Fiera's 60s Thread Strikes Back. Again.

[finbar]

A "bridge"? We have them in Australia all the time. It's called a "sickie"!

[Fiera]

I'm gonna have a try at the highest selling single not to hit #1. Frank Sinatra's "My Way" was the highest selling single for 1969, though it never reached the top of the charts, could that be the one?

[Buck Birdseed]

Although My Way holds the record for single having spent most time on the charts, there are three songs reckoned to have sold a million copies without ever reaching the top spot.

I see it's time to add another two questions to the fray. Still british Charts.

Name the seven #1 hit "one hit wonders" achieved in the sixties, where the artist in question was involved in NO OTHER CHARTING HIT. (If you want you can name the 12 70s ones as well.)

What band has had the greatest number of Top 40 hits without making the top ten?

[Fiera]

OK, another wild guess for the highest selling not #1 single: Pat Boone "Love Letters in the Sand". ?

[SuperSneak]

Here's one for y'all....:
What band undertook their comeback in a 1967 UK tour that also included the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Amen Corner and Pink Floyd?

[finbar]

Originally posted by Snapcase
I see it's time to add another two questions to the fray. Still british Charts.

Name the seven #1 hit "one hit wonders" achieved in the sixties, where the artist in question was involved in NO OTHER CHARTING HIT. (If you want you can name the 12 70s ones as well.)

1960: Ricky Valance - "Tell Laura I Love Her;
1962: B. Bumble & The Stingers - "Nut Rocker";
1966: Overlanders - "Michelle";
1968: Crazy World of Arthur Brown - "Fire";
1969: Zager & Evans - "In The Year 2525; Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg - "Je T'aime, etc"; Archies - "Sugar Sugar".

***

1970: Lee Marvin - "Wanderin' Star"; Norman Greenbaum - "Spirit In The Sky"; Matthews' Southern Confort - "Woodstock";
1971: Clive Dunn - "Grandad";
1973: Simon Park Orchestra - "Eye Level";
1975: Typically Tropical - "Barbados";
1976: J.J.Barrie - "No Charge";
1977: Floaters - "Float On";
1978: Althia & Donna - "Up Town Top Ranking" (sounds familiar! ); Brian & Michael - "Matchstalk Men & Matchstalk Cats and Dogs";
1979: Anita Ward - "Ring My Bell"; and Lena Martell - "One Day At A Time".

I won't carry on into the 80s. Actually, this was a question I had lined up.

[finbar]

Originally posted by SuperSneak
Here's one for y'all....:
What band undertook their comeback in a 1967 UK tour that also included the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Amen Corner and Pink Floyd?

The Move were on that tour. But they weren't making a comeback. They were huge at the time. Great band, too. The Nice (with Keith Emerson on keyboards), Outer Limits and Eire Apparent were also along for the ride. None of them were making comebacks. So, unless someone else sneaked onto the bill somewhere along the way ...

[finbar]

Originally posted by Snapcase

What band has had the greatest number of Top 40 hits without making the top ten?

The Clash had 16 by my reckoning. Any higher than that?

Elton John seems have to have the record for most Top 10 hits without a #1 with 16. Aside from his #1 duet with Kiki Dee. Electric Light Orchestra had 14 apart from a #1 with Olivia Newton-John).

[Buck Birdseed]

Damn it, if you knew all the answers you should have let someone else have a go!

Actually, it's not The Clash (Who are disqualified anyway for having a #1 hit with the 1991 reissue of Should I Stay or Should I Go), but a band with no less than 19 top-40-but-not-top-10 hits, from 78 to 95.

Sorry, not Love Letters in the Sand. Two out of the three million-sellers are Eighties tracks...

[SuperSneak]

Fin...that's who I was thinking of, and calling it, erroneously, a "comeback" when I should have termed it more of a "re-entry". After some initial huge hits that were followed up by a horrendous publicity backfire (taken to court by the PM for a slanderous depiction of infidelity) I figured it was a reset back on the popularity path....but I guess slamming the status quo doesn't necessarily make us unpopular, now does it?

You got it, in any case.

[Fiera]

Originally posted by Snapcase

What band has had the greatest number of Top 40 hits without making the top ten?

Sorry Finbar, this one's mine: it's AC/DC.

As Snapcase said, a run of 19, from "Rock'n'Roll Damnation" in 1978, to "Hard as a Rock" in 1995. Not a single Top Ten. The highest they reached was #12 with Heatseeker in 1988.

[finbar]

Originally posted by Snapcase
Damn it, if you knew all the answers you should have let someone else have a go!

And wait five years for someone to guess - at most - two or three of them? It was, after all, one of the more arcane questions. Which was why I was going to ask it.

Actually, it's not The Clash (Who are disqualified anyway for having a #1 hit with the 1991 reissue of Should I Stay or Should I Go), but a band with no less than 19 top-40-but-not-top-10 hits, from 78 to 95.

AC-DC.

Edit. This is bizarre. When I replied to Snappy with this post, neither Fiera's post - re AC-DC - nor even Supersneak's post had appeared. And they were posted hours ago. When I posted this, they appeared. S-p-o-o-k-y.

Sorry, not Love Letters in the Sand. Two out of the three million-sellers are Eighties tracks...

This one's intriguing.

[finbar]

Originally posted by SuperSneak
Fin...that's who I was thinking of, and calling it, erroneously, a "comeback" when I should have termed it more of a "re-entry". After some initial huge hits that were followed up by a horrendous publicity backfire (taken to court by the PM for a slanderous depiction of infidelity) I figured it was a reset back on the popularity path....but I guess slamming the status quo doesn't necessarily make us unpopular, now does it?

You got it, in any case.

The Move issued postcards featuring PM Harold Wilson naked in a bath to promote their single "Flowers In The Rain". After legal action, Wilson copped all royalties from the song and donated them to charity. If anything, the whole thing made The Move more popular with the youth of the time.

The Move, a Birmingham band, were basically a meltdown of egos waiting to happen. You had, at the band's peak, Jeff Lynne (later of ELO, et al), Roy Wood (one of Brit music's wonderful eccentrics and brilliant musos, later of Wizzard, et al) and Bev Bevan (later of ELO). "Flowers In The Rain" is a great song, famous apart from anything else for being the first record played on BBC's Radio One - the BBC's first pop station - when it opened. Roy Wood's "Blackberry Way" - a sort of tribute/pastiche to/of "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields" - is another Move track worth checking out. Roy was very fond of tributes/pastiches.

After The Move transmogrified into Electric Light Orchestra, Roy got a bit bored - well, okay, there wasn't enough room in 100 bands for egos the size of Roy's and Jeff Lynne's - and Roy departed. Some of the stuff he did, later, with Wizzard, remains quite extraordinary.

[Buck Birdseed]

Off the top of my head I could probably have named (at least) Ricky Valance, Z & E, Greenbaum, Marvin, and probably Matthew's Southern Comfort as well.

I'm slightly suspicious about The Archies, though. Surely that was just one of many names used by studio musicians under Don Kirchner? In fact, a bit of extra research unearths that the three Archies Vocalists were perennial hit-maker Ron Dante and the songwriting team Greenwich/Barry (!), all of which had many top-ten hits- Ron Dante even as a performer. "Tracy" by the Cuff Links anyone?

[finbar]

Originally posted by Snapcase
Off the top of my head I could probably have named (at least) Ricky Valance, Z & E, Greenbaum, Marvin, and probably Matthew's Southern Comfort as well.

My point exactly. What hope would anyone else have had? I wouldn't have got Ricky Valance but I knew the others you name, along with "Michelle" and "Fire".

I'm slightly suspicious about The Archies, though. Surely that was just one of many names used by studio musicians under Don Kirchner? In fact, a bit of extra research unearths that the three Archies Vocalists were perennial hit-maker Ron Dante and the songwriting team Greenwich/Barry (!), all of which had many top-ten hits- Ron Dante even as a performer. "Tracy" by the Cuff Links anyone?

True, the bubblegum factories shuffled session musos and singers between studios and called them something else. So it's purely a statistical thing.

Phil Spector - bow down! Mono Rules! - must've started that factory genre. No one - not even Phil - will probably ever know how many times Darlene Love was recorded and under how many names. The Crystals being a classic case - on "He's A Rebel" and "He's Sure The Boy", the girls who, as the Crystals, recorded "Uptown" and "He Hit Me", didn't sing. It was Darlene Love backed by The Blossoms. The original girls returned for "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me". But you'd be hard-pressed to know by listening.