If only I could have a puppy, I'd call myself so very lucky

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

09/12/73 : Dreams Are Nuthin' More Than Wishes - David Cassidy


Bowie last week, Cassidy this - they're pretty similar Davids right?  I am aware of who Mr Cassidy was, but I'd struggle to say I'm a connoisseur of his work.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that increased exposure is not going to improve my opinion, but let's see, eh?

Meh - it's not brilliant but I'm sure we'll meet worse on our travels through the year.  I didn't mind "Daydream" - I knew it was a cover but had no idea it was originally by The Lovin' Spoonful.  "Fever" is not such a great cover - it's really pretty rubbish.  And "The Puppy Song" is also a cover (although I didn't know that) and that's particularly rubbish honky-tonk nonsense with some terrible lyrics.  All in all, it's much more "crap cabaret" than I was expecting - I'd say it sounds very dated, but I can actually imagine Robbie Williams churning this kinda stuff out now.  And no, that's not a compliment.  Also, what's with the "nuthin" in the title?  Is that just there to annoy me?

We're at #1 this week in its fourth week of a twelve week run - somewhat surprisingly it debuted at #18 and climbed up the chart to this position, but it only had the one week at the top.  The rest of the top five are Roxy Music, David Bowie, Black Sabbath (is there ever going to be a year when Ozzy doesn't pop up somewhere?) and Gilbert O'Sullivan, with the highest new entry this week being Singalongapartysong by Max Bygraves - thankfully that means I've been spared it.  The highest woman in the charts this week is Karen Carpenter at #12, followed by Karen Carpenter at #31 and, errr, Karen Carpenter at #32.  And she's at #50 as well - and who do you think the other "artist" to have four albums in the chart this week is?  Yup - it's Max.  Gilbert and Bowie only managed the three each, but that means that between them all they take up nearly a quarter of the entire chart.

Wikipedia has very little on the album, but it did tell me that "The Puppy Song" was written by Harry Nilsson at the request of Paul McCartney who wanted a song for Mark Hopkin.  Interestingly, this album did nothing in the US - I was also amazed to see his last album was released in 2003 and even more amazed to see it actually got as high as #61 in the album charts.

"Customers also listened to" The Partridge Family, The Osmonds and David Soul - ooooh, are we going to see any Hutch this year? (Nope - he was later 70s).  This is a pretty rubbish album, but I'd say it's no more rubbish than the rubbish we've seen in 1983, 1996 or the present day - maybe part of that is that it was a different kind of rubbish and when I've had more of the same for the rest of the year I'll be ready to murder someone.  But for the time being, I can tolerate it.

02/12/73 - Surprisingly enjoyable
16/12/73 - I don't really see the point

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