Music Box 9th March 2024

We start with London band Department S, most famous for this single, Is Vic There? (Demon 7” 1980). Jason King is nowhere in sight.

Next up, Dallas Texas garage band Jimmy C & The Chelsea Five (see), with Leave Me Alone, the B-side of their Rolling Stones cover Play With Fire (Zero 7” 1967), their only single. 

I know nothing about Nzimande All Stars, but  I guess they’re South African (judging by their record label). Here’s Sporo Disco (Masterpiece 7” South Africa 1978).

Bree Sharp is an American singer-songwriter and actress, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, famous for her single David Duchovny (actor from The X-Files). Here’s her single America (Trauma CD 1999), from her brilliantly titled debut LP A Cheap And Evil Girl (Trauma 1999). 

Though Bree’s song America isn’t a cover of the Paul Simon classic, it did remind me that I’ve criminally ignored one of my favourite artists (and my first record purchase – their 1972 Greatest Hits LP). So we conclude with two obscure and unknown Simon & Garfunkel LP tracks. First, Cloudy, a song Simon co-wrote in the U.K. a year earlier with Bruce Woodley of The Seekers. It comes from the duo’s third LP Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (CBS 1966). Then we conclude with Punky’s Dilemma, a discarded song from the 1968 movie soundtrack The Graduate. Later released on their fourth LP, the classic Bookends (CBS 1968). Both songs are marked by humour and whimsey, rare in the S&G catalogue, though the latter is also a pointed remark on American youth and the Vietnam War. I hope you like both of them. Until next week …