History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
"Love Buzz" The Shocking Blue (1970)
It's amazing how many people have heard the cover of this song, but
not the ORIGINAL version, the one that inspired Kurt Cobain. If you
haven't, here it is.
It's on the second side of their
self-titled 1970 LP. If you should score a lucky find in the thrift
shop, I'd HIGHLY recommend it. Start to finish, it's a GREAT album and it also has "Venus" on it....
The year was 1979 and there was change in the air.......
1979 was the year the disco backlash began. And something NEW was going to replace it. Something for the '80s. But what?
Well, leave it to Columbia Records to figure that out.
Columbia released this FREE 7" EP to record stores. Columbia (then a part of the CBS Records empire that was acquired by Sony in 1989) had been on a signing binge of assorted Knack-like power pop acts and this EP was a freebie at the counter of the Lynnwood, WA Fred Meyer Music Market I just couldn't pass up. (It had new music on vinyl and it was FREE. So there.....)
There were four recently signed groups featured on this EP.
1. "Take Me To Your Leader" The Sinceros
2. "Do Wah Diddy" The Hounds
3. "Don't Wait Up For Me" The Beat
4. "Good Reason" Jules & The Polar Bears
This EP did help launch a few minor stars. Jules & The Polar Bears, who's frontman Jules Shear reappeared in
1983 as the writer of Cyndi Lauper's megahit "All Through The Night" and The Bangles 1986
hit "If She Knew What She Wants". He's still active and a well respected songwriter.
Paul Collins was no newbie. His former band, The Nerves gave us the original version of what would become a classic for Blondie
His second band, The Beat however ran into a few problems. There was a British band, also called The Beat. So the band changed their name to Paul Collins' Beat (the British band was known in the US as The English Beat.) But Columbia decided to ruffle the feathers of the British band by threatening them with a lawsuit to completely change their name. There were other tensions between Paul Collins' Beat and Columbia that led to Columbia suddenly dropping the band in 1982. But the group pressed on and self financed the videos for their last album for Columbia, one of which became an early MTV hit.
Paul Collins is still active today, fronting the alt-country Paul Collins' Band
None of the other two groups, The Sinceros and The Hounds, who's songs on this EP also got modest airplay on early New Wave stations were ever heard from again.
If you grew up in the Pacific Northwest from the '60s to the '80s, you no doubt remember this sign:
Pay 'n Save's ubiquitous blue/green block letter signs were everywhere in strip malls, REAL malls and shopping centers all over the Pacific Northwest, well into California and as far east as Montana and Wyoming.
The Seattle based drug store chain's blue/green colour scheme did not end at just their signs. Their stores interiors and their house brand of products all had it too.
....and their bags.....
I worked at a Pay n' Save. And at the end of the day, after I came home and I took my blue vest, blue pants and green work shirt off. I immediately took a shower to make absolutely sure I got ALL this blue/green crap off of me. Just to make sure.....
You quickly begin to HATE corporate colour schemes in a few weeks.
Some old timers I remember still got away with this shirt
Pay 'n Save grew to be force to be reckoned with. QUICKLY. (Even at their ORIGINAL location at 4th & Pike Street in Seattle, which - KUDOS for them, was STILL in business. until the day Pay 'n Save went officially bankrupt.)
They also had a hydroplane, the popular Miss Pay 'n Save.
It acquired Fred Ernst's hardware chain and Malmo Nurseries in 1959. And the snazziest department store this side of Frederick & Nelson, Rhodes in 1968....
The Rhodes department store chain became Lamont's in 1970.
The Pay 'n Save Empire had grown to also include Schuck's Auto Supply, Yard Birds and Bi-Mart. But like many regional retail chains, over expansion in the '70s, various ownerships and increased competition from national chains in the '80s led to the once giant retailer's demise in the late '80s. Pay 'n Save was sold to competitor Payless Drug in 1989 and Payless was absorbed by the national Rite-Aid chain in 1996.
It's pretty scary for women TODAY, with the Republican party wanting to roll back women's rights back to the stone age. Therefore, you might want to save and print this little 1920 women's suffrage poster and hang it visible to any, um "elephants" in the room........And remind them you're not happy.....
