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Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

30/09/73 : We Can Make It - Peters And Lee



For some unclear reason, I am aware of Peters And Lee without particularly being aware of their music - I think it's folky pub singer-ish stuff, which I'll probably accept as "of its time", whilst everyone at the time was probably going "WHO is buying this?".  Oh well, let's find out.  Well, after we briefly discuss another album that I suspect that was true for...

...yes, it's Singalongamax Vol 4 from Mr Bygraves at #7.  Which includes 32 tracks your gran would love, but you wouldn't - believe me, you really wouldn't.  I did learn an "interesting" fact about the man though - his catchphrase "I wanna tell you a story" was originally started by Mike Yarwood doing an impression of him.  I bet you didn't know that now, did you?  And you didn't need to either, did you?  Right - back to this week's considerably more musically significant offering...

Ah - easier said than done because the album isn't available anywhere (and I mean ANYWHERE - more on this later).  However, I did as much as of it as I could from their best-of and listened to a few other tracks from there and, believe me, that was quite enough for me.

It is indeed folky pub-singerish stuff.  Mike Peters voice is fine, but definitely no more than that - you get a suspicion that Dianne Lee's was a bit stronger, but there's no absolutely danger of her being given enough time in the spotlight to allow us find out ("Woman - know your place!").  Most of it is pretty harmless though and bearable as single tracks, but a whole album is FAR too much for me.  And a lot of it is dangerously close to oompah - I can imagine him standing there in lederhosen with her in her Oktoberfest waitress outfit (in the background, of course).

I will call out "I'm Confessin'" because it's perfectly dreadful - he tries a bit of scat "ba-ba-ba-baaaaa" and he should really be reported for crimes against something.  Just make it stop.  And whilst it's not on this album, I couldn't stop myself checking out their version of "Killing Me Softly" because I felt it would allow me to be mean about it - but I have to report it's disappointingly average, rather than the godawful version I was hoping for.  That's quite some album cover though, isn't it?

We're at #10 this week on its 15th week of a 23 week run, having peaked at #1 for 2 weeks earlier in the run.  What were people thinking?!?  And it managed another 32 weeks on 7 runs throughout 1974 as well.  How very peculiar indeed but it's not like this sort of thing hasn't happened throughout the years - and will, no doubt, continue to happen.  The top five were a somewhat more contemporary Slade (a new entry), The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, The Carpenters (the first time we've had a woman in the top five this year, I believe) and Status Quo (another new entry).  There were no more new entries in the top ten - the next one down is Gilbert at #23 and Karen is obviously the highest woman, but she's joined in the top ten by Dianne here and also very nearly by Diana Ross at #11.

Wikipedia has very little on the album other than telling me that this was their only #1 album and it's one of the very few UK #1 albums not available on CD.  It also intriguingly mentions in passing that Scott Walker was involved somewhere, which sounds unlikely.  And one last fascinating fact - "We Can Make It" started life as a Brotherhood Of Man B-side (and it should have stayed there).  Their entry is somewhat more illuminating - they gained fame by winning Opportunity Knocks an unprecedented seven times.  And the entry for that program includes the fantastic sentence "On one notorious occasion, the young Su Pollard was beaten into second place by a singing dog".

"Customers also listened to" - well, we'll never know for this album but their best-of attracts fans of Brotherhood Of Man (and I should warn you it goes downhill strongly after this), Benny Hill, Renee & Renato and Windsor Davies & Monty Don.  There's some musical masochists out there and no mistake.  From what I managed to find, there are worse things out there than Peters and Lee - but there's plenty better as well.  It's all somewhat mystifying!

23/09/73 - Yeah, I enjoyed this
07/10/73 - Cool album, cool cover

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