Pop Gear

I just saw this TV on some obscure cable channel. What a great period piece. A mix of well-known groups and the obscure, at least in the States. It was most interesting to me to see how some of the greats just sort of leaped off the screen, even though it was all lip-synched. Stevie Winwood in the Spencer Davis Group, as one. The Animals another. In fact, I thought the Animals out and out killed. I thought Herman's Hermits were good.

Lot of comment on the Beatles here. Nice to have some live Beatles clips for sure, but I did not think they were that remarkable.

The group with the red-haired singer asked about by another comment is the Rocking Berries. A real gem of a group that I had not heard of. Billie Davis was great, too. A real cutie, exuding personality.

Also, a good illustration of how there is really bad music in any era, too.

Dress and hair styles were great, too. Within a couple of years it would all be different.

Well worth watching.

This is a difficult film to rate. Most viewers will find it an annoying bore, but devotees of the bands who appeared over the first year of the British Invasion will be mesmerized. The movie is a series of lip-synched "performances" by the also-rans that flourished in the wake of The Beatles during 1964, including The Honeycombs, The Spencer Davis Group, The Animals, Tommy Quickly, Peter And Gordon, Herman's Hermits, Nashville Teens and several others. The standout is probably The Animals featuring a young and deadly looking Eric Burdon. The film is decorated with tons of 1960's set design and art direction and a team of pretty dancers in gold-lame hip-huggers shaking same in Hullabaloo style choreography.

I just caught this this morning. Pop Gear is a British film recapping some pop hits of 1964 with staged performances by bands such as The Spencer Davis Group, Peter and Gordon, The Animals, and many others. Concert footage of the Beatles (singing She Loves You and Twist and Shout) opens and closes the film. The producer assumes familiarity, an intimacy between performers and audience, to the extent that the Master of Ceremonies (whose hair resembles a worn-out blond mop) never bothers to introduce himself, nor does he bother to introduce many of the pop groups by name. This is irksome for a lay cultural historian like myself, but that's the way it was, baby. There's a lot of good music and the songs are generally rather brief - 2 minutes on average. A cinematic, widescreen variety show, with more hits than misses. Recommended for fans of 60s radio pop.

I had wondered what had happened to a little film I saw in the early 70s called Go-Go Mania and now I know - its original English title is Pop Gear.

Nice viewing for pop music historians. There are good performances by obscure groups here that never made it to the US. Too bad the performers didn't always think to write the name of their group in bigger letters on their drum kits, sort of as a way of preserving their work for posterity. Nor does the film pop up the name of the group and the song the group performs (the benefits of pop-up video!)

I caught this film on a cable channel over the July 4 holiday and sat frantically flipping through a book on British pop music trying to identify some of these groups!

Anyway, for those of you not familiar with British pop music of the 60s, here's what I caught:

The Nashville Teens perform "Tobacco Road" and "Google Eyes", both written by John D. Loudermilk. Do not be fooled by the name - it is a British group.

The Honeycombs are identifiable by their female drummer, Honey Langtree.

I thought the performance by the Four Pennies was particularly good - they sang with a passion. This was a group that unfortunately never even surfaced in the US - Lionel Morton, Fritz Fryer, Mike Walsh, and Alan Buck. Too bad we missed out!

Another good performance by a 5?-man group whose lead singer has red hair - sadly I couldn't identify these fellows. Anybody out there who can help me out?

Eric Burdon and the Animals are always a treat. A little guy with a huge voice.

The description of the film says Spencer Davis is in here too, though I turned it on too late to catch them.

And the grand finale looked like footage of the Beatles from "A Hard Day's Night". 'Nuff said about the Beatles.

The music holds up extremely well - the dance numbers were something else. They positively date the thing in the 60s. The tight gold pants worn by one group of women look awful. And the dresses worn by another group look like sacks - they called this fashion?

Absolutely amazing time capsule look at the British pop music scene in 1964. There are sixteen groups (or solo singers) and several sing two of their 1964 hits, one being The Beatles who bookend the whole thing with color concert footage of "She Loves Me" and "Twist and Shout". It's the best early Beatles stuff I have ever seen and the editor does a nice job cutting between the group and the audience-mostly girls who scream and swoon-while the few boys in the audience sway to the beat and try their best to look interested.

The rest of the groups are filmed in a studio-with either lip syncing or ADR supplying the audio. The guitars are unplugged but they are playing and singing-it works fine because they are mostly on beat and it is easy enough to suspend disbelief. Jimmy Savile, a British radio personality who looks like a cross between Edgar Winter and Marty Feldman; handles the introductions. Things were very different back then-imagine trying to get 15 of today's chart topping groups to cooperate with something like this.

It is an interesting mix of British recording artists, most were just starting out and they would have extremely varied futures although few would last out the decade. About half the songs made it onto the American charts and some were big hits. This was the first wave of the British Invasion and those that didn't make it were quickly replaced by groups like The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and The Velvet Underground.

1. First up is Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas doing "Little Children" on a set with giant alphabet blocks. The greased back hair and the conventional suits made this guys look outdated even in 1964.

2. Susan Maughan sings "Make Him Mine", she was a solo artist and arguably pop music's all-time prettiest girl.

3. The Four Pennies sing "Juliet" (a B-side song that unexpectedly became their biggest hit) and then later "Black Girl" (by Leadbelly).

4. The Animals do "House of the Rising Sun" and "I'm Just a Soul Whose Intentions are Good". Eric Burdon is amazing.

5. The Fourmost sing "A Little Lovin"; both group and song are forgettable.

6. The Rockin' Berries do "He's In Town" and "What In the World's Come Over You". These guys are an unexpected treat with Geoff Turtone's falsetto voice very distinctive. They are a beat group whose name came from their fondness for Chuck Berry.

7. The Honeycombs do "Have i the right" (the first time he growls "Come Right Back" is one of the top ten moments in rock and roll) and "Eyes of Someone in Love" (illustrating the one-hit wonder phenomenon). They have a female drummer.

8. Sounds Incorporated perform something I did not recognize and follow it up with an up-tempo version of "The William Tell Overture" (it would be a great song for a high school football game halftime show). A five member instrumental group, at one point they have alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones going at the same time-they could have made it big if they had thought to incorporate an oboe. They also jump up and down a lot.

9. Peter and Gordon do "Please Lock Me Away". Watch Peter play a 12 string guitar complete with a back beat-he is the one of the pair who looks the most like Jane Asher (not surprising since she is his sister).

10. Matt Munro does a couple of completely dreadful songs-he looks like a cross between Perry Como and Bobby Darin and is completely out of his element in this production.

11. Herman's Hermits do "Something Tells Me I'm Into Something Good".

12. Tom Quickly & the Remo Four perform a song about nursery rhymes that may have inspired Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song".

13. Billie Davis does "Whatcha Gonna Do". Billie is a girl, she is very cute and wholesome.

14. The Spencer Davis Group does "My Baby" and it is a stretch to classify it as R&B.

15. The Nashville Teens try to do C&W. Except for the Stones, British groups have always struggled with country inspired tunes and the two songs here ("Tobacco Road" and "Goggle Eyes") will be quite painful listening for Americans, and the Dexy's Midnight Runner look (complete with a little boy dressed as Huck Finn) will send you scrambling for the fast forward button.

This is essential viewing for those interested in pop history and should be a lot of fun for casual fans.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.