Top Six Cheesy Songs From the 60s, That Weren't Really That Cheesy At All

Self-explanatory really. All cheesy, all good.


'I've Been A Bad, Bad Boy' - Paul Jones
Kicking off with the loveable rogue and Oxford University drop out himself, who's still going strong of course, though lost a lot his rogueishness.


'Pictures of Matchstick Men' - Status Quo
Forget what people say about them, the 'Quo rocked. Probably still do. This is an early offering in black and white, when they'd clearly briefly jumped on the psychedelia bandwaggon, and were known as THE Status Quo. Think they dropped the 'The' after this performance..


'Young Girl' - Gary Puckett and the Union Gap
Good singer. Sounds like he's having some trouble..


'Baby, Now That I've Found You' - The Foundations
This is definitely not a nod towards having a group of black dudes in the list just for the sake of it, but rather 'cos it's a good song. Same people that did the better known 'Build Me Up Buttercup'.


'Fire' - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
A near-mandatory inclusion, as is the oft-quoted fact that he was at Reading University. Think he dropped out, which I'm sure was their loss. He also appears in 'Eyesight to the Blind' from the movie version of 'Tommy' and I'm not sure what else. Later referenced as a euphemism/term of abuse for a pedophile, in the Brass Eye pedophilia special..


'Silence is Golden' - The Trememloes
The ultimate of the ultimate. Don't know if they did any other good songs or how their vocal chords held out (and indeed how the effect was achieved).


A common thread running through this is they were more or less all on Castle Communications (as was) 'Ultimate 60s' collection, that I had about 20 years ago on CD, when these were still quite new, and the 60s were of course fresher in people's minds! In fact, all of these songs must have appeared originally within a 2 year time frame - what a time for music, I think..