New Town Animals

 

A fun little oddity for you today, in the shape of a one-sided flexidisc issued in 1979 by the marketing agency charged with trying to attract shoppers to Central Milton Keynes, and specifically to its new retail outlet, The Centre: MK, which was opened on 25 September 1979 by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

 

Milton Keynes, now the biggest town in Buckinghamshire, was incorporated in January 1967, part of a scheme to build new towns to deal with Britain’s expanding population. Named after an ancient settlement in the area, this new town swallowed up existing small towns and villages, including Bletchley, Middleton, Stony Stratford, and Wolverton. Often ridiculed as an example of what not to do in terms of town planning and modernist architecture, the new town of Milton Keynes would also provide the subject for a 45 release by the Style Council (Come to Milton Keynes), and Sir Cliff Richard filmed his infamous roller skating video for Wired For Sound there too.  

 

The track, You’ve Never Seen Anything Like It has the credit ‘music by Ronnie Bond’, rather than ‘performed by Ronnie Bond’ or simply ‘Ronnie Bond’. Bond was the former drummer of The Troggs who, by the end of the 1970s, was starting to make a name for himself writing advertising jingles. He wrote the famous Lee Cooper ad Don’t Be A Dummy, originally recorded by Gary Numan while still a member of Tubeway Army, before being re-recorded for 45 release by John Du Cann. He also penned It’s Written On Your Body for rival denim company Levi’s, scoring a minor UK chart hit with the resulting single release.

 

But that is not Ronnie Bond singing on You’ve Never Seen Anything Like It. Bond had a very distinct, pinched nasal voice, nothing like the rich baritone on display here. I wonder who that anonymous session singer is. Any suggestions?

 

Milton Keynes was not the only town to get its own corporate anthem, of course: let’s not forget the wonderful Energy in Northampton or the remarkable It’s a Leicester Fiesta. The Centre: MK is now a Grade II listed building. Looks like the town planners had the last laugh there.

 

Enjoy!

Download Never Seen HERE

It's a Hit, By Cracky!

Here’s a fun little disc, not in any way ‘the worst’ of anything, but a real oddity that you might not have the opportunity to hear otherwise.

 

Produced in 1967, the By Cracky Beat and flip side Gikki/Gong were issued in Canada to promote the By Cracky! candy bar, for Canadian chocolate company Lowney’s, and was given away to kids at schools, via radio promotions and - I would assume - in stores.

 

Born in 1855, Walter MacPherson Lowney began manufacturing chocolate bonbons in Boston in 1883. Seven years later he established the Walter M. Lowney Company and, in 1905, he opened the Walter M. Lowney Company of Canada, Ltd., with a factory in Montreal. The company was eventually taken over by the giant Hershey corporation.

 

Both compositions are credited to Mamorsky, Zimmermann and Hamm, the owners of MZH (later to become MZH & F Music Productions), a New York-based company that specialised in advertising jingles. Morris Mamorsky (1910-2003) was an orchestra leader and composer, and once conducted the NBC Orchestra; Tommy Hamm was a member of the vocal group The Mello-larks, who released the 1959 album Just For a Lark. Jack Zimmermann was a guitarist, bass player, orchestra leader and professional whistler who, in 1956, issued the album The Whistler and His Dog on Golden Crest Records.

 

Their company was responsible for many famous jingles, including I Am Stuck On Band-Aid that was composed for MZH by Barry Manilow before he made it big. Manilow worked on many advertising campaigns, including ones for McDonald's, KFC, and Dodge trucks, and in 1976 he won an award for MHZ for composing and performing a jingle for the soft drink Tab. For a short period in the early-to-mid 70s they owned a recording studio in Manhattan, MZH Studio (which later became Celebration Studios, equipped with a 24 track Dolby dbx desk), used by Loudon Wainwright III and Meco (he recorded his disco-fied version of the Star Wars theme there) amongst others.

 

There’s no credit for the vocalists or instrumentalists on either side of this great little disc, however it has been suggested that the vocal act could be the Toronto-based Laurie Bower Singers, formed by trombone player Bowers, who did most of their work for TV and film music specialists the Canadian Talent Library. having listened to a few contemporary recordings by the Laurie Bower Singers, I tend to concur.

 

Anyway, enjoy these fun, funky slices of 60s cheese.. or should that be chocolate?

 

Download Beat HERE

Download Gong HERE

The Legend of Jan Terri

I have featured Chicago-based singer and songwriter Jan Terri on the blog before, briefly mentioning the outsider music legend in the 2018 Christmas cavalcade, but its high time she had a dedicated post all of her own. There can be no question that she deserves it.

 

Born Janice Spagnolia on 17 June 1959, the showbiz bug bit early. Jan’s father was an aspiring singer, who used to perform in local bars in costume as Elvis, and in blackface as Sammy Davis Junior (she denies he was ever known as the Black Elvis, despite what you may have read elsewhere). When she was just five years old Jan, who grew up in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park, would perform Beatles and Elvis numbers for her school friends, complete with cheap guitar and Beatle wig.

 

She graduated in 1983, having earned a B.A. in Broadcast Communications and a Management Certificate for Sound Engineering from Columbia College. While studying, she took an internship at a recording studio run by local country bar band the Windy City Cowboys. Jan became their backup singer, and performed with them at local bars and weddings. At the same time, she began writing her own material.

 

Personal issues within her family meant putting her career on hold: Jan did not resurface until the 1990s when, while working as a limousine driver, she started recording her own material. She spent her hard earned cash and recorded half a dozen of her compositions, and made video clips to accompany them. She assembled press kits and sent them to every record company she could think of, and gave VHS tapes of her videos to various clients at the limousine service. Two self-financed albums followed, Baby Blues (1992) and High Risk (1994).

Then one of Jan’s press kits ended up in the hands of Marilyn Manson.

 

Manson was so impressed with Terri's winningly inept, yet heartfelt, enthusiasm that he brought her out to open for him at the Aragon Theatre in 1998, and she appeared as his opening act at concerts in Chicago in 1998 and 1999. She also appears in his 1999 live video God Is In The TV. Television appearances followed and her early videos started to attract attention. Losing You, from Baby Blues (which makes excellent use of Jan’s limousine), went viral - well, what amounted to viral back in the last century - and it looked like fame, of sorts, was to follow.

 

Sadly Jan was forced to put her career on hold again: she spent eight years looking after her mother (who suffered from dementia) until she passed in 2008, and in 2002 she was involved in a bad traffic accident. But in those years, while she was in a kind of forced retirement, things changed. In 2005 YouTube debuted and very soon after Jan became an international sensation. Suddenly she was an international star.

 

New recordings surfaced, including her first new album in 20 years, Wild One (2012, although much of the album was recorded back in 1997), and Holiday Songs (2014) along with the infamous 2011 comeback single Excuse My Christmas.

 

Today Jan considers herself to be retired, however recordings continue to surface, mostly digital and available from her Bandcamp page, including the planned 2013 album, I'm A Horsie (now titled High Risk), and the 2014 collection No Rules, No Boundaries. If you like what you hear please go to her page and support her: you can even order yourself a signed photograph or even a personal phone call! She is currently trying to crowdfund a new album, and you can help HERE

 

Here are a couple of my personal favourites from Jan’s catalogue: Journey to Mars and her wonderful version of Ave Maria.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Journey HERE

Download Ave HERE

Democracy Inaction

Welcome, fellow mad music enthusiasts, to the first WWR blog post of 2021. You would think, after blogging about bad music for 14 years now, that I would have run out of terrible records to bring you, but no! There’s loads more to come, new acts to discover and a whole world of madness coming your way over the next 12 months.

 

Today’s post comes as the world recovers from the insane goings on witnessed in Washington this week. The open call to arms (‘we’ll be there with you’, the Cheeto-coloured manchild raged. No you were not, you cowardly orangutan) from the 45^th President is something none of us have witnessed before. Sadly, as well as resulting in the deaths of four people and injuries to many others, this massively overshadowed what happened in Georgia, where Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeated Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, handing control of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House to the Democrats for the first time since 2009. Warnock, a Baptist pastor, becomes the first black senator for Georgia and only the eleventh black member of the Senate in US history.

 

Eleven. Eleven out of something like 2,000. Incredible.

 

To celebrate this momentous occasion, here are both sides of Pete Quinto’s 1968 45, Mr Democrat. The single originally appeared with a short spoken introduction by Sam Shapiro, 34^th Governor of Illinois, who was in office for eight short months between May 1968 and January 1969, but after his defeat by republican Richard B. Ogilvie this was dropped, and in late 1969 the song was re-written as Mr Citizen. 

 

Peter Gabriel Gianquinto was born in August 1921, in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and was known primarily as a Louis Armstrong impressionist; in fact he was the only imitator to play on the same stage with Armstrong, which he did on several occasions. He died in March 2003 after a short illness, just three years after issuing his only album, A Tribute to Louis Armstrong.

The lyrics were written by Quinto, Shirley Spilmon and Mike Vallo and the tune for both versions was composed by Vincent Chiarelli, owner of Vincent Records, which was established in Illinois in the late 1960s and still in operation today, with grandson Vince Chiarelli at the helm. The team of Chiarelli, Quino and Spilmon composed at least two other songs, Find Yourself a Girl (and Fall in Love), and The Greatest Treasure, which was copyrighted at the same time as Mr Democrat.

 

Here’s the original version, complete with spoken introduction, and the mostly-instrumental flip side.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Democrat HERE

Download Instrumental HERE