The Captain & Tennille certainly picked the right song when they sang “Love Will Keep Us Together” back in 1975 – not only did the record go to Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 nine weeks after its debut, the husband and wife team really are still together.
“Do That To Me One More Time” also did pretty well for them. It too went gold and reached Number 1 in 1979.
“Captain” Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille married on 11 November 1975, and the following year they sang in the White House for Queen Elizabeth II and President Gerald Ford during the American Bicentennial celebration.
Toni Tenille was also involved as a session singer on albums by top artists such as The Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Elton John and Art Garfunkel.
Here’s the Neil Sedaka/Howard Greenfield song “Love Will Keep Us Together” that did so well for The Captain & Tennille in 1975 (looks like she’s going to jump off the chair any minute…):
And their 1979 hit “Do That To Me One More Time”, written by Toni Tennille, at a somewhat more sedate pace:
Mi-Sex was a top New Zealand band that went to Australia in the late Seventies and had a lot of success there, culminating in their first album “Graffitti Crimes”, featuring the title track as well as songs like the Australian No. 1 single “Computer Games” and their recent other single from 1979, “But You Don’t Care”.
I remember their predecessor band Father Thyme playing at dances in the “Old Woolroom” at Massey University in about 1977 or 1978.
I distinctly remember they played “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd – or maybe it was “Welcome To The Machine” from the same album (not so distinct after all…), and I also remember chatting to the bass player, Don Martin, in the breaks.
Mi-Sex, however, played quite a different style, quite New Wave, and when I was planning the 1980 Massey University Student Orientation (two weeks in February-March when term started in New Zealand after the summer vacation), I tried to hire them for a festival we were running – for NZ$10,000, a lot more than Father Thyme had commanded.
Unfortunately they were already booked for that time, so it didn’t happen, and I had to be content with buying their album, which I think I bought in Germany, having gone there a couple of weeks after Orientation ended to write my M.A. thesis.
As I said, the album, released in July 1979, was called “Graffitti Crimes”, here’s the title track:
One of my favourites is the 1979 single “But You Don’t Care”:
And finally the hit “Computer Games”, which wasn’t on all versions of the album:
Mi-Sex disbanded in 1984, and unfortunately lead singer Steve Gilpin died after a car accident on his way home from a gig in 1991.
When I heard the name Alan Parsons mentioned today, in my mind I was in a student flat in about 1977 in Waldegrave Street, Palmerston North, New Zealand, listening to “The Raven” from the album “Tales Of Mystery And Imagination”, the first from The Alan Parsons Project.
The Alan Parsons Project was founded by its namesake Alan Parsons, a young engineer at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, and Eric Woolfson, who wrote most of the songs and sang on many of them. Woolfson died at the beginning of December last year (2009).
Alan Parsons first came to prominence engineering the Beatles album “Abbey Road”, and was also particularly well known for his work on Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, as well as many works by The Hollies.
He also played a major role in influencing the sound of Al Stewart’s “The Year Of The Cat” and “Time Passages”, which he also produced.
The Alan Parsons Project was really a fluid group of different musicians around these two main protagonists, and produced studio music in the genre some call progressive rock.
“Tales Of Mystery And Imagination”, released in 1976, was a tribute to horror writer Edgar Allen Poe. Here are two tracks from it:
“The Raven” (lead vocals by Leonard Whiting, Alan Parsons lead vocal through a “vocoder”):
“(The System Of) Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether” (vocals John Miles and Jack Harris):
The following year “I Robot” was released. There are a number of tunes from this record I still remember well.
Firstly, of course, the title track, “I Robot”:
“Breakdown” (vocals Allan Clarke):
“I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You” (vocals Lenny Zakatek):
“Some Other Time” (vocals Peter Straker and Jaki Whitren):
“Don’t Let It Show” (vocals Dave Townsend)
Although in the early years there was little live material, later you can find more, and especially recently, although The Alan Parsons Project itself ceased to exist back in 1987 already.
Here is a live version of “Don’t Let It Show”:
In 1980 the musicians released the album “The Turn Of A Friendly Card”.
It featured the song “Time”, with lead vocals by Eric Woolfson:
Finally, from the 1982 album of the same name, “Eye In The Sky”, also sung by Eric Woolfson:
“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” from Pink Floyd accompanied me all the way round New Zealand’s South Island in the back seat of the family car at the end of 1975, my last year at school. (I grew up on the North Island, by the way.)
And a few years later I remember hearing a band called Father Time playing it in the “Old Wool Room” at Massey University, where they used to hold the student dances before it was pulled down. Key members of Father Time later went on to become “Mi-Sex”, a top band in Australia.
Of course, Pink Floyd was everywhere in the 70s, you couldn’t go to a party without hearing the album “Dark Side of the Moon” if nothing else.
I had a bit of a problem regarding a video of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” – the song is so long, people have had to break it up and it wasn’t so easy to find the matching clips!
This one is an earlier live version, from 1974:
And here are two parts form a concert in LA, also in the Seventies, though the accompanying footage is more recent, i.e. 2008:
Finally, three more recent renderings, Pink Floyd… in 1990 –
and David Gilmour… electric in 2007:
And Dave Gilmour solo doing a purely accoustic version on his own:
I could have spent all night listening to all the different versions of this song, but I’ll leave you with these ones for now….
