Super Hits of The 70s: Have A Nice Day, Vol. 3

So difficult, I L.O.V.E. Neanderthal Man and Indiana Wants Me.

The song was the first to be recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, England, on new four-track Ampex equipment purchased by studio owners Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman and Peter Tattersall. It featured a simple repeated chorus and a heavy drum rhythm that Gouldman's manager, Harvey Lisberg, has claimed became influential in pop music. He said: "I think a lot of people were very influenced by 'Neanderthal Man', which was something new in drum sounds, using four drums on a four-track machine. When Gary Glitter came along with his records, I thought I could hear the same sort of sound deep down in there. I think there were a lot of other people who copied the sound, maybe unintentionally."[1]

Stewart recalled that when the recording equipment had been set up, Kevin Godley set up his drum kit, Lol Creme got out his guitar and Stewart sat down at the control desk. "It was the first time we'd had a real control desk with a four-track machine and we were excited to try it all out," he said. "The whole thing was just an experiment because Kevin wanted to lay all sorts of different drum beats down that he hadn't recorded before, and there was this crazy sort of nursery rhyme that had just got into our heads."

"As we laid down the drum tracks, Lol was singing in the studio with Kevin keeping time – and after we'd laid four drum tracks down Lol's voice came through at a very high level, sounding like something none of us had ever heard before on a record. It really sounded very strange, so we carried on working on the number, adding little bits of piano to it."[1]

By good fortune, Dick Leahy of Philips Records, (the Record company that had released all the singles by Stewart's former band The Mindbenders on its Fontana label), was in the Manchester area on business and visited the studio. When he asked Stewart what they had been working on, Stewart played the "Neanderthal Man" tape they had just completed. Stewart said Leahy immediately claimed, "It's fabulous! It's a hit record!" and offered a ₤500 advance. The advance was particularly timely for Stewart, who was considering selling his house and moving to something smaller to provide him with more funding for the studio.

He said the first task was to create a name for the band: "We had no name for the group, of course. But we had a girl at the studio… Kathy Gill, I think her name was, who had very, very nice legs and she used to wear these incredible hot pants. Green, leather hot pants. So we called the group Hotlegs."

There's a great video to go with it, somewhere out there in YouTubeLand.

Noiiiiiice. Been listening to v. 3 this morning in anticipation of the thread. This is getting harder and harder. Partridge Family is bleh and easily chucked, and the Bobby Sherman is overly-schmaltzy, but the rest are legit contenders. I think I'll personally discount the Melanie track because, although that thing is epic and amazing, it doesn't quite feel like it fits. Thank u to this series for introducing me to it, though.

Had no idea about the 10cc/Hotlegs connection! 'Neanderthal Man' is great.

Jerry Reed might be the paragon which all novelty songwriters should aspire to. Most of his goofs are still legitimately good tunes.

I'd say I love five of these:

1. "Tighter, Tighter"
2. "In the Summertime"
3. "Julie, Do Ya Love Me"
4. "I Think I Love You"
5. "Lay Down"

Real close between the top two. Have never heard, or even heard of, "Fallin' Lady."

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/cryptosicko/playlist/6FKN6m4gSFM9GbneYWGSu5?si=av_Nv_FOQIy-MFY6jZWvAQ

Missing "Neanderthal Man" and "Fallin' Lady." Also had to go with the full-length album version of the Melanie song, since I couldn't find the edit that is included here.

My fave is problematic :)

If we're thinking of the same song, we litigated that one on ILM a while back to some controversy.

"Neanderthal Man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e0qYP_PTlY

"Fallin' Lady"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxQ1IXw3TcU

Yeah I’m sure we have! I’m also not gonna hunt that thred down tho. I would offer that it’s probably not (?) MORE problematic than Arizona, which is super problematic, which I voted for.

"Fallin' Lady" sounds like Gene Pitney on crank BTW.

Punch is Two-male, two-female californian folk pop band. This is the first single from their debut LP "Punch" released in 1971. The song Bubbling Under Chart at number 110 the week of October 2, 1971.

Here's the short version of "Lay Down"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlp3wmE4bbI

It's the rare fifty-year-old pop cultural artifact which isn't problematic in one respect or another.

might vote for "Amos Moses", fond memories of driving round the backwoods of San Andreas

Countdown To Hot Takes On "Amos Moses"...

Can't not vote for Jerry Reed.

I had never heard/heard of "Fallin' Lady" either; guess that #110 chart position had something to do with that. That's a pretty good song!

If the problematic one is "In The Summertime" yeah, I get that, but the problem never registered with adolescent me, who played the 45 to death. And that's my vote.

I genuinely don't know which of these is being singled out as THE problematic one.

I would've assumed 'Gypsy Woman'.

That’s the OTHER one

Is the problem with the Mungo Jerry track the endorsement of drinking and driving? If not, I'm not sure I geddit.

If her daddy's rich take her out for a meal
If her daddy's poor just do what you feel

Shrugemoji

I've always been too annoyed with the song on musical grounds to be offended by its lyrics.

I'm not sure I could wholly express what it is I hate about the song; I suspect that the very things that people love about it are the same things that I find obnoxious.

Today I’m really feeling Montego Bay

Today I’m really feeling Montego Bay

i've now heard melanie and hotlegs and gene pitney on crank for the first time. i only really knew mungo from the previous ilm litigation.

i don't think i'm qualified to vote in this poll, but i won't let that stop me yet. larnin. it's what we do.

As for Jerry Reed, I suspect that he is one of those figures that, if I'd lived through the 70s, I would have hated the way that I hated, say, Billy Ray Cyrus when I was a kid, but I mostly regard him as a curiosity, part of a weird cultural moment that produced things like "Convoy," Smokey and the Bandit and, later, The Dukes of Hazard. He even was even a "guest star" on Scooby Doo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWG_R6SjUNY

Oh I love that swamp countryfunk thing. Amos Moses is a great song. Thought it was a Tony Joe White at first.

Hmm, maybe I need to read through the ILM litigation of 'In The Summertime' but that lyric seems...pretty innocuous? I don't think there's anything in the context of the song that suggests 'do what you feel' = 'get as handsy as you like' rather than 'do whatever you collectively choose to do as an alternative to going out for a meal'.

^^^ totes agree with this reading.

Keep in mind that lyricists of this general era were not at all subtle about treating women like objects when that was the message they were trying to convey.

Good point.

LOL I forgot about "In the Summertime", I thought the problem might lie with the protagonist of "Indiana Wants Me" murdering someone for talking dirty to his wife - sticks and stones and all that.

When I was going through one of my obsessive binges on every charting single of a given year, there was one that jumped out at me (like '62 or '63) as one replete with songs about casually shooting the people in their lives over relatively minor infractions.

(I'm going to resist the urge to reconstruct that grammatical disaster of a sentence and trust that y'all got the general thrust.)

damn the past is a foreign country sometimes

def not voting bobby sherman because i am dead now

Bobby Sherman's continued presence in the pop charts of this era reminds me of some Clowes drawing of a grotesque-looking elderly adult gaudily dressed as a teen and fooling exactly no one.

Despite hearing all of these at some point, I had never heard of Bobby Bloom - other collaborations, accidentally shooting himself at 28.

w/r/t Mungo Jerry - at about the age of 9 I understood that couplet to mean that if you were poor your father couldn't protect you.

Voting for "Indiana Wants Me" - because it sounds like a Partridge Family song, about murder.

If her daddy's rich take her out for a meal
If her daddy's poor just do what you feel

We did go over this, and I'm not especially eager to do it again, but if the guy's saying he'll take a rich girl to dinner but do what he feels like with a not-rich girl, how do you make the leap to rape? How do go right past "She's not rich, so we'll skip dinner and just go out for a drink or a movie instead"? He's cheap, and he's found a convenient out for his cheapness. I just find it bizarre that anyone can read menace into "In the Summertime."

"do you go"

Mungo Jerry looks like a motherfucker with some dark secrets

https://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0003/762/MI0003762461.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

I wouldn’t let him take me anywhere.

Bootsie Collins is a Jerry Reed fan. He shared "Amos Moses" a few months back online.

Jerry Reed had this movie/tv persona, but he was one of the better guitar players in country music.

I love "Green Eyed Lady". That is one swanky guitar riff. The long version is the good one. To me, it's a bit like "Blinded by the Light" in that it is this pop song, but has this extended structure that circles around.

Partridge Family has a more pedestrian beat and a less groovy arrangement than I remember.

'Green-Eyed Lady' pretty unbeatable here.

Wow, one of the members, Bruce Sudano, was married to Donna Summers. Also, according to his Wikipedia page:

Alive N Kickin' did a promotional tour of the United States as the opening act for Chicago and Frank Zappa.

The strongest shit i give about this is that donna summer was just called donna summers, which is like calling pres grant “pres grants.”

James redd this is pure age bias on my part pls excuse-

Dang, I can’t believe I made such a typo. Please accept apologies from aging brain.

Must have been getting some noise from Match Game in there.

Also spell checker part of my brain was in Apollo 11 overload loop on whether it was
Alive and Kicking
Alive N Kickin’
Alive ‘N Kickin’

Unfortunately for the one hit by Alive and Kicking, I only hear Simple Minds every time their band name is evoked.

I finally voted. For 'Montego Bay'. Because I figure it's good enough to get one vote.

Regretting my vote for 'Montego Bay' rn.

It has good percussion.

Unfortunately, it did presage the crop of excessive 'WHOOA-OHH-OHH-OHHHH'-ing slathered all over the pop songs and commercial jingles of today.

The strongest shit i give about this is that donna summer was just called donna summers, which is like calling pres grant “pres grants.”

― Hunt3r

i'm calling him "president grants" from now on

"Montego Bay" invented K-Tel World Music, so a meaningful vote.

Amos Moses

“In the Summertime” and it’s not even close. Michael Daddino says in that 1971 mixcloud thread that there was a lot of bad music released in 1971. I thought he was wrong until I heard this album and it turns out he’s right! The Melanie song is horrid! Thing is I’ve always been looking at 1971 through a rock lens (L.A. Woman, Sticky Fingers, Who’s Next, Maggot Brain). These Have a Nice Day comps are great because it’s giving me a whole side of the 70s that I never knew about. All I knew about Bobby Sherman came from that Simpsons episode where Marge admits she used to have a crush on him and Lisa makes fun of her.

Definitely in the summertime

A lot of bad music has been released every year ever, but the notion that '71 is a bad year for music is quite frankly insane. It only suffers in comparison to the couple of years that followed, which were some of the best years for music ever.

(Which is all kinda beside the point, as this comp mostly covers 1970.)

all in for Tommy James here.

These Have a Nice Day comps are great because it’s giving me a whole side of the 70s that I never knew about.

One thing that's surprised me so far is how few of these songs actually became genuine "oldies". I started seriously listening to Oldies radio in '96-7 when a lot of early '70s songs began getting added to playlists--that's definitely how I know "In The Summertime", which was jammed multiple times daily, and "Tighter, Tighter". But a lot of these seemingly missed the cut.

Much to my surprise, I'm going to have to vote for "Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)" - Melanie isn't generally my cup of tea but this is a belter. Bonus points for the 'industrial' video too. This just pips "In the Summertime" (I do not recognise the jurisdiction of that ILM kangaroo court). Hotlegs? OK a great groove but there's not much of a song here.

Of the tracks new to me, the stand outs were "Green-Eyed Lady" (need to listen to more Sugarloaf on this evidence) and "Montego Bay" (moog bass?). But I liked Brian Hyland singing Curtis too, oh and Jerry Reed but LOL at the empty seats in that supposedly sold out concert in the Scooby Doo clip.

A good volume all round. The 70s are still struggling to create an identity for itself at this point and the varied music reflects that.

Yeah, WTF is up with that Melanie vid? Because when I think "Lay Down", I think giant concrete pipe farm.

I love that Melanie video for how bizarre the disconnect is.

But a lot of these seemingly missed the cut.

Just the nature of radio in every era, no? There are so many amazing '50s songs that have vanished, even though they were moderate hits in their day. A big world gets narrowed to a small percentage of songs that never go away, and sometimes the weeding out seems rather arbitrary. And with K-Tel, you tend to be working at the margins anyway.

The 70s are still struggling to create an identity for itself at this point

Definitely the story of '70-71--there's still a hangover/vacuum from the Beatles break-up. For me, that identity starts to take shape around '72 with Led Zeppelin, Bowie (glam in general, maybe the first really new '70s thing), Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and Steely Dan. Then disco, then punk, etc.

I don't know if I would judge a year by the Have A Nice Day series, which by design is highlighting the more, um, macrame aspects of the charts.

I mean Tapestry came out in 1971, which is as clear a line as any in the 70s.

Tapestry was monumental, but I think of it still being very much a '60s album; the singer-songwriter moment ('70-'72, when they were crossing over for #1 pop hits), to me, kept the '60s going for a couple of extra years--Dylan lingering, basically. (The feminist significance of Tapestry, yes, you can say that's new...a self-penned album by a woman selling ungodly numbers of records.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow...Three Brides, Three Bridesmaids. This was a packed volume. I went with "Tighter, Tighter" in the end.

I'm glad that "In the Summertime" has broken free of Harvey Weinstein.

“Have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what drunk driving fatalities look like, you irresponsible piece of shit.”

It's terrible how many drunk drivers have gotten off over the years with the Mungo Jerry defense.

"Mungo Jerry Only Pawn In Game Of Life..."

'71 was huge for, like, soul (what's going on), singer-songwriter (tapestry), british rock (hunky dory, who's next, the fourth zep album, master of reality, etc., etc.), but the biggest american rock albums of the year were by the doors, joplin, and hendrix. three guesses as to what they had in common.

ah missed this!

Would have voted for I Think I Love You or Tighter Tighter, but there’s a lot to love on this volume!

when i did the Bridesmaid polls i included second and third place finishes. so if you went by that for this one then it would be six. (FYI)

many xposts

I'll see about that, but remember this is a 25-Volume series, so with ties, it won't be feasible to include both on a 50 nom ballot.

good point. Just Can't Get Enough was 15 Volumes and that took 37 selections. you would probably have to run two.

I'd never heard of "Amos Moses" and "Green-Eyed Lady" before this poll. Seems like most of the American songs on these collections made no impression on this side of the Atlantic.

I wouldn't doubt it. Seems like it was much easier breaking Brit one-offs over here (see: the career of Tony Burrows) than vice-versa. Did Jerry Reed have any visibility across the pond prior to his movie career (and even then, was there an audience for his films over there)?

I hope all of the people who've just now been exposed to 'Green Eyed Lady' for the first time are non-Americans who've never heard a lick of classic pop radio. Otherwise I don't know how that's even possible.

But I'm jealous of you, whatever the circumstances!

Super Hits of The 70s: Have A Nice Day, Vol. 4

Did Jerry Reed have any visibility across the pond prior to his movie career (and even then, was there an audience for his films over there)?

What films? Also, Jerry Who?

in my house, yes

https://youtu.be/Ni8KBhnebwE

Get thee to a Smokey and the Bandit, Tom. It's a good time.

Jerry Reed seems like the funnest guy ever, imo.

Jerry Who? Jerry Lou

JER’REED

Ah, Wikipedia:

The song tells the story of a one-armed Cajun alligator hunter named Amos Moses, who was "named after a man of the cloth," son of Doc and Hanna Milsap, who lives "about 45 minutes southeast of Thibodaux, Louisiana" (which, at the rate of a mile per minute, would be near Galliano, Louisiana),