SUTC with The Dave Clark Five
-
Artist:
Music fans of a certain age speak of "the British Invasion" in tones of awed reverence...As if it were some golden age or something. It was a very exxciting time, to be sure. It seemed every week another band would arrive with yet another great song. The Beatles (& a bit later, the Rolling Stones) took the American music of the mid-fifties and reimagined it, reinvented it, relabeled it...and sold it back to us. The Beatles of course were a POP-BASED rocknroll band & The Rolling Stones were a RHYTHM & BLUES-BASED rocknroll band. & both of these bands had the song-writing talent & musicianship to evolve & grow & explore the terrain of their sound over the years.
....and there were other bands of course. The Animals recreated the gritty Chess sound with maybe the most 'legitimate' R&B sound of that first wave. Herman's Hermits, who had more hits in America than any other British band exept the Beatles in 1964 were....cute. Thats about it. Peddlers of innocuous pop, they rode Peter Noone's cuteness into the heart of teen-age girls everywehere. And then there was The Dave Clark Five. They didn't have any real strong personalities in the band, they weren't "cute". Their songwriting was derivative & repetitive, formulaic, they often sounded like last year's hits from other bands. But they had an impressive string of hits, back in the day, covering recent tunes by American rocknrollers & writing songs that aped them. Their recordings & performances had all the subtlety, all the nuance of a Gen Sherman Tank. They were all about the beat. And so...to fit the SUTC theme.....we'll lead with their version of the Contours' hit...."Do You Love Me"?
The next selection is almost sacraligious & I apologize. The DC5 take Chuck Berry's Reeling & Rocking & replace Chuck's sly winks & Cheshire cat grin with a steamroller scrubbed clean & sanitized
Glad all over
Can't You See That She's Mine
Over And Over
You Got What It Takes
...and one last song....Catch Us If You Can ...which contains this great opening....(A dramtic reading....."Here we come again....catch us if you can...time to get a move on...we we now we're out of our minds")
Locating MOG account...
Comments (9)
You seem to be posting a LOT of DC5 for someone who holds them in such disdain. Despite the fact that I don't like Glad All Over and Bits and Pieces, their first two U.S. smashes, I am a big fan of the era's 2nd-best rock vocalist (just behind Lennon) Mike Smith. The rest of the band...meh. And Dave Clark? Talentless egomaniac.
i have always liked the DC5 and was glad to see them make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Their music always seemed positive and maded you want to get up and dance.
Incidentally, Wire's cover of Glad All Over is one of my favorite covers of all time:
@T-anger. Yeah! I like it!
LOL ... it looks like they really liked that suit in the last 2 pictures; of course, since the pics are in black & wihite, they could be different suits I guess :D
classic sounds, tho! good for drinking my coffee to :)
I always thought the DC5 wold win out over the Beatles, and had an ongoing argument with a friend over that. (I was about 14 years old I think) TO this day I like them better than the Beatles in some ways. But I'm man enough to acdmit I was wrong.
That's some real fine writin' there Jeff. Good post!
I'm gettin' me some white pants, a dark sports jacket and a white turtle neck
;-)
Dave, right on! Ever notice that in the cut-throat world of indie-alternative rock, there is no group that wears identical suits? It would help them stand out, be non-conformist, look less dowdy and have an edge over the competition.
Dead Man, I like your describing DC5 as having "all the subtlety, all the nuance of a Gen Sherman Tank." Good essay. Even their later LPs have quite a few good cuts. One thing I like about the song "You've Got What It Takes" is that when the four-bar verse ends with the line "You've got what it takes with me," the "me" lands on the first beat of the next four-bar section and becomes part of the chorus. It's innovative but not awkward.
DC5? Isn't that a lobbying group?