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Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - Cliff Richard
And completing our fawning over the week's output from Kings Cross, Bob Stanley's plea to remember the force that Cliff Richard was, rather than the tiresome Tory arse he became:
The late 60s and early 70s produced a wealth of forgotten Cliff treats. After Throw Down a Line came The Joy of Living, a snipe at postwar town planning, of all things. Silvery Rain was about pesticides. Then in 1972 came a single called Jesus. Robin Turner of Heavenly Records remembers being a teenager, "head full of all the usual prejudices that 18-year-olds have" and hearing the song. "It absolutely floored me. The most amazing thing wasn't that I was having my mind blown by Cliff, it was that I was being mind-blown by a Christian rock record that sounded like a pill-ravaged Primal Scream circa Movin' on Up." To add to the fun, Jesus was written by somebody called Hamburger.
4 comments:
Bob Stanley sadly neglected the absolutely mental Cliff movie Take Me High.
It features Cliff living on a canal boat in Birmingham and looks like a close cousin of O! Lucky Man.
I guess it would have been Cliff's response to Tommy, only Tommy came out later
See Cliff sing a funk soul hymn to a burger called the Brumburger and watch him wielding a submachine gun.
It's just a very very strange movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHrUx10qE9M
(Sub-machine gun at 6.50)
Anthony T
"Brumburger" of course inspired Lawrence from Denim (as he was at that stage).
That film is indeed *very* strange: it's part of the pathology of 1973 that even Cliff - even Cliff in his Mary Whitehouse/Festival of Light phase - could be weird, completely by accident and without realising it.
You might find it funny, but "Take Me High" is actually my very favourite of Cliff's movies and don't understand why it is the only one that's is still NOT available on DVD. There are soooo many wonderful songs in it. And some ever so funny dialogues. But I'm still hoping it will be on DVD one day - maybe when there's ony BlueRay left. :D
I'm not saying it's necessarily funny - I'm sure it could be interesting, in its way, and undoubtedly a bit Martin Parr-ish in places (but then it is Birmingham in 1973, with all that suggests about everyone from Go-Kart Mozart to Plone). The whole concept of the Brumburger is itself interesting - part of a forgotten, almost forbidden era when it was still thought "appropriate" to modify such imports for British consumption.
The original Graun piece linked to here was pretty good, though I neglected to mention it at the time - Cliff's 1959 single "Mean Streak" would be thought of as a classic had Johnny Kidd done it.
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