Some You Tube treats

As much for me as for anything else, I'd like to reference a few videos I have found on YouTube, being special to me in one way or the other as follows:

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME - Yvonne Fair/Vicar of Dibley

This was a song sung by Yvonne Fair which was in the top ten in early 1976. A beautiful song from the heart by a woman standing up in church telling the world that it should have been her at the altar with the bridegroom. Somehow, this song never seems to be played on the radio, but the song has stuck with me all of the last 30 years, so it was really wonderful to see the song be used in footage of what turned out to be the most watched TV programme of Christmas 2006, namely, The Vicar of Dibley, broadcast on Christmas Day. Here is the clip, including just one-and-a-half minutes of the song. Still, much much better than nothing.

C MOON - Paul McCartney and Wings

Going back further into the 1970's to late 1972 for this song by Wings, which was Paul McCartney's group after he left The Beatles. I imagine that this would have been one of their first singles, another simple hummable tune, great for an eleven year old, but still sounding good now. Again, it is a song which never gets played on oldies shows on the radio, so a wonderful thing to find it on YouTube, in exactly the same version that I remember seeing on Top of the Pops 35 years ago.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY - Marc Almond

This is not so much for the song, but for Marc Almond, me being and having been a great fan of his since I first heard Tainted Love at the swimming pool at St Georges School, on the Via Cassia just outside Rome, in August 1981. There is alot more to wriet about Marc, but for now, I just want to mention that he had a very bad motorcycle crash about two years ago; he was very lucky to survive and he is taking things easily nowadays. Here is he is with an uptempo number from the Jools Holland Hootenanny Show, broadcast at New Year. The one piece of Top of the Pops footage of him I would really like to see again would be Soul Inside from late 1983, although I think I must have it on a video somewhere, thanks to my friend Dave. Thanks Dave!

GENTE DI MARE - Umberto Tozzi and RAF

The Italian entry to the 1987 Eurovision Song Contest. A beautiful song, sung by Umberto Tozzi and RAF, which came second to (yet another) Johnny Logan song. I much preferred this song (of course) and I think the Italians were more than a little disapointed as it was shortly after this that they stopped competing. Fred and I spent our summer holidays of 1987 in Italy, so we had plenty of time to hear this song as a pop song, not just on Eurovision night.

While I am at it (Eurovision - my goodness, what have I started here?) a quick mention for Katarina Hasprova with her 1998 Slovakian entry MODLITBA, another beautiful, timeless song sung by a beautiful woman.

Wizzard - Angel Fingers

Here is a film from Top of the Pops, showing Wizzard performing their number one hit, Angel Fingers. This went to number one, shortly after we got back from Switzerland, in September 1973. I have spent years trying to watch this film (and also the footage they made for TotPs for the week they were at number one), so I am very very happy to have found this on YouTube.

Angel Fingers was about the first single I bought, from Gerrards Cross, having (probably) missed the train back from school to Beaconsfield. I read today that Angel Fingers was a very expensive song to record as the band was very big and the Phil Spector 'Wall of Sound' sound took a long time to create, a bit like the middle operatic segment of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Although I had been a fan of the Beatles and Sandie Shaw and others in the 1960's, I think Wizzard were the first pop band I got into as a young teenager. They had their first hit, Ball Park Incident, just after we arrived back in England from Australia, followed up by See My Baby Jive at number one for four weeks in May 1973 and then this. They are mostly now known for their classic Christmas song 'I Wish It Could Be Xmas Everyday', which is played every year in England at least. It was Wizzard's bad luck to be competing that year, that classic year of 1973, with Slade's Merry Xmas Everbody, which hogged the number one spot for five weeks.

Looking at this video, and also the other Wizzard videos one realises how life was much more fun in those days for the youth., when you compare this to what they have nowadays, such as sexy Shakira, scarey Darkness, boyband Westlife and miserable-as-hell Snow Patrol or whatever. Still, I suppose Gnarls Barkley were a bit fun last year (says old man Roffey, sounding like his father).

Top ten hits of 1973

Switzerland, August 1973 - three, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Top Hits of 1973
1 Dawn - Tie A Yellow Ribbon
2 Simon Park Orchestra - Eye Level
3 Peters & Lee - Welcome Home
4 The Sweet - Blockbuster
5 Slade - Cum On Feel The Noize
6 Gary Glitter - I Love You Love Me Love
7 Wizzard - See My Baby Jive
8 Gary Glitter - I'm The Leader Of The Gang
9 Donny Osmond -The Twelfth of Never
10 David Cassidy - Daydreamer / Puppy Song

1973 WAS the heyday of glam, as well as Christmas records (see blog above). Here we see the top ten hits of the year being dominated by songs by Slade, The Sweet, Wizzard and Gary Glitter, whilst a little further down we would see T Rex, Mud, Kenny, Alice Cooper and Suzi Quatro. Slade and Sweet were liked more by the hard guys at school, which is funny really when you see just how camp The Sweet were in their Top of the Pops performances. I talk about my favourite, Wizzard in the post above.

Climbing Alvier in Switzerland, August 1973

Climbing Alvier in Switzerland, August 1973 - one, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Here we are back in 1973, with Uncle John (RIP) and cousin Malcolm, climbing to the top of 7,000 foot high Mount Alvier in the eastern part of Switzerland, looking across to Liechtenstein.


This was our first sunmmer holiday since we came back from Australia in 1972 and we joined our Uncle John and Aunty Jane and family for three weeks in Switzerland, driving down in our brand new orange Volvo estate. I can remember taking the ferry across, and wondering at the hovercraft we saw, a boat floating over theater at high speed, a recent British invention. We spent a night in Bruges and after driving down through Luxembourg, the only time I have ever been there, we spent the next night in Freiburg near the Black Forest, which we crossed the next day before arriving at our destination. Nowadays a family would do all this in one day, but then there were notso many motorways in Europe, apart from in Germany, where we were told that Hitler caused them to be built. 1973, at just 28 years after the war is nearer to Hitler than it is to the present day, 34 years later.

We had visions of cucko clocks, Swiss cheese and yodelling and we were not to be disappointed, the old Swiss towns with their wooden houses and geraniums and shops full of, what we probably thought were wonderful souvenirs, cuckoo clocks being conveniently too expensive.

The house we stayed at was a wooden farm house, with duvets (the first ones we had ever seen), half way up a mountain overlooking a valley towards Vaduz and its castle in Liechtenstein, surrounded by meadows full of cows. I can remember my uncle and aunty being there, cousin Malcolm and Andrew as well, but I cannot recall Pamela being there too well. We used to see Malcolm and Pamela a lot during the summers before we went to Australia when we went to stay with our Aunty Frances in Bournemouth. Malcolm being a year or so older than me was my pal and he used to get me inot all sorts of trouble, but he was good fun to be with.

We spent a lot of the holiday, going out for drives and walks and picnics, also visiting teh very large outdoor pool in Vaduz and it felt like a real treat to go to a foreign country to go swimming. We tried and we tasted lots of stinky cheese and were delighted to drink milk directly from the cow without it having been homogenised and pasteurised (I think this is illegal nowadays).

At the house, we would spend most of the time playing cards and we were at the time addicted to Canasta. My card playing addiction would last through school, where I spent most of my spare time in the sixth form playing whist and poker, util at university card playng was not something one did any more. It was great to come ot Holland and stay with Fred and his living group and spend evenings playing Klaverjassen and, again, it is disappointing that this is not such a popular game in Amsterdam, where they even have different rules. Still, I still see myself as an old man one day, playing cards all day, preferably in a Turkish/Arabic cafe than in an old people's home, but this is for the future.

Highlight for all of us in Switzerland is the day we conquered Mount Alvier, which at 7,000 feet was the highest mountain in the area. This is a picture taken on the way up (or down). Thius was about the same height as Mount Kosciusko in Australia and it has always been the measure I have used to determine whether I am high or not, where for example one could put into perspective the altitude of both Sana'a and Asmara at about the same height.

Aunty Jane had family down in the valley, I think they actually owned the house we were staying in and I remember being told that they were very rich, millioaires maybe. Well, we went over there for dinner one evening and I can remeber how excited we were to visit their toilets. So rich were they that they had warm water spout up from the pot to wash one's bottom. We were in awe!