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| From | Stewart Mason <flamingo@theworld.com> |
| Subject | Re: Spanky and Michel Polnareff |
| Date | Tue, 29 Jul 2003 03:12:08 -0400 |
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At 12:28 AM 7/29/2003 -0400, Marston Moor wrote:
>All time favorite, lost classic... Spanky and Our Gang's '68 Mercury LP
>"Without Rhyme or Reason B/W Anything You Choose."
>
>A 6-T's monster of sonic innovation! Dropdead gorgeous pop, makes yer
>skin crawl. Absolutely timeless.
>
>Anybody here agree?
I just got this a couple years ago, and I was impressed by just how odd it
is in spots, and not in an annoying forced way like a lot of similar bands
did around the same time. I wonder how much of the unusually downbeat tone
of the record is due to the group having lost a key member just before it
was recorded.
But when it comes to Spanky and Our Gang, I always gotta go with the
singles: "Lazy Day," "Sunday Morning" (the best version of any Margot
Guryan song, I think), "Sunday Will Never Be the Same," but especially
"Like To Get To Know You," which I think is just one of the pinnacles of
'60s sunshine pop. Interestingly, I only very recently found out why this
song is so weird in the version I'm familiar with (first from the radio,
then from the compilation SPANKY'S GREATEST HIT(S)): it's got a coda that's
nearly half of the length of the entire song! Turns out that version is an
edit from the original LP, which had the coda as a separate coda at the end
of the album. The two parts don't really fit together, but I can't imagine
hearing them separated now. It would be like hearing "Uncle Albert" apart
from "Admiral Halsey."
Our Man In Montreal, Rick Gagnon, recently sent me a copy of a best-of by
the French pop star Michel Polnareff. I just listened to it for the first
time tonight, but on first exposure, it seems I have something new to look
for the next time I'm in the World section on the second floor of Sam the
Record Man in Toronto: Polnareff sounds like a younger, less pervy Serge
Gainsbourg minus the jazz influence and adding a rather large dose of
freakbeat experimentation. ("Less pervy" is a relative term: apparently,
Polnareff became a transvestite in the '70s, and there's a famous poster of
him dressed like Bowie on the cover of THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD, looking
over his shoulder and flashing his bare bum at the camera.) Even the later
stuff, from the '70s -- the time when all of French pop decided en masse to
make records that make the Carpenters sound like the Dead Boys -- sounds
more like ABBA than Cliff Richard. Recommended for anyone else into this
sort of thing.
S
NP: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee live at the Golden Vanity, Boston, c. 1959
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