The Killer -Pretty Woman/ Say Goodbye -Negram NG 2009 (1975 NL)
Unjustly relegated to the B side, Say Goodbye is a simple but hooked-filled little tune. Based on a solid Glitter beat, the melody is Pure Pop with a rich production featuring some nifty thrills -dig those acoustic stabs, wolf-whistles and piano runs...not exactly KILLER, but very memorable all the same. The A side Pretty Woman is an OK update of the Roy O number - no more, no less...
The Killer is Jans Rietman, who was the piano player with Long Tall Ernie and the Shakers. He also joined Bonnie St. Claire & Unit Gloria, as the band was on the verge of breaking up (he’s on the sleeve of Knock on my door). His real claim to fame is when he produced the Jet Boy Jet Girl 45 by Captain Sensible & The Softies back in ’77 !
Thanks to Jos for the background info and to Tim for turning me onto the track in the first place.
Click on title for a full version of Say Goodbye
4 comments:
I love Say Goodbye. Saying it was unfairly relegated to B-side status is an understatement. If an A, it would almost certainly have been a hit.
I should say, by the way, that I've discovered more great music that I knew nothing about in a few days browsing this blog than in virtually all the music blogs I've been going through in the last 3 or 4 months. I always tended to look down on glam rock and other early 70s pop records (apart from T Rex, who I loved), but it's obvious from this blog that a great many fantastic pop records came out during that decade.
Here in Australia 70s pop was filtered for us by Molly Meldrum's weekly Countdown programme. He and his fellow programmers did NOT do a very good job, and, as a result, I obviously developed an unfairly negative attitude towards the music that came out in that period. So many non-hits here that would have been huge if they'd received the exposure they deserved (e.g., I Want To Save You).
Thanks for the enlightenment and keep up the great work!
Hi Mr. Anonymous
Thanks for the kid words. I'm still amazed at some of the stuff I didn't know that still pops up...OK, there's a lot of tosh, that won't get posted here, but I would say that I have another 300-400 obsurish singles that are worthy of a post.By my estimate I make 4-5 new discoveries a month, so we should be OK for a few more years! Sometimes I feel like I'm David Irving -denying the 70s ever happened, but re-writting history by completely ignoring LPs. Revisionism rules and God bless the 45...
Robin,
I agree with what you're saying about the 70s - for most people (including me) it was an era dominated by LPs, very few of which were any good. I had no idea that, as this blog shows, the real 'action' was on 45s and, as a result, wasted a small fortune on albums with at best one or two good tracks.
I can't agree with what you say about Irving, though. I'm an historian and what you write is a travesty of his position. Don't pay attention to the media furore - whether or not you think he has a questionable agenda, he's probably the best WWII historian writing in English today. By which I mean more to say that most of them are really bad than that he's really good.
Anyway...Very Important Fact is that Jan Rietman became a football commentator for Skysports TV Channel in the 80's.
jos
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