Good review, John.

I prefer Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman version, but both versions of "Something Stupid" were in my top 100 favourite UK # 1 singles list.

 

Thanks Alex, Robbie & Nicole, to be fair, almost got a number one in my charts, so I still liked it a lot too, but I love Nancy now more than I did when she was hot B-)

 

 

DEDICATED TO THE ONE I LOVE - The Mamas & The Papas (2 weeks)

 

The fourth Number One for the band was a 50’s pop cover, but oh my word what a cover! The harmonies and melody on this is sublime. This was an actual “I was MAD on this record” moment when we lived at RAF Valley, age 9. The softly-sung verse girl lines followed by the boys loud answering lines, and the combined powerful male-female chorus lift this up, and pretty much started my love affair with Mama Cass and the band. It had that Summer Of Love feelgood vibe going on, and I rediscovered it again on tape in 1970, before buying it on a hits album in 1974, and the Number One re-issue in 1977 in my oldies charts that I ran for a year or so. I decided to include them them as “official” charts alongside the current 1977 charts, as there were 40 or 50 tracks competing as re-issues, so it was a proper chart as such, but mostly because I couldn’t bear the thought of this record not getting an official chart-topper. This was the final topper for The Mamas And The Papas but not the last for Mama Cass and not the last for John Phillips songs.

 

SAN FRANSISCO (BE SURE TO WEAR SOME FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR) - Scott McKenzie  (1 week)

 

Talking of John Phillips songs - here’s the one he gave away to his mate Scott. Bit of a massive misjudgment there! This is the Summer Of Love anthem above all anthems, pure 1967, flower power, hippie peace and love, a youth movement to set the world to rights. At least in theory. People had other ideas, of course, about that notion. Scott McKenzie is virtually a one-hit wonder thanks to this gorgeous pop ballad. Scott’s a great singer, but really you can tell this is a Mamas & Papas record, and it could easily have been Number One number 5 and boosted their back catalogue some more had they recorded it. Hey ho, it’s still a classic and topped my chart appropriately right after the creative brains behind it, in 1977. I’d already bought it by then, circa 1974 on a previous reissue. My mum loves this too, takes her back to that summer of love...on a welsh island! John Phillips, meanwhile, outside the band had one more great solo track in him, a 1970 minor hit called Mississippi, a bit of swamprock whimsy.

 

LET’S GO TO SAN FRANSISCO - The Flowerpot Men (1 week)

 

Talking of Summer Of Love pop anthems about San Fransisco...here’s the other one. OK, it’s bandwagon jumping-time, as The Flowerpot Men were studio musicians from the UK created and written by former fab harmony pop band members The Ivy League (John Carter and Ken Lewis) and S.F. was probably more of an aspiration than an actuality, but that’s an injustice to the record which is just as good in it’s own way. Great production, great tune, great harmonies, great singer - more on Tony Burrows at a later date - but there is an actual follow-up to this record, it just didn’t chart until 1974, and the band name had changed to First Class, and they were using nostalgia for 1967 and the sixties as the basis for an even better record. This also had a ten-year anniversary chart-topper run - yes in 1977, the year of punk, I was getting all retro and hippie. 19 was just about too old to be a punk, so student hippie was the way forward for me. Happy to buy both though. The name, by the way, had more to do with flower power and pot, than the children’s Watch With Mother TV show - though they both referred to weed......