Norma Kelly — Siga aquele carro (Follow that car)
b/w A Canção Que a Guitarra Não Tocou (Mocambo 1968)
Lil’ pop gem from Brazil circa 1968. Can’t find much else about Norma Kelly, but this is one groovy little dancefloor ditty.
First heard this on Give the Drummer Some a while back… download link in the comments!
Les Doubles Faces — Addio Città (1967)
from 60’s Italian Beat Resurrection 6
Continuing in the garage vein, here’s something a little more polished—an Italian beat track from Les Doubles Faces… great garage organ sounds and haunting backup vocals singing “addio città” — “goodbye city.”
Moha Jamin — Raks Raks Raks (1968?)
from Raks Raks Raks - 27 Golden Garage Psych Nuggets From The Iranian 60s Scene
Continuing this globe-trotting garage fest with this track from Moha Jamin (مهاجمین - The Aggressors). The drums are insane, as is the breakdown halfway through. The album cover of this comp is actually a modified version of the original 7” single, as seen below.
Sound quality is pretty bad, but that’s pretty common for music from this era in Iran—it’s hard to find good quality vinyl, because most records were destroyed during the Islamic Revolution in ‘79. In fact the original vinyl single is going for 700 euros on CDandLP right now…
The Tigers — Seaside Bound (1967)
This is what 1967 sounded like in Japan. No doubt that ザ・タイガース (Za Taigaasu, sounded out) are some fucking cool cats… look at that cover!
Gigliola Cinquetti — La Pioggia (The Rain) (1969)
Italian pop with an identity crisis, from a girl from fair Verona, Gigliola Cinquetti. She hit the big time when she was just 16, taking first place at San Remo in 1964.
Five years later she sung this bizarre track, ‘La Pioggia,’ which alternates stylistically between polka, circus music, 60s beat and spy movie soundtrack, but she lost out to the Roman Elvis wanna-be, Bobby Solo, with his track ‘Zingara’ (Gypsy).
The Tigers — Seaside Bound (ザ・タイガース - シーサイド・バウンド) (1967)
The Tigers were one of the most successful bands in Japan’s ‘Group Sounds’ era in the late 60s—a infectious mix of beat, pop and rock’n’roll that was more or less Japan’s response to the Beatles. But don’t think of them as knock-offs—these guys were real rock’n’rollers in their own right. Look at those dance moves!
I just tracked down a compilation of all The Tigers’ A-sides, so stay tuned for some more pop gems. Yeah yeah, I know, the blog’s turning into a Japanese music appreciation festival. But there are just so many charming oddities to discover…
The Zombies — She’s Not There (1964)
from Zombie Heaven
Pop perfection. On their US tour in support of this single, their schedule included seven shows a day at downtown Brooklyn’s Fox Theater, at Flatbush and Fulton. (The theater was torn down in 1970 to make way for a ConEd building.) The Brooklyn shows were promoted and MC’d by Murray the ‘K’, who was also a booster for those other British invaders — The Beatles.
