A track by Mark Wirtz – he of the Teenage Opera – released as by The Mood Mosaic.

It seems this was used as the theme music for a German TV show called Musikladen among others.

How sixties does this sound?

A curio.

For some reason the 60s TV import Captain Zeppos came into my head recently. The series was made in Belgium and as such was a very unusual thing to be shown in Britain where foreign-made programmes were very thin on the ground (bizarre animated shorts from Eastern Europe apart.)

I vaguely remembered Captain Zeppos as a sort of detective show but it seems it was much odder.

The tune was performed by Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra. Kaempfert was a German band leader of the easy-listening type.

This is very typically European in its style.

It was with great sadness I heard on Sunday of the death of Brian Matthew, one of the voices of my youth and, through the BBC Radio 2 programme Sounds of the Sixties, also of my recent adulthood.

This came only a few days after the BBC had mistakenly reported his death.

Despite his apparent dismay at a crass decision by the powers that be to replace him, and his stated intention to make further programmes for Radio 2, Mathew was obviously not as hale and hearty as he once was (none of us are.) There had been another lengthy absence from the programme a couple of years ago so the final news was merely a confirmation of what I had feared.

Whatever, Sounds of the Sixties is not – and never can be – the same without him. The new incumbent, Tony Blackburn, is far too chatty (what is all that stuff with Dermot O’Leary, who follows him on air? Just play the music and give us the information about the acts) and always sounds fundamentally unserious about the show’s contents. It’s Blackburn’s style and has always been his style but it grates somehow.

So. Here is the tune that will forever now be associated with Matthew – the one with which Sounds of the Sixties played (and plays) out every episode and which I will never in future be able to hear without a further tinge of sadness.

Brian Matthew: 17/9/1928 – 8/4/2017. So it goes.

The Peddlers were a frequent sight on UK TV at the back end of the 1960s and very early 1970s but never had much chart success. Birth, from 1969, was their biggest hit.

The piano riff is reminiscent of the one in Elton John’s Border Song which came out in 1970.

This is an odd mixture of psychedelia and that USian vocal sound exemplified by The Association. The guitar intro is reminiscent of Paperback Writer and Pleasant Valley Sunday.

Despite the hippy gear they still managed to look very USian and clean cut. But that keyboard player was so affected.

The miming in the clip is also pretty bad.

I came across this when I was searching for Emitt Rhodes songs. It seems he started out in The Merry-Go-Round. Being a US (minor) hit I hadn’t heard it before or at least didn’t recall it. I do remember Alan Freeman championing Emitt Rhodes when his first solo album came out, in 1970 I think.

There’s a Zombies feel to the introductory guitar and the “strings” sound very like a mellotron to me.

I can’t resist the mellotron sound.

Everyone knows the big hit performed by Peter Sarstedt (who died earlier this week) Where Do You Go To (My Lovely). Many people think he was a one-hit wonder – even his Wikipedia entry says that about him despite mentioning he had two other hits (though I must confess I don’t remember Take Off Your Clothes – probably because it was a B-side) but the follow-up single Frozen Orange Juice did get to no. 10 in the UK.

His previous single to the big one wasn’t a hit though arguably it deserved to be.

Peter Eardley Sarstedt; 10/12/1941 – 8/1/ 2017. So it goes.

More psychedelia. Why not?

During this I keep expecting the lead singer to follow the pause with “Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?”

I think the group’s name was perhaps a bit of a mickey take.

Though it seems I didn’t, I thought I had mentioned in Friday on my Mind 29 that I actually bought Status Quo’s first hit Pictures of Matchstick Men, though they were The Status Quo then.

This follow-up – remarkably similar to that first hit and which appeared on the ludicrously titled first LP, Picturesque Matchstickable messages from the Status Quo – has a title that is all too appropriate, but has a bass line reminiscent of Hendrix.

Richard John (Rick) Parfitt: 12/10/1948 – 24/12/2016. So it goes.

Les Fleur de Lys¹ were the band called upon to record my favourite 60s song, Reflections of Charles Brown, and its B-side, Hold On under the name Rupert’s People.

I naturally assumed this song is a reference/tribute to the Edward Lear poem The Dong With A Luminous Nose. I was therefore amused when on Sounds of the Sixties 26/11/16 it was introduced and listed as “Going with the Luminous Nose.”

It sounds like psychedelia to me.

¹To be correct French shouldn’t that be Les Fleurs de Lys?