There’s a TV ad in the UK right now about how to pay your TV license. Are we the only country where the government takes people £140 to pay for the national broadcast service (BBC)? Possibly. Anyway, it is a good thing but the way they enforce it is kind of crazy. Maybe I’ll discuss this another time.
Anyway, the song on the ad is a great piece of naive 60s girl pop written by Tony Hatch and sung by his 15-year-old sister Ninette and you can hear it in full right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdJVj2x9wNk
As ever it leads me to thinking on exactly what percentage of new bands are still basically wanting to be either the Beatles or the Stones or the Velvet Underground (about 97 per cent, possibly) and why no-one digs a bit deeper and, erm, pays homage to these other quite-naive sexy Sixties vibes (see also previous posts re Francoise Hardy/Brigitte Bardot etc).
Maybe someone should, eh? (Alright, apart from St Etienne who I like but who never quite nailed it. Discuss.)
I guess this kind of thing is really inspired by that kind of Adam Faith/Bobby Vee pop of the late 50s/early 60s – sweet-sounding and smooth and safe and not likely to scare your mum and dad.
But so many years on, we’ve all got over the idea of pop as being solely about teenagers moaning about having to tidy their bedrooms or have their hair cut… so this sounds ace and rather like summer.
My next post will be about befezzed indie mover/shaker Mike Alway going to see Brentford FC at Griffin Park in the company of Liam Gallagher and getting on famously.
And about my own ongoing search for musicians for my own French Pop Dream project.
If you care.
You’re not the only one… There’s a licence fee over here (Ireland) too.