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I can't believe how fast 1967 is flying past. Quite a mixed bag, this week, and none of them songs I'd ever have listened to, if it weren't for this project, so that's cool!
Just Loving You - Anita Harris (peaked at Number 6)
Well, if the incredibly cinematic sweep of strings at the start didn't give it away, the classically-styled piano and clearly-enunciated delivery of the opening line are a sure indicator: Anita Harris is one of those British actors-slash-singers in the mould of Shirley Bassey and Petula Clarke, very proper, very well-mannered, very classy. Quite a sensible vibe, really - I don't think Anita's out there raising any eyebrows.
It's not bad, for all that. There's a melancholy to the lines, as Anita sings about how I could spend my life just loving you / If you could learn to fall in love with me. Which sounds romantic, but it's clearly a hypothetical, a doomed romance that could be so good - if only her love would return her affections! She knows it's futile, knows it's only going to hurt her, I'm not the laughing child I used to be. And yet, she can't help it, 'till then I'll go on scheming / Though I know I'm only dreaming / I can't help myself just loving you. Sentimental stuff, but Anita sells it with an admirable restraint, avoiding hamming it up too much. There's a breathy sigh to her voice that's just enough to convey how sad and lonely she is. But it's not as cheesy as, say, Tom Jones almost breaking down just a week ago.
I will admit that I am a little thrown by the echoing harmonica solo that cuts in halfway through. It's a bit country and western, to my ears, and makes Anita sound like she's come stepping out of a 1950s cowboy flick. Double strange, since there aren't really any other country elements in the whole thing. And it's just a really tinny, flat-sounding harmonica, too. You could have done the solo on literally anything else and it would have sounded better. Pick something interestingly muted and melancholy. French horn. Oboe. Guitar. Literally anything. It's a small thing, but it does stand out in what's otherwise a perfectly serviceable love song.
Even the Bad Times Are Good - The Tremeloes (4)
Also a perfectly serviceable love song, this! Even the Bad Times Are Good was apparently written as Eurovision fodder, only to be replaced by Puppet on a String. I cannot stand Puppet on a String, but even ignoring that, I do think this would have done fine for itself, it's a straightforwardly romantic number, with a simple, rousing tune that repeats a lot, and a decent amount of energy. And beyond that, it's also just very sweet, with a big, anthemic chorus singing about how even the bad times are good / Soon as I get to you, baby / You just gotta hold me / And even the bad times are good. Add in some meaningless la la la la las, and you've got yourself a nice, feel-good hit, all about finding comfort in a loved one when life gets difficult. It's cute, right? Certainly cuter than Puppet on a String, that's for sure.
I do think that the version that ended up seeing release here is probably not as polished as whatever would have eventually been put onto Eurovision. I mean, even as you hit play, you're confronted by a good ten seconds of what sounds like almost an accidental recording of the band cracking each other up, some unintelligible studio joking and clattering around and talking over the start of the song. And even once the song gets past that, the overall dynamic is still quite a rowdy one, with lots of background shouts and heys and laughter and here we gos and waheys, and a chorus that's sung in unison with the whole group, in rollicking, full-throated sing-along fashion. There are some pretty harmonies on the la la la las, but apart from that, it's a very raw, rough take, down to them not even singing all that well in time with each other.
This is an approach that isn't without its charms, the Tremeloes do sound like they're having a whale of a time! But yeah, it isn't necessarily a song you're coming to for nuance or complexity. It's a basic tune, very thumpy and repetitive, with the chorus coming back again and again, enough that more than anything the song feels like the fade-out from a longer, more complicated song. It's like the na na na nanana na bits of Hey Jude, but it's a whole song, not just a coda. I don't hate it, it's a fun, warm, laid-back sound. But it isn't the most substantial or worthy of tracks, I fear. Still would have been better than Puppet on a String.
The House That Jack Built - The Alan Price Set (4)
And finally, this. I've really liked the other Alan Price tracks we've come across so far, so my hopes here were high, especially when I saw that it was Alan's first self-composed hit, after a string of brilliantly but rather eclectically selected covers. I was excited to see what style of music he went with, when left to his own devices - would it be simmering, bluesy jazz noodling, like I Put a Spell on You, or something lighter and quirkier, like Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear?
Turns out, it's the latter. The House That Jack Built really does sound like it could be a Randy Newman hit - in particular, I'm hearing some elements of You Can Leave Your Hat On, just in the tune. And beyond melodic similarities, there's a similar quirkiness to it all, not unlike what we heard in Simon Smith. Except there, where it was a boy and a bear, here, it's a house full of nutty people, each with their own peculiar set of interests. We learn that Brother Nigel paints the stairs with the signs of the zodiac, that Sister Emma rides a zebra round and round the garden / Spends the whole day saying I beg your pardon. Meanwhile, Uncle Joe cracks walnuts between his toes for fun / And looks through coloured glass at the dark spots on the sun, while Mary, she believes that her mother was a queen and cousin Festus writes a letter each and every single day / He believes that writing letters keeps the Asian flu away. And Alan himself has just received some sort of reward, cause I killed all the flies in the state of Tennessee.
You could make a case, as some have, for this being a song about an asylum. I think that's too obvious, though. Another way of reading it is a song about hippies, and the oddballs you find more generally, out on the countercultural fringes of society. This holds a little more water, for me. In this interpretation, you could read the house as some sort of commune, a safe haven for people who just don't fit in to form a little found "family" of their own. Psychedelics would maybe go some way to explain the zebra riding and delusions, too. And c'mon, this is the house that Jack built, baby / And it reaches up to the sky? Might as well come out and explicitly sing about how "high" you are right now.
I joke, though, because at the end of the day, I do think that the song actually benefits from not being explicitly "about" anything. Alan has apparently since said that it was basically an exercise in nonsense poetry, trying to capture a sense of how daft people can be, generally, the wonderful, ridiculous variety there are among humans. It's a song that's about celebrating eccentricity and weirdness. Which I can get behind. Add in a bunch of cool little touches to convey that same eccentricity - most notably some jazzy flutes, of the groovy sort we've been hearing so often recently, plus a bluesy bit of piano, and a delightfully bonkers solo on a sped-up saxophone, and you end up with a song that sounds bright, cheery and absolutely loony, in just about equal measure. I kind of love it, and I'm loving it more the more I listen!
Alan Price, man. I really think he ought to be better known, he's been one of my favourite discoveries of the mid-60s. I hope he has more top 10 hits, but even if he doesn't, I know for sure that I'm going to at some point sit down and just listen through to his whole discography, because seriously, all three of his hits so far have had just the right balance of coolness to silliness to genuine skill. A difficult needle to thread.
Favourite song of the bunch: The House That Jack Built
I know they're just a concept art rn (at least I've finally finished the coloring part), but it was worth all the time I've spent on these smol twilburys
