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[sheddyian]

Do you remember, in the 1970's and into the 1980's, those very cheap Top of the Pops LPs, usually sold in Woolworths?  For about 99p you could buy a compilation album of current (or very recent) chart hits... that were sung and played by session artists, not the original band.



I had 3 or 4 of them, and played them a lot - what's curious now is sometimes if I hear the original recording of a song, I don't like it - I preferred the version I was used to on the Top of the Pops LP! 

I heard a programme on the radio a few years ago about the LPs.  The singers and musicians had very little time to learn or rehearse the music, sometimes just a few hours of listening to the original record then having to sing and play their version of it.  They didn't have original lyrics, so when they weren't sure what the proper words were, they'd improvise!

That sounds a recipe for disaster, and some of them were pretty poor, but others were astonishingly well done.

Try these for surprisingly good, hastily recorded cover versions :

Autobahn (Kraftwerk) :
http://youtu.be/Ww7w0p99ibA

Life on Mars (Bowie) :
http://youtu.be/n3on2vVAK_o

Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) :
http://youtu.be/3HetQa0eyYk

and, for balance, here's how awful they could sometimes be

Joan of Arc (OMD) :
http://youtu.be/a2CgDMVV-rs


They're worth listening to all the way through, but you're allowed to stop the last one before it finishes.

Ian

[UncleUB]

Thanks for the links Ian. 

I'm a big fan of 60's ad 70's music and find a lot of this 'digital remastered' stuff not a patch on the original recordings.

My big passion is Tamla Motown and Soul....Talking of Tamla Motown,nearly all the backing music came from a group of session artists called the Funk Brothers.

If you have ever listened to any big Motown hit then the more than likely the Funk Brothers supplied the backing music

http://www.thefunkbrothers.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funk_Brothers

[kitz]

Oh myyyyyyyyyyy gawwwwd...  that is truly awful.   

... and I must admit I was so very young and naive back then, that I didnt know they werent the originals on those LPs.. 

[jack8]

I had a couple of these they were rather good

[sheddyian]

Hello.  I've two reasons for replying to my own old thread..

The version of Bohemian Rhapsody that I linked to in the earlier post isn't the original cover version, it's a different (and poorer) cover version!  Apparently, this is the cover that was impressive given the technical/time constraints on the musicians
http://youtu.be/RYWuMvaIqFM. 

But, and hopefully more interestingly, there has been a repeat of a radio programme that Stuart Maconie made a few years ago, all about the musicians that made those Top of the Pops cover versions.

BBC iPlayer link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tttwp (will expire around 26th April 2014, so hurry hurry hurry)

Enjoy 

Ian

ps, I have to disagree with you Kitz, that Kraftwerk cover is quite incredible, all things considered.
pps. I am not obsessed with these cheap cover version LPs.  I like them a normal amount.

[kitz]

ps, I have to disagree with you Kitz, that Kraftwerk cover is quite incredible, all things considered.

My post was in reference to their version of OMD's Joan of Arc, not Kraftwerk

[youtube]H6WSUSsi2GE[/youtube]

^ Much better - just ignore the miming

[sheddyian]

ps, I have to disagree with you Kitz, that Kraftwerk cover is quite incredible, all things considered.

My post was in reference to their version of OMD's Joan of Arc, not Kraftwerk

You are forgiven 

Some of those mid-1970's covers are amazing considering how little time and resources they had to make them.  The later ones are awful; there's a cover of 1980's Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes where the tune is loosely-at-best based on the original.

Ian

[sheddyian]

[OMD video]
^ Much better - just ignore the miming

That is one of my favourite OMD songs, I like the way it sounds so unusual, so quirky, it's a waltz!, and yet it made the charts.

Original OMD Maid of Orleans (Joan of Arc) video:

http://youtu.be/vmwMhjbThKg

which reminded me of late 1970's Public Information Films a while back http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=12144.0

Ian

[edit : can't get imbedded YouTube to work, what did I do wrong? - the short link didn't work, nor did the page url, though it was https]

[kitz]

can't get imbedded YouTube to work, what did I do wrong?

http://youtu.be/vmwMhjbThKg

You only need to add the video no between the brackets.
Sometimes its more hidden but it will be the bit that says v=


eg

Code: [Select]

[youtube]vmwMhjbThKg[/youtube]

[youtube]vmwMhjbThKg[/youtube]
^Yes much better indeed

[Ezzer]

Stone the crows! I think my parents had that very record. Brings back memories of the 70's style bar in the corner of the front room. cresent shaped with fake pin cusioning vinyl on the front. The sort of thing that would look at home on the set of Terry and June.
I went to a friends parents house in Norwich only to find they still had a similar one, but with an aquarium fitted in the middle of it.
We did have one of those huge record player radio combo's (with out a cassette player so it wasnt a "Music centre") but you could stack the records and the player would drop each record and play it automaticaly after finishing the previous one. However it couldn't flip the record over to play the other side for you.

[kitz]

I must admit that the very first ToTPs LP I had...  I won in a competition at school.

The sad thing is we'd not long been in the UK and my parents didnt have any means to play it on...  so I had to go over to a friends house to listen to it