Hello everybody,

 

I am here today to talk about celebrity scandals. Does anybody have any particular favourites they would like to talk about? First of all, I would like to discuss scandals involving performers miming to other people’s voices on ‘their’ records. What are your opinions about this?

 

I mention this as I have been reading about the court case involving Lou De Prijck, the real singer of the Plastic Bertrand song “Ça Plane Pour Moi”. De Prijck wanted to promote himself as original singer of the song, which was much to the disgust of the record company that owned the original rights.

 

Now I was quite surprised that this had come to light again, as I thought that the fact that Plastic Bertrand did not sing on the song was common knowledge by now. I first heard these rumours way back in the early 1990s and anyway I thought that Plastic Bertrand was always regarded as a punk ‘cash-in’, rather than a ‘proper punk’, in the eyes of the press.

 

Even though most people will have not seen De Prijck before or care who Plastic Bertrand actually was [to be honest I would not know who he was without looking at the cover of the first Smash Hits magazine] I think most people on here will remember Milli Vanilli or Black Box, two high profile ‘lip-synch’ acts of the late 1980s.

 

In suppose if the success of Milli Vanilli and Black Box had just stayed confined to Europe, then nobody would have bothered too much as this kind of ‘deception’ was something that you would expect of Euro-pop and Euro-dance producers [49ers, Boney M, Xpansions, DJH featuring Steffi etc].

 

In regards to English and American acts, I think in the past, most stories have involved people not playing on their own records rather than miming along to other people vocals, though in the cases of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and ‘The Pistols’ [allegedly 10cc and Chris ‘Motorbiking’ Spedding respectively], these rumours have only added to their ‘mystique’.

 

So what do you think?

 

Loz

 

hard to say, creations have existed as long as music existed. the earliest group i remember was the monkees and it was quite scandelous that originally they didnt perform 'their' music. that was soon rectified.

 

but by the late 60's there were many acts doing the rounds who were vehicles for a figurehead... love affair for one, which was in reality a steve ellis plus session musician group. the archies are another example... then there was tony borroughs who appeared in several groups even appearing twice on one totp shows in different groups..

 

so as time went on i guess it was inevitable that some acts would have mime artists heading the product... does it matter? i guess if you like the product youd overlook it..

hard to say, creations have existed as long as music existed. the earliest group i remember was the monkees and it was quite scandelous that originally they didnt perform 'their' music. that was soon rectified.

 

but by the late 60's there were many acts doing the rounds who were vehicles for a figurehead... love affair for one, which was in reality a steve ellis plus session musician group. the archies are another example... then there was tony borroughs who appeared in several groups even appearing twice on one totp shows in different groups..

 

 

Some good points in your comments, though I cannot see there being too much initial scandal around The Monkees, as I would expect most people in 1960s America would have viewed them as a TV comedy show first. I suppose you could view them as the retro equivalent to ‘Glee’ though in the case of The Monkees I suppose you could say the music is a far better feature of the show, than the comedy.

 

When I was younger, I thought that 1960s acts were just suitable for ‘old fogies’ [my parents] and like S/A/W, Genesis or Hair Metal, this would be the type of music that I would not listen to. Even though I would try to avoid most 1960s music, The Monkees would be one of the few acts that I thought were alright, as I used to watch their show when it was broadcast on TV every holiday morning. You see I hated ‘Why Don’t You’ with a passion and so would watch all those old American comedy shows like The Monkees, Get Smart and I Dream Of Jeanie instead when Inspector Gadget and Ox Tales were not being shown.

 

I do not know if The Archies were a cartoon series as well as a comic strip, or whether the cartoon footage I have seen was just made to promote the song, but I think their music career may have been developed to rival to The Monkees.

 

At the time, I heard that all the people who played on the record were anonymously listed to make it look like the cartoon characters were actually the people who played on the record. I have forgotten who the studio band was, but like Gorillaz I think the people behind The Archies also had many other Number One hits as well. It may have been Flo & Eddie from The Turtles but I think they ended up as part of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention instead.

 

I was actually listening to a 1960s rock album today before I came out to work. On the disc was PJ Proby, whose ‘pant-splitting’ exploits I heard much about in my youth from my father. With all the fuss that was made over Proby I though he might have exposed himself in a way similar to Iggy Pop and his infamous see-through trousers, but according to a documentary I saw recently it was only his knee that was exposed.

 

Also on the disc was “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen, which I think was regarded as being very obscene back in the 1960s. Even though the lyrics are not supposed to be rude, the mumbled voice on the record does give the impression that you are in fact listening to someone who might be the ‘American Serge Gainsbourg’. I do not know if you have figured out the lyrics yet, but to me it does sound like the chorus is “Louie Lou-eh [rude noises] to the break of dawn”.

 

I do not go to the cinema very much, as generally I am not a person who likes to sit with all the noisy crowds that you get at a ‘blockbuster’, though I did make a point to watch the recent ‘Gainsbourg’ film. I thought the film was entertaining, but as the film overlooked a lot of his scandals, I guess anybody who is not too familiar with Gainsbourg would wonder what all the fuss was about. As expected, the film featured “Je T’aime”, though some of the lines were not subtitled, probably due to maximum rudeness.

 

Not only was “Je T’aime” covered by René Artois from ‘Allo ‘Allo, but by Judge Dread as well, an act who managed to chart many rude reggae songs over a period of about 10 years. I have recently heard one of his songs on a reggae compilation album but I do not know which one as most of his Top 40 hits had similar titles. As these titles included “Big Six”, “Big Seven” and “Big Eight”, I wonder if he would have debuted with a “Big One”.

 

I also wonder if any of his records would have been played on the radio in the 1970s. If “Relax” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood was banned in the 1980s and that song was actually not very rude at all, then I cannot see how Judge Dread could get any airplay at all.

 

At this point I am having trouble imagining where Judge Dread fits into 1970s culture, as on one hand he could have been quite an ‘underground’ act and on the other he was a very successful artist in the charts, with his singles on the chart for about 25 weeks each.

 

I am wondering if he would fit into a ‘humourous song’ scene that might also feature people like Jasper Carrott, Max Boyce, Mike Harding or Doc Cox, though I do not think any of these performers had any reggae songs in their sets. Can you remember seeing any of these acts at the time? If so, what are your reminisces and thoughts about this period of popular culture?

 

Loz

 

dont know about in america, but the monkees not being a real pop group was big news here for a short while... even as a ten year old i thought it was a bad thing..

 

as for judge dread.... vile... just part of that awful 70's sexist bollox that gave us 'emmanuelle' and the 'confessions of' soft porn seriese of films. even as a teenage schoolboy i never liked judge dreads awful material.

 

'louie louie' was rather rude apparently, but i never knew the track until later as it passed me by as a young kid in the 60's ... even though i know from first hand most other chart tracks from the era.

dont know about in america, but the monkees not being a real pop group was big news here for a short while... even as a ten year old i thought it was a bad thing..

 

as for judge dread.... vile... just part of that awful 70's sexist bollox that gave us 'emmanuelle' and the 'confessions of' soft porn seriese of films. even as a teenage schoolboy i never liked judge dreads awful material.

 

'louie louie' was rather rude apparently, but i never knew the track until later as it passed me by as a young kid in the 60's ... even though i know from first hand most other chart tracks from the era.

 

 

I do not think “Louie Louie” was ever a big hit in the British charts. I think it may have been popular in America, but as far as the UK market was concerned, I think the song became more of an ‘underground’ tune.

 

I say that, even though I do not know what would be regarded as an ‘underground’ scene in the early part of the 1960s. From what I know of Britain in the 1960s, all the ‘troublesome’ or ‘dangerous’ scenes, like the ones that featured Mods, Rockers and Hippies, would come later on. I think they were the moral panics of the period 1967-1969, whilst earlier on all I can think of as being ‘underground’ would be the beatnik jazz scene that would normally be shown as being situated in and around Soho.

 

I know that The Kingsmen are usually described as a ‘garage’ band but I do not know if this would be just an American genre at the time. I think ‘garage-rock’ could be the American equivalent to that British blues-rock scene that ‘spawned’ successful acts like The Who and The Animals.

 

I do not know if any of the American acts from that scene had the same stadium-sized success in their home country as The Who did here or whether they would be generally regarded as a one-hit wonders, outside a small specialist group of ‘garage-rock’ aficionados. I do not know if you are a fan of the ‘garage-rock’ genre but “Louie Louie” would be the only record that I know that was by The Kingsmen.

 

The tracks mentioned in my previous posts [The Kingsmen, PJ Proby] all feature on a compilation album that is supposed to represent the playlists the pirate radio stations in the mid 1960s. The compilation was issued around the same time as that Richard Curtis film, “The Boat That Rocked”, was released into the cinemas of the UK and Ireland.

 

I do not know if you have seen the film, but if you have avoided it thinking it was just another ‘Richard Curtis rom-com’ [though he was the guy who created Blackadder], then it might be of interest to you especially if this was the era you grew up in [and especially if you were one of those people who would be listening to their transistor radio from under the bed sheets].

 

Even though the film will never feature on E4’s ‘100 Greatest Comedy’ films list and would be too long to sit through in one sitting at the cinema, it is supposed to be a good representation of the pirate radio scene of the mid 1960s.

 

I grew up in the 1980s, so I associate ‘pirate radio’ with the kind located in tower blocks and parodied by The Lenny Henry Show [Delbert Wilkins of The Brixton Broadcasting Corporation]. The ‘pirates’ of the 1960s may have been radical and scandalous in their day, but it is hard to believe how much trouble they were, especially when many of the presenters on those boats turned out to be the cheesy ‘Smashy and Nicey’ types of the 1980s.

 

Do you remember what radio was like in the 1960s and were you a listener of ‘pirate radio’ at that time? If so, which station did you listen to and could you get Radio Caroline, Radio London or The Big L on your wireless set?

 

 

Loz