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psychicdeath

Member
Jan 21, 2015
955
1,521
Dave's Song of the Day

Couldn't Get It Right – Climax Blues Band

Tuesday song of the day: Today’s song is the result of the band’s record label telling them to “write a hit.”



In 1976 the Climax Blues Band was working on their eighth album. Their previous work had gained them a moderate following and they were popular on the touring circuit, but they had not produced a hit record. When their record company heard the music they had recorded for the album, they told the band that they thought none of the songs would be a hit single. Their manager, Miles Copeland III, told the band that they really needed to come up with something more commercial. He suggested a cover of an Elvis Presley song, but the band wanted to come up with an original song.

Derek Holt, bassist and singer for the Climax Blues Band, later said, “”We did an album for RCA called Gold Plated, and the album was produced by an old legendary producer called Mike Vernon. We delivered the album to RCA. RCA heard the album, said, ‘You know what, guys, there really isn’t a hit single on it. So, could you go try and write a hit?’ We went to our London studio, which belonged to George Martin, without Mike Vernon, the producer, and we had a couple of days in the studio and we came up with the song Couldn’t Get It Right from absolutely nowhere.”

Couldn’t Get It Right was about a topic explored by many other bands: life on the road and the all-encompassing fatigue that sets in. The lyric “looking for a sign in the middle of the night” referred to looking for a hotel to stay in after a show.

The record company wanted a hit, and the band delivered. Couldn’t Get It Right was released in the UK in late 1976 and rose to #10. In February 1977 it was released as a single in the United States and eventually peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.



Tomorrow: No one gets hurt if they don’t act funny
 

psychicdeath

Member
Jan 21, 2015
955
1,521
Dave's Song of the Day

Scooby Snacks – Fun Lovin' Criminals

Wednesday song of the day: Today’s song partially contributed to a phrase being added to the dictionary.



The band Fun Lovin’ Criminals formed in New York City in 1993. Their music blended hip-hop, rock, R&B and various other genres, with the subject matter often involving crime and drugs. They never had a hit in the US, although their 1996 song Scooby Snacks did get enough airplay to land at #14 on the Alternative Songs chart. It failed to place at all on the Billboard Hot 100.

Scooby Snacks told of a fictional bank robbery and escape from the police. The name, of course, came from the old cartoon Scooby-Doo, where the dog of the title was often rewarded with a food called Scooby Snacks. Later the term became slang in the New York area for diazepam, a drug more commonly called by its brand name Valium. The characters in the song are depicted as “all whacked off of Scooby Snacks.” The song is also notable for using sound bites from two Quentin Tarantino films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

In 2016, twenty years after the song had its brief notoriety, the Oxford English Dictionary added the term Scooby Snacks to the dictionary on its annual list of new additions. The dictionary gave two definitions to the term. The first was a reward or inducement, usually food, taken from the more common use originating with the cartoon. The second definition was “slang, in pl. Any of various narcotic or illegal drugs.” The first example given for this usage was the 1996 Fun Lovin’ Criminals lyric.

Fun Lovin’ Criminals still perform and release records, and have been popular in the UK and Scotland, where they have had several hit records.



Tomorrow: But they got tired of that, you know