Not-So-Super Superstreaker

I’ve just returned from a short trip to Australia, having been invited to take part in the annual Melbourne Queer Film Festival, which this year was inspired, in part, by my 2017 book David Bowie Made Me Gay.

 

I had a wonderful time: I met some amazing, creative people and got to visit an incredible city. And, while I was on the other side of the planet, I had some opportunity to dig around Melbourne’s record stores and search out a few obscurities for you to enjoy. If you are ever in the city, check out the shops on Smith Street for some real vinyl bargains!

 

And here’s the first. Not an Australian recording, but rather an American one, from the febrile mind of Gary S. Paxton – the man responsible for the Hollywood Argyles hit Alley Oop and such horrors as the 1978 anti-abortion abortion The Big A = The Big M, a number I featured on the World’s Worst Records radio Show once or twice but have not written about (yet… I shall remedy that very soon). Paxton is not credited on this particular disc, but he’s there, hiding behind the aliases ‘D. Sanford’ as co-writer, and ‘White Tornado’ as producer and arranger – a seat he filled back in 1962 for Bobby (Boris) Pickett’s Monster Mash. Paxton had previously used the name White Tornado for a one-off single, It's Hard To Be A Rock & Roll Star When You're Bald & Fat, issued by RCA in 1973.

 

Issued in the States (and elsewhere, clearly, as this copy is an Australian pressing) in 1974 at the height of the short-lived streaker craze, and credited to Flesh Gordon And The Nude Hollywood Argyles, Superstreaker was a cash-in on the runaway international success of Ray Stevens’ The Streak, a number one in the USA and the UK. Stevens single had been issued in the US in February, and Superstreaker followed just one month later. The disc, incidentally, has no obvious connection to the sex comedy Flesh Gordon which, although it was issued in the same year, was actually shot three years earlier.

 

Streaking was big business, especially in the States, where dozens of discs sought to cash in on the public’s obsession with public nudity. In April 1974 Billboard reported on several streaking-themed discs hitting the shops and the airwaves, including Streakin’ by the Red Garter Band, the Ballad of the Mad Streaker by radio disk jockey Larry Lujack, Speaking Of Streaking backed with Streak Easy by Harold Hardsell, Streakin' Parts I and II, by the Streakers, Streakin' With My Baby by the Four Guys, Streakin' Across the USA/Music To Streak By, by Rick Springfield, Let's Go Streaking, Parts I and II, from Hank Ballard, Streakin' Parts I and II, by an act calling itself Campus Security (and a different tune to the one issued by The Streakers), and Midnight Streaker/Streakin', by Jimmy Ward and the Streakers, alongside the Flesh Gordon and Ray Stevens discs.

 

A rip-off of the Olympics’ Hully Gully, although it seems to have been meant as a parody of the Streak (an odd thing considering the original was intended as a comedy record), one British review dismissed Superstreaker with a withering ‘It’s Just not very funny and the arrangement is very ordinary,’ however James Hamilton, reviewing the disc for Record Mirror liked it, saying that ‘With a group name like that you’d be right to expect a revamped version of “Alley Oop”: what you might NOT expect, though, is for it to be as good as it is. With lines like “Look up in the tree, it’s a sugar-cured ham!” – “No, it’s Superstreaker!”, it’s a veritable laffarama.’ Cash Box thought big of it too, telling its readers that Superstreaker was ‘a very cute, fun record that stations will be hopping on for the sheer novelty of it all.’

 

The B-side, Naked, is a saxophone-led quasi-instrumental with little to recommend it, composed by the disc’s musical arranger, Don Tweedy, but I have included it here for completists. Neither side was a hit anywhere (unless you count hitting the dizzy heights of 120 on the Cash Box chart), although the A-side was played quite a bit on local radio in the Philadelphia area.

 

More soon, but for now enjoy both sides of the 1974 single Superstreaker.

 

Download Superstreaker HERE  

Download Naked HERE