My blue horizon is turning gray and my dreams are drifting away

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

07/03/65 : I Am P. J. Proby - P. J. Proby


P. J. Proby is an odd one - I know his name but I'm not sure I'm aware of any of his stuff, so let's see what we've got here...

This is another one that's not Amazon (it's struggled somewhat with the less popular albums this year) but YouTube came to my rescue. Wow, thanks very much for that YouTube - what did I ever do to you? The album opens with an absolutely dreadful version of "Que Sera Sera" - I wouldn't have thought it was possible to murder that song, but he certainly manages it. He also manages to mangle "The Glory Of Love" (originally by Benny Goodman in '36, but I suspect I know the Otis Redding version) and The Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby" (which is particularly bad). The other songs aren't quite so bad, but all are probably best avoided - "Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu" is quite the title as well. And let's not dwell on his haircut either...

We're at #18 in the charts this week on his last week of a three week run, with it having peaked at #16 in the week before. The top five this week were The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Jim Reeves, Val Doonican and Cilla Black and we have one new entry for The Kinks (#16).

Wikipedia tells us that we've got another debut album (it sounds very dated for the period for a debut album) - apparently it's faster that his other albums, but the good news is that I'll never have to listen to any of them to find out because this is the only one he's ever charted with (he's even done two spoken word albums - the horror!). Padding things out a bit by looking at his entry, we learn that his real name is James Smith and "at nine, his parents divorced and as part of the custody deal, Proby was sent to military school" - which seems somewhat harsh. 

I also learned that, whilst I might have complained about his cover versions on this album, these are NOTHING compared to what did in the 80s to (amongst others) "Tainted Love", "Love Will Tear Us Apart", "Sign Of The Times", "In The Air Tonight" and "Anarchy In The UK" - I've included the links but you probably want to think very carefully before clicking any of them - particularly the last one. To be fair to PJ, he hated them all as well and he was drinking heavily at the time - maybe they contributed to him giving up the booze (but Wikipedia's stated reason of a heart attack seems more likely). His entry makes him sound like quite a "character" and he's still with us at the ripe old age of '86.

Hmmm - I wonder how long it's going to take me to stop typing "customers also listened to". However, in this case I've got no idea who would listen to this, let alone anything like it - it's a most peculiar album with some absolutely appalling cover versions on it.

28/02/65 - Fine, but unexceptional
14/03/65 - Pretty decent

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

And she'll tease you, she'll unease you

Image
  A first for me! Cheap tickets often pop up to various All Points East events through work, but it often coincides with holiday time - and the one time I did make an effort to go a train strike prevented me from making out into the wilds of East London. Until now when, for no obvious reason, I went to a day when I had no great interest in the headlining act. It's based in Victoria Park in Hackney and it's a BIG site. The set-up is similar to Reading Festival with two main stages which alternate between acts, involving a lot of audience migration across the site. The distance between the stages might even be bigger than at Reading, but there's also a sizeable tented stage about halfway between so you can always stop off if you're feeling tired - and I did, on several occasions! Also, unlike both Reading and BST Hyde Park, there is a lot of shaded area on site which was also much used throughout the day whilst a LOT of music was being enjoyed, because I saw... Liana Flor...
Read more

Who are ya?!?

Image
A point each for the name, the song and the artist. 1. Her boyfriend’s a dick – he brings a gun to school 2. He took me to the future in the flux thing and I saw everything 3. He lives on the second floor 4. She told my baby we'd danced 'til three, then she looked at me 5. He tempted her with his treacle tart and his tasty wholemeal bread (2 names) 6. He’s stepping through the door 7. His girlfriend's pregnant too - he’s about to be a father 8. She’s gotta be strong to fight them, so she’s taken lots of vitamins 9. She came from Miami, F.L.A - hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A. 10. Her smile is like a breath of spring, her voice is soft like summer rain 11. He’s darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there 12. He was jamming good with Weird and Gilly 13. Two American kids doin' the best they can (2 names) 14. I just act like I don’t remember and she just acts like she don’t care 15. She got a double wide and she rode a plane 16. You could have heard a...
Read more