And this will be the final New York mix. There are still plenty of songs that I have not used, but 92 New York-related tracks should suffice. In fact, I’ll add on eight tracks to round the number up to 100.

The timeline on this mix spans 116 years, which surely is quite unusual as far as mixes go. So we have the U.S. Marine Band from 1894 and two songs from outstanding 2010 albums, by the wonderful Caitlin Rose and Ray Lamontagne. I owe the Ben Sidran track to reader Marivic (thank you).

TRACKLISTING:
1. Velvet Underground - I’m Waiting For The Man (1967)
2. Death Cab For Cutie – Marching Bands Of Manhattan (2005)
3. Wallflowers - 6th Avenue Heartache (1996)
4. Bob Dylan – Hard Times in New York Town (1962)
5. John Lennon – New York City (1972)
6. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters - Broadway (1962)
7. Ella Fitzgerald – Manhattan (1956)
8. Grover Washington Jr. – East River Drive (1981)
9. Tyrone Thomas and the Whole Darn Family – New Yorkin’ (1976)
10. Ben Sidran – New York State Of Mind (1975)
11. Albert Hammond – New York City Here I Come (1974)
12. Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs – New York City’s Killing Me (2010)
13. Dar Williams – Southern California Wants To Be Western New York (1996)
14. Caitlin Rose – New York City (2010)
15. Rufus Wainwright – Poses (2001)
16. Al Stewart – Broadway Hotel (1992)
17. Cat Stevens – New York Times (1978)
18. Eagles - In A New York Minute (1994)
19. Simon & Garfunkel – At The Zoo (1968)
20. U.S. Marine Band – Manhattan Beach (1894)

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And here are eight more, to make it a century of NYC songs:
Christy Moore – Fairytale Of New York (1994).mp3
Ben E. King – Spanish Harlem (1961).mp3
B.J. Thomas - Eyes Of A New York Woman (1968).mp3
Counting Crows – Sullivan Street (live, 1998).mp3
Swift Jewel Cowboys – Coney Island Washboard (1939).mp3
Sex Pistols – New York (1977).mp3
Shinehead – Jamaican In New York (1992).mp3
Billy Murray – Take Me Back To New York Town (1907).mp3

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NYC – Any Major Mix Vol. 1
NYC – Any Major Mix Vol. 2
NYC – Any Major Mix Vol. 3 – New York in Black & White
NYC – Any Major Mix Vol. 4

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Van McCoy – The Hustle.mp3
What a tune! Disco guitars, strings, flute, horns, a killer bassline and friendly ladies and imposing gentlemen commanding us to do The Hustle. Do it! It’s the sound of summer ’75. Before trying to peddle a dance nobody could really do, McCoy had been a songwriter, a producer and a label boss. He co-wrote such songs as Jackie Wilson’s I Get The Sweetest Feeling, Brenda & the Tabulations’ Right on the Tip of My Tongue, The President’s 5-10-15-20 (25 Years of Love), David Ruffin’s Walk Away from Love… And then, in 1979, McCoy died of heart failure. He was only 39.

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Bay City Rollers – Give A Little Love.mp3
When the sartorial disaster zone that was the Bay City Rollers had a hit with a ballad — a cover of the Four Season’s Bye Bye Baby — it was inevitable that they’d release another retro ballad. And it gave them a second #1 in Britain. Give A Little Love was not a patch on Bye Bye Baby, and yet I preferred it. I suspect I was showing my preference for the understated. Or I was just being in touch with my feminine side because, let’s face it, this song was for all you girls out there for whom it supposedly was a teenage dream to be thirteen. Lucky girls. By the time I hit 13 four years later, I discovered that it was a nightmare being that age. Anyway, in ’75 I might have liked the girly song, but within the next year and a bit, BCR would release Saturday Night and Yesterday’s Hero, two real bubblegum pop stompers.

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I Santo California – Tornerò.mp3
The holidaymakers’ import hit from sunny Italy in 1975. I really like this song. But I do have a soft spot for some Italian pop, supplementing my great love for Italy. I have no idea how desperately uncool it may be to like songs by Umberto Tozzi (“Ti Amo”, “Gloria”), but I do. There was a German version of Tornerò by Michael Holm titled Wart’ auf mich, but the melody is so essentially San Remo pop, it requires the sound of the Italian language. I wonder how many Europeans in their mid-thirties owe their life to Tornerò?

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Albert Hammond – Down By The River.mp3
Albert Hammond – To All The Girls I Loved Before.mp3
Originally a minor US hit for Hammond in 1972, the re-recorded version of Down By The River that became a über-hit in Germany in autumn 1975. The merry tune masks the fact that the song states Hammond’s ecological concerns. It’s pretty well done; starting out as a camping romance poisoned by the polluted river, Hammond ends the song in ways that might have given me nightmares had I understood English then: “The banks will soon be black and dead, and where the otter raised his head will be a clean white skull instead, down by the river.” The b-side could feature in The Originals series, but I’ll post it here, simply because I really don’t like Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias’ awful duet.

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Harpo – Moviestar.mp3
A Top 30 hit in Britain only in 1976, Germans got to know the barefooted Swedish singer Harpo in late 1975 with this cheerful and sarcastic number, which apparently features Anni-Frid of ABBA on backing vocals. In Britain Harpo might be remembered as a minor one-hit wonder, but he had a string of hits in Germany between 1975 and ’77. In 1977 Harpo was jailed for four weeks for refusing to do his compulsory military service in Sweden. By 1978 his German career had fizzled out. I was loyal to Harpo beyond the call of duty, buying 1977’s Television and 1978’s With A Girl Like You, a cover of the Troggs hit. Both had pink and black covers, neither charted.

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Penny McLean – Lady Bump.mp3
The sound of Munich disco. Penny McLean was one of the three members of the Silver Convention (Fly, Robin Fly), and possibly not the most talented of the lot. The recurring scream on Lady Bump? Not Penny. The spoken bit? Not Penny. Which leaves us with some pretty ropey vocals. The scream was the work of one Gitta Walther and the introductory recital by Lucy Neale (of Love Generation). Penny McLean, you’ll be shocked to learn, was a pseudonym; the singer’s real name was Gertrude Wirschinger, not a moniker to inspire much by way of sexy disco fever. But she didn’t even use it in her career as a folksinger, as part of a duet with husband Holger Münzer called Holger & Tjorven in the 1960s. After her disco career fizzled out, McLean became an author on New Age twaddle, such as numerology. How fitting then that the follow-up hit to Lady Bump (a German #1) was titled 1,2,3,4…Fire.

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5000 Volts – I’m On Fire.mp3
Another disco hit, this one from Britain, and much better than Lady Bump, if one can get past the blatant rip-off of Black Is Black. 5000 Volts was basically Martin Jay (whom we would later encounter in Tight Fit and Enigma) and Tina Charles, who would soon score a huge solo hit with I Love To Love. And good for her: when I’m On Fire became a hit, Charles was replaced on the lip-synching Top of the Pops by blonde actress Luan Peters, who also appeared on most single sleeves (she is otherwise best known as the hot Australian over whom Basil Fawlty fawns in Fawlty Towers’ “The Psychiatrist” episode). The subterfuge caused a scandal at the time, with the German label replacing the single sleeves for I’m On Fire to depict Tina Charles with Martin Jay and another dude. I don’t recall whether I watched the Disco ’76 show of 5 December. I hope I did, catching in the process not only 5000 Volts, but also ABBA singing S.O.S. (months after having a hit with it) and Hello performing New York Groove.

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Hello – New York Groove.mp3
Americans are more likely to know New York Groove in the version by Kiss man Ace Frehley, but it first was a hit for the English pop group and BCR labelmates Hello, who were clearly aimed at the teenybopper market while holding for themselves higher aspirations. Three of the four Hello members were only 19 at the time, and had been releasing records for three years before having their first hit in 1974 with a cover of the Exciters’ Tell Him. New York Groove a year later became their only other hit. They also supported Gary Glitter on tour (good thing then that the drummer was ten years older than the other members). New York Groove was written by Russ Ballard, who to my knowledge never released it.

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Juliane Werding – Wenn Du denkst Du denkst, dann denkst Du nur Du denkst.mp3
Essen-born Juliane Werding was just 15 when she had her first hit, a German cover of Joan Baez’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down in 1972. After that she disappeared from the scene, completed her education, and returned in 1975 with this verbosely titled country number, which translates as “If you think you think then you only think you think”…that a girl can’t play cards. This is the storyline: like Udo Jürgens in part 1 of the 1975, Juliane fancies a late night drink. Unlike the Greek tavern dwelling Udo, Juliane finds a nice working-class Kneipe in which beer swilling men challenge her to a game of cards, thinking she’ll be easy prey. Of course, she beats them and proceeds to drink them under the table, giving cause for her good-natured taunting in the manner of tongue-twisting posers. In the middle of all that, a man interjects in a disconcertingly creepy manner that he’ll get her next time. On the ZDF Hitparade show, presenter Dieter-Thomas Heck does the creepy guy honours.

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Smokey – Don’t Play That Rock ‘n’ Roll To Me.mp3
I was going to write an essay about why Smokie were uttley naff (and fans of the group will know what I did there). And, of course, they were. But here’s the thing: some of their songs were quite good, in the ways of 1970s pop ballads. I quite like this Chinn/Chapman production, which borrows its riff rather too liberally from His Latest Flame. Anyway, the eagle-eyed reader will have noticed that the heading and the single sleeve spell the band’s name Smokey. As I recall it, the Motown legend Mr Robinson apparently believed that the name Smokey was his trademark alone, suggesting that the public might become confused between his high-pitched voice and Chris Norman’s pebble-garglings. Or that people might not properly process the picture of four white Yorkshiremen on a sleeve, and buy the record in the belief that they were getting a Quiet Storm. Faced with the threat of litigation, our four friends changed their name to Smokie. Incidentally, Sammy Davis Jr didn’t sue Robinson for appropriating the rather indelicate nickname Frank Sinatra called him by.

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More Stepping Back

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Theme – Sesamstrasse.mp3
Theme – Sesame Street.mp3
Sesame Street – Rubber Ducky.mp3
Sesamstrasse – Quitsche-entchen.mp3
I cannot overstate the importance of Sesamstrasse, as it was known in Germany, in my development. For the first few years, German TV did no more than to synchronise the US original, with Gordon, Susan and Bob speaking German. Mr Hooper was renamed (with phonetically sensitivity) Herr Huber. Big Bird became Bibo, Grover became Grobi, Cookie Monster (apart from Ernie and Oscar the Grouch, my favourite) Krümelmonster.

Not being a pre-schooler, I had no need for the lessons in numeracy or the alphabet, fun as they often were. The entertainment value of most skits was great, of course, and I can still delight in watching clips like the original Manah Manah (redone to diminished effect on The Muppet Show) or Bob’s Fairy Tales, which clearly were written with a nod and a wink at the watching Moms. But the great impression Sesame Street made on me was the presentation of the inner city, idealised to communicate the possibility of harmony and equality between races, ethnicities and classes. Just the reasons why the right-wing Bavarian government under the thoroughly ghastly Fanz-Josef Strauss considered Sesame Street undesirable (or, as they euphemistically put, as not appropriately reflecting social realities) and banned it from their aiwaves. Susan, Gordon, Bob and Oscar the Grouch — whom I dressed up as for a costume party in early ’73 — shaped my outlook just as surely as did later Günter Wallraff’s undercover exposé of the Bild newspaper or Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

Apart from the US and German themes of the show, I’m posting the US and German versions of Ernie’s classic Rubber Ducky.

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Bay City Rollers – Mañana.mp3
There were two versions of the Bay City Rollers: the incarnation on millions of barely pubescent girl’s bedroom walls, and a rather more ripened version without future frontman Leslie McKeown and hard-living axeman Stuart “Woody” Wood. I’m not inclined to argue forcefully that BCR v1.0 was musically superior to BCR v2.0 (though much more so than v.2.3), but I still enjoy Mañana a lot, with its tribal drums and catchy singalong chorus. Or perhaps I like it because I had been looking for the song, released in 1972, for absolute ages, and can’t commit myself to disappointment. I remember making up football-related lyrics on our schoolground in 1974, with the chant relating to a Hannover 96 player called Damjanoff. I might have had a career as terrace chant lyricist…

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The Les Humphries Singers – Mama Loo.mp3
I have no idea what a Mama Loo is, and I am much less disposed to engage in speculation. I do know that Mama Loo gets Les and his multi-national and multi-ethnic singers rockin’ and rollin’and rockin’ and reelin’ in a most joyful manner, borrowing more than a little from the Beach Boys’ hit Barbara-Ann. English-born Humphries’ outfit seems to have been inspired by the Edwin Hawkins Singers (of Oh Happy Day fame) with a reference to the free-love hippiedom of Hair. Add to the recipe a set of catchy songs that fused the sound (and sometimes lyrics) of gospel with pop, and you get the Les Humphries Singers. Whatever a Mama Loo is, I rather like the energy of this song. Impressive lead vocals too by, I think, John Lawton. See the video, in which the cameraman unsubtly goes for a close-up of Liz Mitchell’s breasts.

Some of Les’ singers went on to greater things. Liz Mitchell became one of two Boney M members to actually sing on their records; English-born John Lawton (a founder member of German prog-rockers Lucifer’s Friends) became lead singer of Uriah Heep; and Jürgen Drews became a successful Schlager singer. My grandmother, who financed my earlier record-collecting endeavours and lived her pop fandom through me, did not like these hippies. The Les Humphries Singers with their long hair, racial integration (to her all black people were Afghanis, it seems) and likely sexual promiscuity failed to embody her old-fashioned German values. But that was not even the worst of problem she had with them. She forcefully objected to their dancing, calling them Hopskrähen (jumping crows; hmmm, sounds like the basis for a name a 1990s rock band might adopt).

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Cindy & Bert – Immer wieder Sonntags.mp3
Jürgen Marcus – Ein Festival der Liebe.mp3
I remember seeing both of these Schlager horrors (oh, but the first one is a horror which even nostalgia cannot mitigate; the second at least has an interesting interlude) on the ZDF Hitparade, the hugely popular monthly show that featured only German Schlager acts (look at Cindy & Bert on the Hitparade; Bert doesn’t look like he wants to be there). Cindy & Bert were a husband-and-wife duo of whom my dear grandmother was very fond, perhaps because they looked a lot like the very nice couple that rented the top floor flat of her beautiful house (her affection for the couple ceased when they moved out, having left the place in a bit of a mess. We later learnt that the husband had cheated on his lovely wife, behaviour of which Oma did not approve, obviously). What my grandmother had missed about Cindy & Bert was that the apparently very square couple had just a couple of years earlier recorded a rather incongruously heavy cover of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. It’s fair to say that my granny was not a great Sabbath fan. The Paranoid cover will feature in the next installment of German curiosities.

I should imagine that my grandmother was also slightly troubled by the length of Jürgen Marcus’ hair. But otherwise he was a “very nice boy”. We can safely say that Jürgen’s big bowtie did not come from the wardrobe of Ozzie Osbourne. But Oma clearly forgave the singer his luxurious mane, because he was an amiable young man performing nice songs, flashing luxuriant smiles and mugging genially, even if he looks rather glum on the cover of the single which proclaims a festival of love (but how much of a grin would you muster while wearing Bozo the Clown’s oversized comedy bowtie). For a generation of mothers, he was a perfect, albeit hirsute, prospective son-in-law. What that generation of mothers didn’t know was that Jürgen wouldn’t be interested in their daughters. A few years ago, the singer revealed that he is gay. This video clip from the Disco ’73 show must be seen just for the lack of rhythmic coordination among the audience in the backrow.

Marcus was produced by Jack White, who as Horst Nußbaum had been a professional football player, at one time plying his trade with Dutch giants PSV Eindhoven. He retired from professional football in 1966, but continued to play for the amateur team of Berlin club Tennis-Borussia. In December 1976, by now a famous record producer, he turned out for the club’s first team in a German cup game against 1.FC Köln. His side lost 1-5 to the eventual cup winner. In the interim, he had produced a string of big German hits, including the German football team’s 1974 World Cup song (which I intend to inflict upon the reader in the next installment). Later he also produced Paul Anka, Engelbert Humperdinck, Laura Branagan (including her US top 10 hits Self Control and Gloria) and — of course — David Hasselhoff.

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Albert Hammond – It Never Rains In Southern California.mp3
I once noted that in nostalgia, the sun always shines, except when bad weather is an essential constituent in happy memories. Albert Hammond Sr’s hit sums up my memories of a sunny 1973, whose run of good weather was disrupted only by cold winter mornings when I walked to school in the dark and snow, which I found terribly exciting, by playing in central heated indoor coziness while outside it rained, a dark and cold Christmas and zooming down a hill in the park on my sled. But for the most part, the sun put in overtime in 1973, or so my memory tells me. My friends, brother and I played a lot outdoors. Our suburban block was our kingdom. But we were warned of hazards such as traffic and bad men who might want to abduct us, the latter known in the local patois as Mitschnacker. We were on alert.

A Mitschnacker yesterday (actually, it's Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard)

One day, a dude dressed in black with a funky hat and a drooping moustache — an exotic look in our kingdom — came walking down our street. One of us (it might have been me) approached him and asked: “Excuse me, are you a Mitschnacker?” As he suppressed a laugh, he answered affirmatively and made a grabbing motion at us. We scrammed, but on reflection decided that he probably wasn’t a Mitschnacker. A couple of years later, a man exposed himself to us as we were walking to school. Rather than being alert to the dangers of a sex offender, we laughed at the strange man who took out his willy, because willies were very funny to us. We didn’t even conceive of the idea that the joker could be a Mitschnacker.

Traffic was very light in our area, so we paid little attention to it. That’s how my little brother got hit by a car and broke his thigh, just a few days before his fifth birthday in early summer. His present had already been bought: a slide, to go with the set of swings and sandbox we already had in our garden. With his whole leg in plaster, he obviously couldn’t make good use of his present for a while. The rest of us, however, had excellent fun with it.

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Gilbert O’Sullivan – Get Down.mp3
Officially, the song is supposed to be about Gilbert’s dog which required reprimanding for jumping on his furniture. It’s clear that the song is not about a disobedient dog, but about a woman who bothers him for amorous attention, presumably after a drunken one-night stand (would you sing to a dog a verse like this: “Once upon a time I drank a little wine/Was as happy as could be, happy as could be/Now I’m just like a cat on a hot tin roof/Baby what do you think you’re doin’ to me”?). And then Gilbert feigns surprise when he is alone again, naturally. Ah, the days when a singer could enjoy hits with songs that demeaned women… Using dogs as metaphors for women couldn’t happen today, of course, at an age when pop music invariably treats women with highest respect.

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Ireen Sheer – Goodbye Mama.mp3
Like Get Down and the next song, Goodbye Mama was one of the big German hits of the summer of 1973, during which my family went on holiday to Denmark (during which it rained a lot, though I have fond memories of not being bored indoors. Though I most probably was).

Ireen Sheer was born in England, growing up in Romford. She struggled to get her career going, until her record company came up with the bright idea that Ireen could record in German, since her mother was from Düsseldorf and Ireen had some knowledge of the language. The plan worked: in 1973 Sheer enjoyed her first German hit with a typically sentimental Schlager that in its title identified the singer as English and in sound evokes Greece, like so many songs of the time (including Cindy & Bert’s hit above). I don’t remember any other songs by Sheer, but apparently she has maintained a fairly successful career to this day.

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Cliff Richard – Power To All Our Friends.mp3
I never really liked Cliff Richard. Even as I liked this song at the time, I didn’t realise that it was sung by Cliff. Obviously I hadn’t watched that year’s Eurovision Song Contest, at which this was Britain’s offering. To me, it was just one of those tunes that always cropped up on the radio. I think I might have been doing Cliff a decades-long injustice. Sure, he is hyper-square, has an annoying grin, issues trite Christmas songs and has that Peter Pan of Pop shit going on. Sure, his music is not of consistently quite-good standard (the born-again Christian singer has disowned his best song, Devil Woman). But he seems to be a very nice man who, I’ve read, does a lot of fine charitable work. I’d love to read a full, candid biography of the man. In the meantime, I think this apologia for Cliff will do.

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Reinhard Mey – Gute Nacht, Freunde.mp3
I really enjoyed Sky Nonhoff’s musical memoir Kleine Philosphie der Passionen: Schallplatten (dtv, 2000), but then, in an aside, he viciously attacked Gute Nacht, Freunde. Eventually I could forgive Nonhoff for his unkindness towards one of my mother’s singles. Mey is one of Germany’s veteran Liedermacher, singer-songwriters whose worthy lyrics and music repudiate the banality of the pop industry, much like their chanson counterparts in France. I think the melody is quite lovely. The lyrics are very adult. A guest is thanking his hosts for their hospitality and unconditional friendship. There aren’t many good songs about friendship; this one probably helped many people articulate their gratitude to good friends, like an eloquent Hallmark card.

It being 1973, the protagonist is having a smoke while he is formulating his appreciative farewell speech. The third verse is particularly nice as Mey gives thanks for “the freedom that is your eternal guest, and that you never question what’s in it for you. Perhaps it’s because from outside the light in your windows seems to glows more warmly”. Yeah, Schatzi, we’ll definitely invite him again.

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The Sweet – Ballroom Blitz.mp3
As noted in 1972, I had no idea that the guys doing this song were the same group that sang Poppa Joe, the single I loved so much. And that even though Ballroom Blitz, like Blockbuster before that, was ubiquitous. Only a few months later, when Teenage Rampage became a hit, did I make the association. The Sweet were massive in West-Germany, more so than in Britain; only one Sweet single did better in the UK than it did in West Germany, and that was Love Is Like Oxygen, released in 1978 at the end of the group’s run in the charts (it reached #9 in the UK, and #10 in Germany). Ballroom Blitz was the fifth in The Sweet’s run of six consecutive German #1s, which started in 1972 with Little Willy (the follow-up to #3 hit Poppa Joe) and ended with Teenage Rampage in 1974. The run was broken by the song that is perhaps  the group’s best, The Six Teens.

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More Stepping Back

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1. Manfred Mann - Mighty Quinn (1968)
Flute Moment: 0:01 Appropriately, the mix kicks off with the flute. What came first, the Mighty Quinn or Come Together?

2. The Coasters – Love Potion No 9 (1970)
Flute Moment: 1:38 The flute starts up suddenly and quite frantically as the whole Leiber & Stoller classic goes into funk mode.

3. Canned Heat - Going Up Country (1968)
Flute Moment: 0:01 The flute introduces the song until the very odd vocals begin, making the occasional cameo appearance throughout.

4. Jethro Tull – Up To Me (1971)
Flute Moment: 0:02 The Tull giggle as though they are high (surely not), and the almost percussive flute comes in.

5. Donovan – Sunny Goodge Street (1965)
Flute Moment: 1:33 Alas, poor Donovan. History underrates him dreadfully. But hear this and tell me he did not profoundly influence Nick Drake. The flute solo is quite lovely.

6. Minnie Riperton – Light My Fire (1979)
Flute Moment: 1:59 The interplay between keyboard and flute is impressive. José Feliciano comes in later to duet on this (superior) cover of his interpretation. One wonders how big Riperton might have been had cancer not claimed her. She had one of the most beautiful, sexiest voices in music. Ever.

7. Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. – You Don’t Have To Be A Star (1976)
Flute Moment: 0:04 The flute hook introduces the song by these two former 5th Dimensions, who by then had gone soul.

8. Albert Hammond – It Never Rains In Southern California (1972)
Flute Moment:0:08 The brief flute interlude, which recurs at 1:56, sets the scene for the vocals. Happily, on this blog I needn’t point out that this Hammond is the dad. I don’t think Hammond, like Donvan, gets enough respect.

9. George Harrison – Dark Horse (1974)
Flute Moment: 1:08 The flute is going discreetly in the background until it decides to let its presence felt.

10. Marshall Tucker Band – Take The Highway (1973)
Flute Moment: 0:05 The flute drives this song from the start. A flute rock classic.

11. CCS – Whole Lotta Love (1970)
Flute Moment: 0:35 The purring flute holds its own against the thumping rhythms in the Collective Consciousness Society’s fantastic cover of boring old Led Zep, which British readers may know better as a theme for Top Of The Pops.

12. The The – Uncertain Smile (1982)
Flute Moment: 1:21 I don’t know if The The ever appeared on TOTP. For the flute in this, they (well, he) should have. Hear where Lloyd Cole got his ideas from.

13. Men At Work – Down Under (1981)
Flute Moment: 0:03 One of the most famous flute songs in pop, with perhaps the most recognisable flute riff. Men At Work are often seen as a naff ’80s outfit (and written off as — calumny! — a one-hit wonder). They were fronted by Colin Hay, who is not in any way naff.

14. Saint Etienne - Nothing Can Stop Us (1991)
Flute Moment: 1:17 The whole thing is a chilled-out house thing, but when the flute comes in, the song gets soul.

15. Esther Williams – Last Night Changed It All (1976)
Flute Moment: 0:30 Dance music in the mid-’70s made great use of flute hooks (and, yes, The Hustle must feature in Volume 3).

16. The Chiffons – Just For Tonight (1968)
Flute Moment: 1:14 The alto flute solo gives the latter-day girl-band a whole new sound.

17. Marvin Gaye – Stubborn Kind Of Fellow (1962)
Flute Moment: 1:04 But the flute solo also did a fine job in early Motown.

18. Love – Orange Skies (1966)
Flute Moment: 0:31 The flute comes in to echo and emphasise the singers declaration of love. When he sings about how happy he is, the flute responds as if it was a cartoon bird. It’s like Mary Poppins for love-struck hippies.

19. Chicago – Color My World (1970)
Flute Moment: 1:54 Damn, Chicago were good before the group was hijacked by the extravagantly coiffured Peter Cetera. The flute solo takes a long time coming, but when it arrives, it is quite beautiful and it sees out the remaining minute of the song.

20. The Guess Who – Undun (1969)
Flute Moment: 2:15 The Guess Who might have given English teachers nightmares, but they knew how to use a flute to good, albeit far too brief, effect.

21. Lou Reed – Sad Song (1973)
Flute Moment: 0:01 Is the flautist trying to get to the melody of Somewhere Over The Rainbow?

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Any Major Flute Vol. 1

More mixes

Another cover specially made for this mix by Cheap Gas Music (http://cheapgasmusic.wordpress.com)

The first Not Feeling Guilty mix went down well, and if comments to the post, by e-mail and Facebook (click here to become my friend) are an indication, my rant against the false notion of “guilty pleasures” expressed what many felt.

So here is the second mix. I can’t see much to feel guilty about here. Anyone who might be ashamed of secretly enjoying the sounds of Boz Scaggs does not deserve to hear music. Anyone who dismisses Christopher Cross as a cheesy two-hit wonder self-evidently hates music (yes, VH-1, I mean you). Anyone who fails to funk along, even just a little bit, to the Larsen-Feiten Band, Pablo Cruise or the Climax Blues Band has no ryhthm in their soul. Not that I ought to make anyone feel guilty about not liking music.

The inclusion of Todd Rundgren might raise some eyebrows. Well, I consider his 1970 track a progenitor of the whole soft rock genre. See whether you agree or not.

Andrew Gold, by the way, is the chap who wrote the theme for The Golden Girls. Am I trying to test your resolve not to feel guilty?

1. Doobie Brothers – Listen To The Music (1972)
2. Boz Scaggs - JoJo (1980)
3. Larsen-Feiten Band - Who Will Be The Fool Tonight (1980)
4. Pablo Cruise – Watcha Gonna Do (1977)
5. Climax Blues Band – Couldn’t Get It Right (1976)
6. Atlanta Rhythm Section - So Into You (1976)
7. JD Souther - You’re Only Lonely (1979)
8. James Taylor – Your Smiling Face (1977)
9. Rickie Lee Jones – Chuck E’s In Love (1979)
10. Andrew Gold – Never Let Her Slip Away (1978)
11. Jay Ferguson – Thunder Island (1977)
12. Boston - Amanda (1986)
13. Kansas - Dust In The Wind (1977)
14. Poco - A Good Feelin’ To Know (1972)
15. King Harvest – Dancing In The Moonlight (1972)
16. Sutherlands Brothers & Quiver – Arms Of Mary (1975)
17. Albert Hammond - The Peacemaker (1973)
18. Loggins & Messina – Watching the River Run (1977)
19. Christopher Cross – All Right (1983)
20. Todd Rundgren – We Gotta Get You A Woman 1970)
21. Little River Band – The Night Owls (1981)

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EDIT: I have been made aware that I included a badly ripped version of Boston’s Amanda. Below a pristine rip: download it and drop it into the Not Feeling Guilty Vol. 2 folder. My apologies (note to self: check tracks before zipping them).

Boston – Amanda.mp3

Not Feeling Guilty Mix Vol. 1

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