A Neil Young song with some SF imagery. It was a hit for Prelude whose cover had some nice harmonies.

I present both versions for comparison purposes.

Speaking of The Troggs, this was the first of their singles that I bought. Almost the first single I ever bought, it being two or so years since the previous one.

An example of the group’s more tender tendency.

If The Troggs were my musical vice of the 1960s the band which took that role in the 1970s was The Sweet.

Their early hits were mostly rubbish created by the songwriters Chinn and Chapman (who also were responsible for the band Mud and wrote for Suzi Quatro among others) but The Sweet began to hit their stride when they moved away from directly appealing to the young “teenybopper” market in 1973 with the harder edged Blockbuster which started off their biggest run of chart success.

Examination of their B-sides – which they wrote themselves, and leaned toward heavy rock – reveals more than a degree of casual sexism: a feature mostly absent in the bands they aspired to emulate.

Some sources have it that lead singer Brian Connolly was related to the actor who played Taggart, Mark McManus. As Wiki says that Connolly was fostered this would not quite be the case.

The Six Teens was the most lyrically interesting of their big 1973/4 hits, referencing the disturbances of 1968, but it was the start of their popular decline.

There always seemed to me to be something Calvinistic about Focus’s music, a touch of rigidity: predestination even. Maybe it was because they were Dutch.

It was particularly so of Eruption, the long track that made up the whole of side 2 of the LP Focus II (Moving Waves).

It is also true of their biggest UK hit Sylvia but perhaps less so of the earlier Hocus Pocus.

Medicine Head was a duo made up of guitarist John Fiddler who I think wrote the songs and Peter Hope-Evans who unusually played only mouth based instruments. They had a few hits in the early 1970s, mostly blues-based.

I couldn’t choose between them, so here are all four.

This song has been recorded many times over. The most famous of these is probably the one that gave Jimi Hendrix his first hit but I also know it from Love’s eponymous first LP. [See also Friday On My Mind 3, Alone Again Or. Btw I noticed on checking that the original video I featured there has been withdrawn so I have updated it.]

Jarvis Cocker has been playing various versions of Hey Joe on his BBC 6 Music Sunday Service programme (4–6 pm) roughly every month. The one he played last Sunday (New Year’s Day) surprised me as the performing artists Kasenetz Katz Singing Orchestral Circus are probably more widely known for the “bubblegum” hit Quick Joey Small. I had certainly not paid them more attention than that. Their Hey Joe is much better than I would have thought.

I always liked this song. It’s maybe the optimism of the thing. But the long sustained cadence over the word “skies” in the middle eight is quite a feat for a pop singer.

Well Tull at Christmas is almost a tradition here, now, isn’t it?

Labi Siffre is remembered more for writing It Must Be Love (which, of course, Madness made into a big hit) and his signature tune Something Inside So Strong.

This, though, was his first single – but not much of a hit.

While clearly being about a proud and loving father doting on his daughter I wonder if nowadays this song might be frowned upon as having an unfortunate subtext.

I’ve finally found an embeddable clip of Chicory Tip’s Excuse Me Baby, the original version of which I featured over two years ago.

Listening to it now, with its hints of Trad Jazz, I understand why my brother liked this. (See my Friday on my Mind category.)