Motorbikes = death. Sudden, heartbreaking death. But cool death. This is what pop music teaches us. I have learnt my lesson well and you can thank my parents' music taste for the fact that I've made it this far in life! Both songs today were released in 1964 and were staples of my childhood. Oh, and the BBC banned them both. Nice work, Beeb!My favourite motorcycle death song is The Shangri-Las' Leader Of The Pack, with its famous spoken introduction and revving sounds. In life, it only takes someone to say, "You get the picture?" and I'm off, singing the whole thing!
There's a certain amount of doubt over the origins of this song. It's credited to George "Shadow" Morton with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich but Morton claims he only added the others to the credits for business reasons. Even Billy Joel has tried to get in on the act, claiming he played piano on the record, but this has been denied by Greenwich. Anyway, forgetting all that nonsense, here's the song!
The Shangri-Las - Leader Of The Pack mp3 (available for 7 days)
The second song is by Twinkle, possibly the most inappropriately nicknamed singer ever. There's not a whole lot of twinkling going on. Perhaps I'm being unfair, since the only footage I've ever seen of her is when she's singing about being partially responsible for the death of her boyfriend. Fantastic song!
Twinkle - Terry mp3 (available for 7 days)
Ride carefully!
6 comments:
Afternoon,
I was put off motorbikes when a man came to our primary school and told us that 100% of people who own one have an accident of varying degrees of seriousness in the first two years.
100%.
The statistics didn't really seem to give me much manouvere in not having an accident stakes, so that was that.
Leader Of The Pack incidentally is completely brilliant - except of course when it is sung by Julian Clary.
Haven't heard that Twinkle song for years. We had it on one of those old Decca 'World of Hits' albums in the 60's but I've never seen it on CD. Also have a brother called Terry who used to have motorbike accidents on a regular basis so I always found this particularly funny (I had a sick sense of humour)
amazing blog!!! I put you on my links!!
Cheers!!
Thanks Stereo Pills :)
I owned a couple of admittedly very puny motorbikes in my yoof - a Yamaha RD50 and, later, some sort of Kawasaki 125. Can't ever remember having any sort of accident, though, so I suspect that bloke who came to your primary school was merely trying to put the willies up you, so to speak, with that 100% claim, Ian TB.
you can keep your radioheads and all your moping musos no one will ever do pain and anguish and desperate heartache like the shangri las. leeave it to the teenage girls if you want it done proper
x
Mick - I've always thought that if you don't laugh at least once during Terry, you must have a heart of stone! You have more reason than most!
Too right, Ally! They really were the masters of it.
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