"Suzie wants to be a lady director
And Eddie wants to drive a hearse"
Not the most promising opening to a first verse in music history, but nonetheless it came from the #28 song this week: "Almost Summer" by Celebration featuring Mike Love. Celebration's lineup included two members of King Harvest, the one-hit-wonders who charted with "Dancing in the Moonlight," and Mike Love came from the Beach Boys, three of whom wrote said song. The tune came from the film Almost Summer, and because there seem to be no plot summaries of the film on the Internet that extend more than one sentence, I have no idea whether that opening line lists character motivations relevant to the cinematic work itself. (Obviously, I have never seen the film.) Anyway, here's the song; a nice, bright little tune with a cute reference to "Little Deuce Coupe":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6GuVu703To
Disco's fine, but listening to the Top 40 countdowns from 1978-79 I can appreciate how some people were getting tired of the genre's chart oversaturation. I love the Bee Gees, but I'm going to pick on them as an example. This week the #31 song was Frankie Valli's "Grease", the title track from the movie written by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees that would eventually top the singles chart. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1V7EwR5w2A
The #1 song this week was Andy Gibb's "Shadow Dancing," written by Andy with his three Bee Gee brothers. Listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZxA3FVUwvk
Let's face it, that's almost the exact same song. Even the string and horn arrangements are similar. But maybe that similarity of styles let both Gibb and Valli easily slip into this phenomenal duet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhrPTu-1kSI
If you're wondering if I held it together while listening to the first rerun countdown aired since Kasem's death, I assure you that I was fine. It saddened me more to hear Kasem announce that Andy Gibb's achievement made him the only male singer in music history to have his first three releases top the chart. I rank Andy as "good, not great" and never thought he was anywhere near as talented as his brothers, but it still saddened me to hear Kasem excitedly announce the Gibb brother's accomplishment with the 20/20 hindsight of knowing how Andy would flush his career and his life away with his rampant drug abuse.
And I started this entry by talking about a hearse.