Time Machine week 93

Today, we lurch into October 7th, 1962, and the big news today occurred on the game show What's My Line.  From IMDB:

During the October 7, 1962 broadcast, an intruder made his way to the camera range while the panel was blindfolded for the mystery guest round (the mystery guest that night was Melina Mercouri). The intruder was quickly escorted off the sound stage by Johnny Olsen and executive producer Gil Fates. The only panelist who apparently realized what had happened was Victor Borge, who joked about it during his next turn at questioning. According to Gil Fates, the intruder seemed to be promoting a personal dating service. Fates wrote facetiously many years later, "I guess the cops eventually let him go, because as far as I know no one has ever made it a crime to deliver a commercial on television."

The gentleman on the left, there, tried to say, "I've come here tonight to talk about...", but Host John Daly said "No."  I listened carefully to the video, but at no point did I hear Johnny Olsen ask him to "Come on down"...  ah, the joys of live TV.


Welcome to Time Machine, where we shall have no such interruptions (As long as I avoid bringing in the Idiocy Prevention Bureau again), we have for your viewing pleasure 5 American top 40s on the UK list; the return of the Greatest American Hero (kinda); a Dick Clark cameo (again, kinda); and we see if a few weeks difference from when I was GOING to do 1962 keeps Sherry from being a landslide winner again!  Oh, and those four songs from last week's M10 I said were great #1 candidates?  Well, they are ALL in the top five- and ONE of them is the new number one!  Put on your blindfold and make yer guesses, it's time to rock!

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Before we kick things off I have a special treat.  As you might guess, there are a lot of songs on my "top tens" shuffle that never quite make it into the M10.  One such act is a young man who is a legend in Saharan Africa, Omar "Bombino" Moctar.  He is of Tuareg stock, born in Niger, but has been forced out of his native land twice during Tuareg rebellions because "the guitar is an instrument of rebellion", sayeth the government.  But on that second exile, to Burkina Faso, he got discovered- and he is a sensational guitar player.  Here he is with the tune on my shuffle, Akhar Zaman (This Moment):





(Who says this isn't a multicultural experience here?)

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So our Panel this week is:  WBBW Youngstown OH; KJR Seattle; WMCA New York; KRLA Los Angeles; WDRC Hartford; KUTT Fargo; WNOR Norfolk; WAKY Louisville; KFJZ Ft Worth; WARM Wilkes-Barre; KMEA San Bernardino; and KDWB Minneapolis.  They dredged together 21 different songs, including our bottom charters:  The Beach Boys' 409, which wasn't charting on Cashbox as it was the flip of Surfin' Safari, though Billboard had it at #78;  and The Routers, an instrumental group, with Let's Go (Pony), which would eventually make BBs top 20 but was #107 here this week.

They also collected a variety of #1s, as it wasn't until the seventh station I checked that I got a repeater at the top!  The #1s that didn't make the Panel Four were the Crystals' He's A Rebel (Seattle), Booker T and the MGs with Green Onions (New York), Chris Montez' Let's Dance (Norfolk), and Brenda Lee's All Alone Am I (Ft Worth).  As for the Panel Four:

At #4 with 21 points and the #1 from Hartford, Bobby "Boris" Pickett et al with The Monster Mash, which was at #3 nationally.

At numbers 2-3, a tie.  Each with 2 number one votes and 26 points.  They are The Contours with Do You Love Me (#1s courtesy San Bernie and Los Angeles, and nationally #8), and Dickey Lee with Patches ( Fargo and Minneapolis, #5).  Very strong geographic connections there!

And at #1, with 3 #1 votes and 38 points... I know you can guess, but wait for it anyway.


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Debuting at #10 on the M10 is a band from Philly who started out named after the one guy's ex-girlfriend, Joy something-or-another.  She complained, so they changed to something completely stupid and politically incorrect.  Finally, a bandmate said, "Why don't we just go back to being Joy again?"  And thus they became Joy Again, and their song is this one:






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I really need to put more thought into who and what kind of quote I use to open this section.  But since I didn't, here's some wisdom from John Cleese:

If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat? 

Exactly.  Now, time to...

10- Adam Faith makes another appearance here, something he never did in the US of A, with his tune Don't That Beat All.

9- Ray Charles' You Don't Know Me had just dropped of the US chart last week.

8- Frank Ifield was at #9 here with I Remember You.

7- Brian Hyland peaked here at #3 back in July with Sealed With A Kiss.

6- Carole King with one of her early solo efforts, It Might As Well Rain Until September (never a good thing to say in October), which sat at #29 back home.

5- Little Eva had already been to the top and was on the way down at #25 with The Loco-Motion.

4- Also on the way down in the states at #11 was Tommy Roe's Sheila.

3- Where would we be without the English Elvis, Cliff Richard on the UK chart?  He was up here with It'll Be Me.

2- The American Elvis, er, that is, Elvis Presley, was on his way down back home with She's Not You at #26.

And tops of the pops?

... the Tornadoes and Telstar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It was three weeks away from hitting the American charts.


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The debut at #9 on the M10 belongs to music vet Benji Hughes with a very Gilbert O'Sullivan-esque tune...





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Remember The Greatest American Hero?

Maybe not the show (though I do), but certainly (if you're an old-timer like me) the #1 theme song, better known as Believe It Or Not.  That was the one big hit for Joey Scarbury, though he'd been around a while by then.  His next biggest song was an AC hit in 1973, a cover of the old tune I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Right Me A Letter.  How old?  Well, Fats Waller was the first to chart it, hitting #5 in 1936, followed by the Boswell Sisters hitting #3 that same year- the year the sisters retired and leader Connee Boswell went solo.  17 years later, she also charted it, hitting #29.  But our key block here is one Billy Williams, who hit #3 in 1957.  His rendition was the very first guest performance on Dick Clark's very first American Bandstand on August 5th, 1957.

Now, the very LAST guest appearance was a tune called Shattered Glass by Laura Branigan.  She is better known for her hits Gloria and Self Control, the latter a tune recorded just before her by an Italian singer name Raf, and the two of them dueled across Europe in 1987- in fact, Raf's version hit #1 in Switzerland by squeezing in between weeks that Branigan's version was on top!  The tune was later redone by an act called Infernal- in a performance our good friend Shady featured not long ago!  This comes up because Infernal-ite Paw Lagermann helped Danish pianist Bent Fabricus-Bjerre- better known as Bent Fabric- on his 2006 comeback lp!  And in case you don't remember just what he was coming back from, he had the 1962 international hit instrumental Alley Cat- which sat at #6 this week but got no Panel love.

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And now, the M10, or what's left of it.


Judy slips 4 to #8, but still gives Castlecomer the biggest of their 4 M10 hits.

In fact, the rest of the way to the top five is droppers- Shakes one notch to 7 with the former #1 Strange Tides, and Keane to #6 with last week's runner up Somewhere Only We Know.

Agnes Obel squeezes into the top five, up 2 with Golden Green.

Leaping 5 to #4 is Lucius with Pulling Teeth.

Holding at #3, Shakes back again with Tranquilize.

Slipping (for the moment, maybe?) to #2, Dent May with Face Down In The Gutter Of Your Love.

And the #1s?  M10 says...

After a five week absence from the top, The Explorers Club leap from 5 to 1 for their second top dog, Quietly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And the Panel?  C'mon, guys...

...the Four Seasons, nationally in their 5th week of a six-week run at the top, with Sherry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  But at least this time it was a LITTLE closer...


Target date 1979 next week!  See you then!