme tune of them all, though.

The Six Million Dollar Man
Also known as the Bionic Man. Steve Austin was my favorite, and I spent most of my childhood wishing I could get the action figure, with the bionic eye that you could look through and the arm that would open up to reveal his mechanical arm. It was possible to get the action figure for his boss, Oscar Goldman. But who the fuck would want that? IIRC, in the pilot, Steve Austin, once he gains his new powers, would run really fast, meaning they sped up the film of him running. I guess they realized that eventually he would have to run past something moving or people would catch on, because later in the series they switched to his more signature slow-mo running and jumping ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac moves. You just had to imagine that he was really going fast or jumping that high, or bending those bars. When you got the ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac sound effect for his vision, though, it seemed a little silly. Totally jumped the shark when Bigfoot arrived, but I loved it when I was 6. We won’t talk about the Bionic Woman, though – they gave her a Bionic Dog, and that was just stupid.

The Incredible Hulk
Sadder and more introspective than any of the other shows, Hulk wandered the wilderlands of central California doing odd jobs and trying not to get angry.

SpiderMan
This show is the strangest. Most people don’t remember that there was a live action Spiderman before the Tobey Maguire version, they just remember the cartoon. In the UK, I even got to see the pilot at the theater, played as a movie. I went with a whole bunch of kids for someone’s 6th birthday, and it was on a double-bill, believe it or not, with Breaking Away, which we’ll get to later. It was your standard this-looks-stupid-now superhero fare, but it really did look like Spiderman was crawling up those skyscrapers. And that’s because he was. Back in 2005, on a trip to California, I took a tandem hang-gliding jump. The crazy old guy who drove us up the mountain I was about to jump off was the guy you see in the Spidey suit climbing up the Empire State Building. Seriously, he did that. Fun Spidey Facts: Kim “Facts of Life” Fields’ mom was in it.

TV Supercops

Everybody know the 70s was the decade when cops didn’t play by the rules. They gunned Buick Regals and Ford Gran Torinos down back alleys, treated their captains like short-sighted fools, and banged all the chicks they met. Usually all within act 2.

More than that, though, they had theme songs (opening themes, remember them?). And not just theme songs, damn funky theme songs.

My sister was a huge fan of American cop shows when I was a kid. She loved the sly wit of Telly Savalas as Kojak, gushed a little over Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco, and positively fawned over David Soul in Starsky and Hutch. Sure, she may have bought the Telly Savalas “Who Loves Ya Baby” single, but David Soul convinced her to buy a whole album’s worth of his sweet vocals. So I have fond memories of Saturday nights in a maisonette in Primrose Hill, lights off, Mum and Dad out down the pub, and me and my sister in the living room with milk and McVities watching to see what could possibly challenge Starsky and Hutch’s not-homoerotic-at-all, purely platonic friendship.

Kojak

The Streets of San Francisco

Starsky and Hutch