Q: What do you call a boomerang that won't come back?

A: A stick

I'm here all week -- try the veal

But seriously that song is blatantly "out-of-date. "I practiced  'til I was black in the face"??????

Sing that one today & get ready to duck.

 

 

Last edited by unclefester (August 13, 2018 10:20 am)

I'll Be Watching You by The Police

Stalking does not play well these days.


Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching youEvery single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching youOh can't you see
You belong to me
My poor heart aches
With every step you takeEvery move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I'll be watching youSince you've gone I been lost without a trace
I dream at night I can only see your face
I look around but it's you I can't replace
I feel so cold and I long for your embrace
I keep crying baby, baby, pleaseOh can't you see
You belong to me
My poor heart aches
With every step you takeEvery move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I'll be watching you
Every…
 

Last edited by Leslieville Bill (August 13, 2018 11:41 am)

https://youtu.be/Q9TXjIadhq0

I'd like to think, for the sake of mom's, wives and daughters, that this was not cool.

Last edited by Lentil (August 13, 2018 8:57 pm)

I don’t know what it says about me that “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back” was the first 45 I ever bought.  Mind you, I was about eight years old.

I remember that well, Unc.
They did play it down in Windsor, and heard it often at our cottage.  But my parents forbade me from buying the record.  As I recall, the flip side was the song played backwards...

...and here's the U.S. version.


 

Last edited by Peter the K (August 14, 2018 2:09 am)

Peter the K wrote:

...and here's the U.S. version.


 

 
What?!  No Flying Doctor?!

Paul Anka's "(You're) Having My Baby" seems pretty sexist these days.

I was a kid when it came out, and the song made me wince. Even then it felt like it was behind the times, with Helen Reddy singing "I am woman hear me roar." and the ongoing shift in the way women perceived themselves in the 70's.

Last edited by betaylored (August 16, 2018 5:32 am)

unclefester wrote:

While you could argue that it may not qualify as a "hit" the 1966 effort by Napoleon Bonaparte XIV entitled "They're Coming To Take Me Away" would never see the light of day in todays environment.

In fact Maybo may well recall the following. CHLO in St. Thomas was the big teen station in the London area back in the day. One night owner John L. Moore took to the airwaves to announce CHLO would  not play the record. He cited the fact that the city of St. Thomas was home to a large mental health/psychiatric hospital adding that the record was unkind to those suffering from mental health issues.

As a ten year old I remember listening to his on air announcement & how disappointed I was that the station wouldn't play the tune. But looking back it was pretty gutsy & the right call more than 50 years ago.

Right you are Unc. If memory serves, Napoleon XIV’s (aka Jerry Samuels) record was a CHUMdinger at one point, and heading for the Top 10 before it was summarily pulled from the chart.

maybo wrote:

As I recall, the flip side was the song played backwards...

And yes, because they didn’t have anything else to use at the time, they simply played the thing backwards on the B-side of the 45, with even the label getting into the act.


  
I was just a little kid when this song (can you call it a song?) came out and fell in love with it. But I wasn’t aware of it being played backwards until I actually bought the record. Which brought to an end an extreme misunderstanding that only a child could create.
 
One day, just after the single came out, I remember tuning through the dial (DXing even then) when I passed by a station I never listened to – CJBC, the CBC outlet at 860, which was all French even back then. What caught my ear was the sound of Napoleon XIV coming out of my speaker.
 
“Wow,” I remember thinking. “It’s such a big hit they recorded a version in French!”
 
I would find out later that they’d actually been playing the backwards B-side for some reason and having been exposed to no more Francais than Chez Helene, I instantly believed they translated it into a foreign language!

Actually that reverse flip side is listed on the front cover of the album (yes, there WAS an album, as you can see below) but it doesn’t actually appear there. Instead there’s an “answer song” by Josephine XV (Napoleon, Josephine – get it?) called “I’m Happy They Took You Away, Ha Ha,” in which the indignant female chanteuse explains why he deserves to be in the loony bin.
 
It really doesn’t make much sense for “her” to do that, since the tune was actually about a man going crazy when his dog runs away. (Hence the reference to “mangy mutt” at the end.)



Samuels always said he didn’t know what the fuss was about when the record was banned. He claims he’d passed it by a slew of people with mental difficulties and they all found it hilarious.
 
According to the book “The Wacky Top 40,” the record was the fastest selling single in Warner Bros. history at the time. It cost Samuels, a recording engineer, $30 for the tape and another $5 to rent the siren that comes on during the chorus. Not a bad investment for a song that’s still memorable - but seldom heard - to this day.

RadioActive wrote:

    
   
 


  
 
 
 
“Wow,” I remember thinking. “It’s such a big hit they recorded a version in French!”

"I found out later they'd been playing the B-side backwards."
 
 


 
 

RA -- that comment truly made me laugh out loud.

A classic -- thanks for posting it! 












 

Last edited by unclefester (August 16, 2018 10:06 pm)

I just thought of two more banned songs, but they were declared verboten for different reasons. One was because of its racial content, The other was the first (and I'm pretty sure last) Top 40 smash about cannibalism. Yes, you read that right. 

In 1967, Janis Ian came out with a kind of protest song called "Society's Child." It would hardly get a second glance today. But back then, the story of a white girl dating a black teen was positively scandalous to some. ("They called you 'boy' instead of your name" goes one lyric.) It's sad to think this was politically incorrect in its era. A lot of stations, especially in the south, wouldn't play it.

But what a powerful tune.



The other song is one of my all-time favourites. It's called "Timothy," by a one-hit wonder called The Buoys and it was written by Rupert Holmes, later of the "Pina Colada Song" fame. He was trying to get The Buoys noticed but Scepter Records, who'd signed them, wouldn't give them any attention. So while working on an arrangement for Tennessee Ernie Ford's classic "16 Tons" (for Andy Kim, no less)  he decided he'd use those opening lyrics as inspiration for a tune about cannibalism. 

The kids knew right away what it was about, but most stations put it on the air without listening to it very closely. When they found out the theme - three guys trapped in a mine for days with no food, so they ate one of them named Timothy - many pulled it off the air. Despite that censorship, it was still a hit and the only one the group ever had. 

It's such a bouncy upbeat song that it's easy to forget what the lyrics are saying. I think it's a great disc as is, even though the record company tried to save it by claiming Timothy was a mule. Holmes is adamant he wrote it about another miner - and that was what, or in this case who, they consumed.



. 

splunge wrote:

i had an old k-tel record back in the 70s that had most of those songs... coming to take me away, the witch doctor, boomerang, hello mudda, the streak, tiptoe thru the tulips etc and so on...

i'm sure if i still have it in a box somewhere it would be scratched to hell i played it so much.

i found the original spot on youtube...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_U7Ku9jAlE
 

Looney Tunes?
 

betaylored wrote:

Paul Jeffries wrote:

betaylored wrote:

Paul Anka's "(You're) Having My Baby" seems pretty sexist these days.

The Hallelujah Tabernacle Choir version is timeless though.

 
I am debating going to YouTube, to see if you're joshing me Jeffries ;)

I know the band Caravan once had a song titled "If I could do it all over, I'd do it all over you." Funny the things you remember that you read in the 'Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock' for show prep decades ago.

And, let us not forget that beloved Monty Python ditty "Sit On My Face".

We'd try to sneak it on-air every now and then late at night, praying that the PD wasn't listening.

Caravan was a great band. Started as part of the Canterbury art rock movement and were regularly featured on the first gen progressive stations such as CHUM FM but the track that got the most air play in Toronto was Land of Grey and Pink via CFNY even though it was from an earlier time,

They had a rather playfully titled album called Cunning Stunts. Invert the first letters of each word and play with a few other letters to arrive at.



 

Last edited by Fitz (August 16, 2018 9:37 pm)

And then there's this one ... I remember the original version getting played and it did sound like it contained the f-word, but I figured it had to be something else. Eventually it got replaced with a version with that part edited out.
https://soulfuldetroit.com/archives/1019-APR%20MAY%2004/3344.html?1084600875