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DISCLAIMER: We apologise for the poor sound quality in this episode. We were unable to record in the studio and the room we ended up in turned out to be wholly unsuitable for podcast recording. That said, we feel there is enough interesting content in this edition to still place it up for download.

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Answer Me by Frankie Laine

What a cheeky bugger.  “Oh, is somebody having a hit record?  Is it me?  Well, quickly, I’ll record their song as well and release it!” Frankie makes yet another appearance – it really was his year, eh? – by releasing a song that was already Number 1, which seems terribly lazy.  For what its worth, I prefer his version, but, really, it’s still a song about God, and still got itself banned.  Interesting fact: on the week of December 11^th 1953, both versions of Answer Me ‘Shared’ the number 1 slot. How that worked I have no idea. Answers on a postcard etc.

Answer Me by David Whitfield

This is an English version of a German song about God. Wait! Come back! It was banned as well! Why? Because it was about God. The BBC, brilliantly, banned it after some complaints.  Seems strange to think that even back in the 1950s people would complain about broadcasts that seem so relatively inoffensive, especially considering how much of the population would have been churchgoers at the time.  Fascinating.  I wonder what’s going to follow this one?

Hey Joe by Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine, feeling put out by the way that the British public stopped buying I Believe six weeks ago, had a bitter plan.  He snuck to the US charts and stole a country song and released it in the UK.  The lyrics don’t make much sense, and it sounds nothing like his previous hit, but it has a charm to it.  As best I can tell, it’s a song about wanting to steal your neighbour’s wife away from her.  Charming.  “Show me you’re my palsy-walsy!” Frankie asks of the titular Joe, requesting that he is introduced to Joe’s wife that he might steal her away.  “I mean to steal her from you!” he tells Joe.  At least he isn’t being underhand about it, right?

Look At That Girl by Guy Mitchell

After so much Frankie Laine, this is wholly refreshing.  It’s chilled out, laid back, swiftly delivered pop, driven mostly by a brushed snare drum and Guy Mitchell’s voice – it’s sugar, honey, golden syrup.  And there’s no unsettling connotations: he’s just saying that there’s a girl and he fancies her, a bit, and he might have a kiss and a cuddle.  It’s innocent and poppy, and the song does exactly what you’d suspect.

This is the first song on this list that I can think of in the terms that we apply to much modern pop music: simple verse, strong melody, driving rhythm, instrumental middle eight, final verse that has a twist on that which has been before (in this case, a dual-layered vocal harmony line and backing singers).  It’s a great, great song. I’ll say it again: Great.  

I Believe by Frankie Laine

I know. People had nothing better to do than to buy this again, three weeks in a row.  I can only assume that the only reason it now stopped being number one is that everybody in the UK had a copy.  

So, it’s set in space and features black holes, but as a piece of science is it more like an experiment that betters mankind and helps them travel to the furthest reaches of the galaxy in the name of science, or is it like being kicked across a pool of blood by a naked Sam Neill?

We discuss the science in this film. Your enjoyment of this podcast will be greatly improved if you have seen Event Horizon recently, or know it well.

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Moulin Rouge by Mantovani

No, not that Moulin Rouge: this one is from the 1952 film of the same name.  The song itself is quite lovely, assuming that you like vaguely stereotypical French orchestral pieces.  In the film it has lyrics, but this version, the one that conquered the UK charts, is solely instrumental, nothing but the aching of the violins covering the melody.  It’s really quite lovely. 

I Believe by Frankie Laine

Here he is again, good old Frankie Laine! The song reappeared for a further six weeks – I can only assume that the public at large were so terrified by the dead girl in I’m Walking Behind You they fled back to religion and hope.  But this is the last we’ll see of the song, right? Surely…

I\’m Walking After You by Eddie Fisher

“I’m walking behind you on your wedding day,” sings Eddie Fisher, which is a little bit creepy immediately, but made far, far creepier by the appearance of the dead girl singing backing vocals.  She covers most lines of the song in her ethereal howl, mimicking Eddie’s lines, something enhancing them, and occasionally being slightly off-key.  “Look over your shoulder, I’m walking behind,” Eddie closes with as the dead girl howls. Shudder.

I Believe by Frankie Laine

This isn’t the only time that this song is going to appear on this rundown, so I’ll deal with the song itself now.  It was recorded to give the British public hope when fighting broke out in Korea in ’52, designed to let people know that war wasn’t going to happen again – and if it did, at least we had babies, and leaves.  The message itself is lovely (and perhaps why it’s now quite the religious standard), and the delivery is as you’d want, or expect: a voice, some gentle instrumentation, some faint choral backing.  But, amazingly, this still holds the record for the longest number of weeks at number one in the UK chart.  How?  Ask me again in a couple of days…

How Much Is That Doggy In The Window by Lita Roza

Somehow, I almost can’t believe that this was ever a single.  It’s like a nursery rhyme, so tacked onto the public consciousness that one cannot see a Dog behind glass without thinking of this.  Listening to it as music is difficult – how do you separate the history, the jokes , the popular culture references (Newman singing it in Seinfeld! It being played to death in Eastenders!) from the song itself?  Well, you do it like this, I suppose: This song is awful. It’s horrendously repetitive, the barking is irritating, the delivery patronising.  Is that what you wanted to hear? Of course not! Even as I listen to this I actually hear my mother singing it to me when I was a little boy, and I can’t be angry at that.  I can only really smile a bit, and file it under a tab marked as ‘Affectionate Memories’.  

Broken Wings by The Stargazers

This is a notable one! This is the first British song to reach Number One on the UK charts.  Unfortunately – did you know there would be one of those? – it’s a drab old choice.  The backing is some sort of organ playing very little in the way of music, and the harmonies are notably less harmonious than many of the American offerings of the time.  “With broken wings no bird can fly,” sing The Stargazers, prophetically, never to be heard of again.  

She Wears Red Feathers by Guy Mitchell

Aha. I am not sure where this falls on the racism scale, but let’s examine, shall we? 

• “She wears red feathers and a huly-huly skirt” seems to be a rather rash assumption of the clothing of the inhabitants of the Pacific islands.  I’m sure they wear other clothes when they aren’t, you know, being native. 
• “She lives on just cokey-nuts and fish from round the sea.” Well, I’m sure that isn’t true. I don’t believe that this could sustain life.
• When our narrator, an English Banker, travels to her island and asks for her hand in marriage it is granted. But there’s no wedding band! Instead, “Six baboons got out bassoons and played here comes the bride.”  I suspect that this might be poetic license. 
• To top it all off, people laugh at this native islander drinking tea when the Banker takes her back to London.  Well, what a life you have blessed her with, Mr Banker! Abject mockery and tea: that sounds like jolly old England!

The song itself could have come from the soundtrack of Bedknobs And Broomsticks.  Nowadays, the Daily Mail would be in uproar.  

So, lots of science in there, but is it a successful experiment that finds new ways too cure disease by sailing round the bloodstream of a rabbit, or is it like being accidentally injected into Martin Short’s bottom?

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Don\’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes by Perry Como

I sense that Perry wasn’t an astronomer, as he seems unsure of how big the stars are.  But that’s barely important! What matters here is his ability to play fast and loose with phrasing and tempo, and to really mess with the listener’s ability to predict what’s going to happen in the song next.  It’s like there is a chorus you keep expecting, but the ability to actually say when it is going to happen is next to impossible.  The song is a train, Perry standing on the back of one of the carriages, plucking stars from the sky – defying everything, music and science be damned! – and serenading all the women in the buffet car.  

Outside Of Heaven by Eddie Fisher

“I pass your house with misty eyes,” sings Eddie Fisher over cod-standard musical motifs, like some sort of mystical stalker.  I think he’s suggesting that he can’t have the woman he loves until they are both dead and, nowadays, we’d assume that he’s going to kill her to have her.  Are we cynics? Or is Eddie there already? We’re told that he watched the Her of the song on her wedding day, and “could hardly keep from crying out loud”.  Eddie, get a grip! She’s not interested etc.  Move on! “Why was I meant to walk alone outside of Heaven?” he asks as the song swells to its conclusion.  Well, I think I know: you scare women, Eddie.

Comes-a-long-a-love by Kay Starr

Well. Kay Starr was, I reckon, a handful.  Based on this, she entertained.  You know: entertained.  I can picture her, almost Liza Minelli-ish in her stage flirtation.  Whilst being neutered – God, could you be anything else in the early 50s if you sang pop music? – there’s something innately sexual about this. The beat is quick, the horns… well, they horn.  And there’s only so many times you can hear “Comes-a-long-a-love” before it sounds a bit sexual.  And the end! The song positively climaxes, with Kay singing her hardest as the horn section put a full stop after every single syllable. 

Phew.

You will enjoy this podcast much more if you have seen Minority Report (even more so if you have seen it recently).

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The first ever recorded UK Number One Single starts as these things probably should: with a swell of strings. “Here in my heart I just yearn for you, only,” sings Martino, and you believe him, in that way you always believe singers like him, singers for whom the only reason you don’t sing something louder is because you physically can’t. His song is like a wave, echoing that swell from the beginning, and there’s a moment at the 2 minute mark when it sounds like he, and the orchestra, are going to burst, when they play and sing louder, stronger. And how does it end? With him repeating the most repeated line of the song again, with more gusto, and the Orchestra playing the final notes of the film soundtrack that they’ve condensed into their three minute timeslot. 

I almost wish that this song was more symbolic of what was to come, that I could sum up the Beatles and the Queen and the Spice Girls that will follow over the next fifty years through it, but I can’t; and somehow that’s more appropriate, really. It works best that it’s nearly fluff, that it sounds like hundreds of soundtracks to Golden Age Musicals, that it sounds like the music played over the logo of a Film corporation, that it sounds like the closing performance at a show for Royalty. It’s fluff, but the most brilliant kind, the kind that stays there without you even noticing it.

Channelzine should be rolling along nicely in early 2009, once the hangovers and indigestion have subsided. In the meantime. enjoy the podcasts and other content.

In each episode of the podcast we will be discussing a different movie or TV show that is, in some way, related to science. For example, our first few podcasts will discuss Minority Report, Innerspace and Event Horizon.

We would obviously like to discuss films that people are interested to hear about and so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in a comment here on this blog post.

Episodes will kick-off next week and they will be available here and soon-after on iTunes, Podcast Alley and other podcast websites. We hope you’ll join us.

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