Time Machine week 115

It's April 11th, 1972, and even the press can't get a decent story.  For example:

For the first time, the deliberations of the United States bishops of the Roman Catholic Church were opened to the press. Seventy-five reporters were invited to the meeting, held in Atlanta. Cardinal John Krol then delivered his speech in Latin. Cardinal Krol told reporters, "We told you we'd let you in. We didn't tell you what language we'd talk."  (Wiki)

So you start out with, "Tu exaudi unumde monacham flavo..."
(Butchered Latin for, "did you hear the one about the blonde nun...")

Welcome to a run of the mill Time Machine.  As one can see from last week's comments, all my begging and proselytizing netted me exactly one BOTB's vote, so I don't think I shall try the "audience interaction" thing anymore.  I guess I should expect it, when blogs with bigger readerships than mine get a fraction of their following to vote on stuff.  Not that I mind if you just comment, I appreciate them all, but... id est, quid sit.  Anyway, I'll try to shake off my mopeyness and general exhaustion from the workaday world to give you a decent show anyway.  This week, we have a six degrees that... uh, well....frankly, we had three songs dropping in the top ten (which is the rule for 6D), and I got one that I really did all I could do before, one that was a complete dead end, and one I did LAST week.  But on the 45 @ 45, I found... virtually nothing.  But I do have an Army Unit (not American) in the #1s lookaround... I have an incredible... er... five hot hundred debuts to work with...and we meet the King of Country Music... in Ireland... Oh!  And a new #1 #2 #3 #4 song... sigh.  On the bright side, you aren't paying money for the trip, and there is some good music, so hop in.

And NO refunds!

Our look around the world's #1s sees three changes this week.  In the UK, The Royal Scots Dragoon Guard hits the top with a song that will be showing up in some other countries later on as well-  Amazing Grace.  The pipe and drum corps version will eventually sell some 7 million copies by 1977.  In Ireland, it is yet another showband song, this one by the aforementioned King of Country Music in Ireland, one "Big Tom"  McBride, headlining the Mainliners, with a tune called Broken Marriage Vows.  It would be the second of 4 chart toppers in the Emerald Isle for Big Tom and crew.  And finally, showing up late to the party, Canada hoists Donny Osmond and Puppy Love to the top.

Here at home, the consensus- Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh- all go for The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.  The lone holdout was LA, where Malo's Suavecito hits the top.  Malo fares not so well elsewhere- 22 in Pittsburgh, 28 on one Chi-town station and 34 on the other, 26 in Minneapolis, and nowhere to be heard in Detroit.  I think it's a great song myself, but whadda I know?

That brings us to our hot 100 debuts, and out of that massive list of five, I'll further trim things to two.  The Chi-Lites come in at 88 with their classic Oh, Girl; David Bowie comes in at 95 with Changes.

Turn to face this week's birthday songs, where for a change we won't have a Beatles song turning 50 this time.  Turning 30 is Eddie's sonnet to Valerie, Van Halen's I'll Wait, along with Cyndi Lauper's beautiful Time After Time and Laura Brannigan's lurid Self Control.  Turning thirty-five, hey, here's a funny one.  Remember this comment from last week's birthday songs?

 Turning 35, Supertramp's The Logical Song (which we always thought should have been the title of the Dr Hook hit that starts:  "When you're in love with a beautiful woman, it's hard")...

This week, it's Dr Hook with When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman!  Well, I thought it was funny.  Along with the good Dr's tune, Olivia Newton-John's Deeper Than The Night turns 35, along with, of course, Frank Zappa's Dancin' Fool.

Turning 40, we have Wings and Band On The Run... and speaking of running, Ray Stevens' The Streak... along with another funny happenstance.  Gordon Lightfoot's Sundown and Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods' Billy Don't Be A Hero come in together 40 years ago this week.  The happenstance comes with my very first trip to buy my very first single at King's Department Store in good ol' New Haven.  I narrowed it down to two choices.  One was on it's way down- Sundown.  The other was on it's way up- BD and the H's follow up to Billy, Who Do You Think You Are.  Not sure why, but I took Bo over Gordon.  Hey, I wasn't even 12 yet!

Turning 45, Sly and the Family Stone with Stand!, Donovan's pretty-much spoken word hit Atlantis, and a cult classic from the Neon Philharmonic, a top 20 hit called Morning Girl.  Turning 50, The Four Seasons' Ronnie, Roy Orbison's It's Over, and Babs Streisand with People.  Finally a tune turning 55 which you might recall from the Great 50s Countdown- Martin Denny's instrumental Quiet Village.  Blow Out The Candles...

The big mover this week is Paul Simon's latest, Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard, up 22 spots to #52.  A survivor of one of our "Guess who had the highest debut" contests, Laura Lee's Since I Fell For You takes the biggest fall, 45 straight down to #93.  Boy, did she fall for you!

I suppose you think that's funny...

And the rather truncated 45 at 45 this week belongs to an outfit from Milwaukee, WI, called Thee Prophets (no, I didn't hit the "e" once too many) with a song called Playgirl.  A pretty good song IMHO, it peaked at 49 and was basically one of those late sixties Chicago local area hits.  It was written by Keith and Linda Colley, whose only top 40 success as writers was a #29 by The Knickerbockers called One Track Mind.  The Knicks were best known, BTW, for the Beatles sound-alike Lies which made top 20 in '65.  The group was produced by Carl Bonafede, who also worked with the Buckinghams on Kind Of A Drag.  Thee Prophets' next single, a King-Goffin tune named Some Kind-A Wonderful,  missed the hot 100 (and shouldn't have), and that was pretty much all she wrote.

Bringing us to the top forty debuts this week, a group of eight.  At 40, up 11, Wings make it stateside with Give Ireland Back To The Irish.  Next are the Nite-Liters, who were just in the survey a while back with the song that refused to keep going down, K-Jee; their latest is called Afro-Strut, and it climbs three to break in at 39.  Al Green moves from 53 to 38 with Look What You've Done For Me, yet another of his many Let's Stay Together sound alikes.  Malo cracks the 40 with Suavecito up ten spots to 37.  Ringo Starr hits at 36, up 13 with Back Off Boogaloo; up ten to 33, Badfinger with Baby Blue.  And the high debut, up 11 to #30, Nilsson with Jump Into The Fire, one of those songs I said, "Oh, yeah, I remember this" upon playing.

One candidate for Almost But Not Quite this week- David Cassidy, with another graduate from that same guess-the-debut class, Could It Be Forever.  It begins its descent after peaking at 15 last time.

One song jumps- and I do mean jumps- into the top ten, so one falls out.  That would be Cher, with The Way Of Love, falling from 10 to fifteen.  I guess we could do a mini-6D on this one.  The song was originally in French written for a French singer named Frederica to sing in the Eurovision contest of 1960.  But... she didn't make it through the national prelims, and apparently never did end up recording it.  Next it was taken on by Brit Kathy Kirby before Cher... but let's see what Wiki has to say about it:

Allmusic editor (Name not mentioned) wrote a favorable review: "some great moments, among them a career highlight in the two-and-a-half-minute opening track, "The Way of Love." The Stillman/Dieval tune was originally a British hit for Kathy Kirby, and both Cher and Kirby drove the song right by the censors. The song is either about a woman expressing her love for another woman, or a woman saying au revoir to a gay male she loved -- in either case this is not a mother to daughter heart-to-heart:


Now, I've listened to the song and read the lyrics- and I don't see what this editor saw.  I mean, if you wanted to stretch it to prove an agenda, maybe... but I hardly think Joe Public is going to get the inference.  And the unnamed editor also screwed up the Kirby chart history, claiming that hers was a "British hit", when it never charted there- but hit #88 HERE.

I suppose, in a final bit of irony, if you want to buy the lesbian take- one of Kirby's biggest hits WAS a cover of Secret Love that she took to #3 in 1963.  But, that again would be an agenda-driven stretch.

Kathy at 1965 Eurovision, where she was runner up with I Belong.

Since I've already given the ball away in the intro-  Horse With No Name takes a third week at number one, Heart Of Gold a third week at #2, and Puppy Love a second week at #3, let's count down to the new NUMBER FOUR song:



The Lion Sleeps at #10, down a single notch for Robert John.

The Chakachas, who defied my every attempt at making a 6D from them, slide down 3 to #9 with Jungle Fever.

Mother And Child Reunion begins to fall, dropping from #4 to # 8.

Joe Tex, sticking his tongue out at James Brown all the way, climbs one more notch to #7 with I Gotcha.

The Dramatics move In The Rain up a notch to #6.

Not surprisingly jumping NINE spots to #5, Roberta Flack with The First Time Ever I Saw Your face.

And this week's new number four song...

Michael Jackson and Rockin' Robin!!!!

(Hey, check out the b-side on that record!  Stalking Diana Ross even back then...?)

Okay, I had fun.  Did you have fun?  Good.  See you next week.  And whatever you do, DON'T VOTE!!!