A bit of polished pop from 1996. With the added bonus of a Scottish lead singer in Shirley Manson.

I had planned at some time to post The Honeycombs’ biggest hit Have I the Right? but since the passing of their drummer Honey Lantree* recently, this one, on which she sings as well as drums, seemed more appropriate.

The fact that she was the group’s drummer – and she could actually drum, and did not need, like many sixties acts, to rely on session musicians – was a selling point, a factor in the group’s success, and a focus of some bemusement among the unenlightened of the time.

Ann Margot (Honey) Lantree; 28/8/1943 – 23/12/2018

I was sad to hear the news of the death of Dean Ford, lead singer of (The) Marmalade (once known as Dean Ford and the Gaylords,) the first Scottish group to have a no 1 in the UK. To make it, of course, they had to leave Scotland and move to London where their initial efforts under their original name didn’t meet with much joy. Calling themselves The Marmalade also didn’t bring instant success. It was only when they adopted a more pop profile – and with songs written by others – that they achieved a measure of success, peaking with that no. 1, a cover of The Beatles’ Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Ford was no mean song writer though. Along with fellow band member Junior Campbell he wrote Reflections of My Life, Rainbow, and My Little One, hits between 1969 and 1971.

Plus this pre-success psychedelia-tinged song, said to be Jimi Hendrix’s favourite of 1967.

Thomas McAleese (Dean Ford): 5/9/1946 – 31/12/2018. So it goes.

A piece of soft country-rock from the mid-70s. Very USian, even all the way down to the harmonies.

From The Jethro Tull Christmas Album. Though this one is more appropriate for New Year’s Day.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

A bit of 80s fluff.

A by now Fishless Marillion recorded this in 1992.

The original was of course first released by Rare Bird in 1970.

Steppenwolf’s other well known track. Never a hit in the UK. Then again, Born To Be Wild only reached no 30.

This seems to be a live performance of the album version with additional film inserts. There’s a touch more psychedelia than I’d remembered.

From the band’s first album rather heavy-handedly called Very ‘Eavy…. Very ‘Umble (but perhaps they thought it as well to acknowledge their name’s origin) and which appeared in 1970, their treatment of the anti-war song Come Away Melinda (first sung in public by The Weavers shortly before Harry Belafonte released his version) is reminiscent of early Barclay James Harvest and also features the mellotron.

If ever a song struck a chord with people this was it. If Pulp had never recorded anything else of significance this would still have been a magnificent contribution to popular culture.

I had been familiar with Pulp before the release of the album from which this was taken, Different Class, as my eldest son (despite being then still of a relatively tender age) had discovered them a few years earlier. I had not paid very much attention – well, children don’t want their parents muscling in on their music tastes do they? Common People really woke me up to the band. Odd to think it’s over twenty years since this burst onto the world.

This is the longer album version.