It’s almost a shame to hear them apologize for being clean-cut, fun-loving musicians who enjoyed their time in front of an audience.
There are so many acts that are angry and that’s their stage presence.
I always wonder why they couldn’t have a little fun while everyone else was doing the same.
Just watched a program with Herman’s Hermits. (Even if you Google them, you won’t get it, because Google can’t take you back in time. You have to have been as old as me, and remember what it was like waaaaaay back then.)
The whole thing was still new and fun – music. Well, not exactly. Music has been around since humans pounded on a hollow tree (or a hollow head). But, music in the late 1960s was still in a state of evolution. Some would call it Revolution.
Peter Noone was the singer for Herman’s Hermits, an English band that crossed the Atlantic and found success – and had fun. You could tell watching them (and recalling through the old PBS video clips) that performing in front of an audience was as entertaining for the band as it was for those they faced.
In later years, particularly in the years my son discovered music, I noticed how angry the performers were. They seemed to be on a mission to deliver a serious MESSAGE. You know, like JEREMY SPOKE IN CLASS TODAY. The still-musical MTV pushed the video in 1993 and made a hit of it.
Granted.
Jeremy is worlds apart from Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter. But many bands released a variety of songs. Some of which were eligible for entertainment. Like – as in, Fun. A fun song, a fun video.
Mr Vedder once said (I recall it pretty well although through brief research, I can’t produce an exact quote) that he didn’t want anyone over thirty years old to listen to his music. Well. Mr Vedder will be 50 this year. Fifty. Things were a lot more fun the year Mr Vedder was born.
Singers smiled. Even the background vocalists. They enjoyed what they were doing. (Oh. Okay. There are those opera people. Those serious If-I-had-a-Hammer folk singers who seriously wanted to Hammer in the Morning all Over this Land. Man. Give it a folk-rest.)
Cause I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane while singing Do-Wa-Diddy-Diddy-Dum-Diddy-dee. (Can you frown during that one?)
It was just surprising, how many songs by Herman’s Hermits I could sing along with. Without hesitation. I never once bought a record album (primitive MP3 or streaming audio) by the group. Their songs were simply – popular.
Not like in a Justin Beiber sense. These fellows were clean-cut, foreign-born, fun-loving, clean-living, singers and guitar players. (And drummer.) When music went south, like Beiber in Florida, these fellows found another way to entertain themselves. (And others.)
Watching the PBS special (which in and of itself reveals my relative age), I was thrown back to a simpler era and a more naïve time. That’s probably the intent of PBS, to loosen up the spending for the whole fund-raising process. There was no talk of crack-cocaine, or meth-labs, serial killers, school shooters, political party wars, or wars in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, or – back then – Vietnam.
I don’t want a time machine to head back to that simpler time.
It would be nice, though, if some of those simpler and honest values could push forward to this day and age.
Oh. Wait a minute.
I have history books here in the shop. I’ll just read up on how things used to be.
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!
