The PBS series Great Performances has produced a two-hour special about The Dave Clark Five, one of the great British Invasion groups, which premieres tonight. The DC5 were the first “British Invasion” band to tour the United States in the 1960s, and they are one of my two favorite bands of the time (the other being the Kinks).
The Dave Clark Five sold more than 100 million records.Their music is characterized by high energy and good times, interspersed with heartfelt ballads of stunning directness. Lead singer Mike Smith was one of the greatest rock and roll vocalists of all time. You haven’t hear of him? Exactly. He is that underrated.
The Dave Clark Five and Beyond: Glad All Over promises much concert footage, plus interviews with band members and other luminaries such as Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen (if you consider him to be such; his music is not my cuppa joe at all).
PBS stations can be inconsistent about when they run a program, and they often do multiple showings, so check your local listings. Should you miss the show altogether (shame on you), it will probably be available on demand at the Great Performances page of the PBS website’s video section.
For more on the Dave Clark Five, read my article “Dave Clark Five’s Joyful Sound Remembered.”
Thanks, Tom. I have all of the Argent albums and really like that band. Incidentally, Rod Argent sang lead vocals on several Argent songs and on a couple of Zombies songs, I think. He has a very pleasant voice.
I too noticed the upcoming TCM British Invasion festival and planned to write about it for our TAC readers. Now I’ll be able to cut and paste your copy of the schedule into my item. Thanks!
I am glad to hear that you have become a DC5 fan. They are like a tonic for the blues.
I think that the pop influence on these singers’ voices was thoroughly beneficial–even Smith listened to a good deal of conventional English pop music before R&B became available in Britain. In the mid-’60s, David Bowie was singing in the Anthony Newley style, and his vocal skills retained those elements when he hit it big in the rock world. The great majority of today’s singers largely lack that pop influence, having evidently listened mainly to rock music all their lives, and I think that many of them would benefit greatly from a broadening of their musical and vocal horizons.
BTW, you’re quite right on this, and since you seem to enjoy my pedantry on the subject, it’s all about the blues, or rather the “blue” note, and the “blues” scale, the pentatonic, which has only 5 notes.
Just as you can play a “blues scale” on guitar over most any set of chords, you can wing a workable pentatonic melody over one too, and that accounts for much of rock’n’roll music and why it was not unfair for the stodgy traditionalists to accuse ’60s rock music of all sounding the same. Or the ’70s:
“I’m sick and tired of people saying that we put out 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve put out 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”—Angus Young, AC/DC
Anyway, to sum up, I discovered how limited my own ear had become when I tried to learn the Irish folk song “Wild Colonial Boy” [it’s in “The Quiet Man”]. The opening figure has a simple major triad [think The Three Stooges’ “HelloHelloHello”: tonic/3rd/5th]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCIef55zzMM
but whenever I sang it, it sounded like crap because I had lost the ability to sing the 3rd cleanly without flattening it ala the blues.
So that’s why The Beatles and the DC5 and many of those “pop” bands could sound so sweet. They had Anthony Newley, and they also had Motown. English music hall, folk music.
Oh, and American country music. In fact, I’m working with some reggae people right now, and they don’t have a lick of the blues in ’em. But they love them some Kenny Rogers.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/09/01/140120452/reggae-loves-country-a-50-year-romance
It’s all about the 3rd.
Tom: Spot-on comments about the deleterious influence of the pentatonic scale. I have long been opposed to the “rockist” critical orientation which finds anything other than the pentatonic scale to be suspiciously effete. We need our thirds back.
ST: Although I adore The Zombies [mostly for the songwriting and for one of the very few pop/rock keyboardists of note, Rod Argent (yes, of the band Argent!)], I’m not enamored of Colin Blunstone’s rather disposable headvoice, which might even be described as a falsetto as it lacks a bass range and connection to his diaphragm, his body. What we call guts. [Think Joe Cocker, whose technique is quite solid, BTW. Never fatigued or shredded; it just sounds that way.]
Anywayz, I stopped by to hip you to an upcoming TCM orgy of 60’s pop movies, A Hard Day’s Night, 2 Herman’s Hermits flicks, and The Dave Clark Five’s “Having a Wild Weekend,” which was featured in the DC5 special. [Also, they have a cameo, as do The Animals, in “Get Yourself a College Girl.”]
http://www.tcm.com/schedule/index.html?tz=est&sdate=2014-06-02
Monday June 2:
8:00 PM
musical
Hard Day’s Night, A (1964)
9:45 PM
musical
Go Go Mania (1965)
11:15 PM
musical
Having A Wild Weekend (1965)
1:00 AM
musical
Hold On! (1966)
2:45 AM
suspense
Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter (1968)
4:30 AM
musical
Get Yourself A College Girl (1964)
I’m now a DC5 fan for life, and will think of you every time I hear them hereforeverafter. Cheers, me brother.
Thanks for your expert opinion, Tom. I agree with your appreciation of McCartney’s talent and skills. He is indeed one of the greatest of the greats.
Some people just have a great voice, however. I don’t know how technically good Colin Blunstone (Zombies) was, but what a voice he had. It was a central part of their sound.
Tom–I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the documentary so much. I like your description of Mike Smith’s vocals; you’re right that he could do everything Lennon and McCartney could do that was worth doing. (He never sang in the lachrymose style McCartney sometimes used, as in “Yesterday,” and that is just fine with me.) Allan Clarke was another superb singer of that era, as you note.
I think that the pop influence on these singers’ voices was thoroughly beneficial–even Smith listened to a good deal of conventional English pop music before R&B became available in Britain. In the mid-’60s, David Bowie was singing in the Anthony Newley style, and his vocal skills retained those elements when he hit it big in the rock world. The great majority of today’s singers largely lack that pop influence, having evidently listened mainly to rock music all their lives, and I think that many of them would benefit greatly from a broadening of their musical and vocal horizons.
Sam—FTR, I wasn’t giving you just a fan’s opinion, but an expert opinion–I’ve been a voice teacher.
Mike Smith and Allan Clarke had pretty much perfect technique, and it’s no coincidence that they pretty much never missed a note. [Flat, strained, out of gas.]
And to his even greater credit, Sir Paul is still touring at age 71, a 2+-hour show playing bass or guitar or piano while he sings better than all but the best of the kids, none of whom can play a lick.
Sir Paul is in the 99th percentile of all time not only as a vocalist but as a bass player. No singer or bass player has not studied at his feet for the last 50 years, and that’s not even counting his songwriting.
For the record. 😉
Sam—Thx for the heads up on this. I was a little too young for them, and I’ve watched it 4 times now! And the band played was so tight, more an R&B band than R&R. And you’re so right about Mike Smith’s amazing vocals–Lennon and McCartney rolled into one, high and low. Even better than my standing fave, the similarly underrated Allan Clarke of the Hollies.
Cheers, bro, and thanks again.
Thanks, Joe. (It’s great to hear from you again.) I re-watched the PBS special with my son last Friday night, as he happened to be home from college for a brief time, and as he was getting ready to return to school he asked to borrow my DC5 compilation discs. Of course I happily complied.
I, too, am eagerly awaiting the day when Clark will release new recordings from the original masters to the public. It would be just amazing, I’m sure, to hear the DC5 catalog in the best possible audio quality.
S.T., nice to know that your other favorite ’60s band is the Kinks. That shows what a tasteful person you are ;-).
My brother saw the DC5 special & immediately requested my copy of the 1993 CD compilation of theirs so that he could download it to his ipod. I don’t begrudge Dave Clark one iota for being successful & rich. However, it would be nice to have the DC5 catalogue available (the said 1993 compilation is now out of print), as well as the Ready Steady Go footage that he also owns, so that the potential audience can still enjoy it without resorting to Mr. Bootlegger, if you know what i mean.
It’s great to hear from you, Tom. Your point about the use of augmented chords is very interesting. There’s much more to seemingly simple popular music than we often realize.
Thanks for the bio material. I found the documentary’s praise of Clark’s business acumen rather welcome, especially on PBS. I had known about Clark’s leadership in that regard, but the the details provided in the documentary were quite impressive.
I found the DC5’s “Because” in a stack of 45s somebody’s older sister gave me little sister. I was like, yo [although we didn’t say “yo” back then]. What weird notes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX9SJNHz9hM
For the Leonard Feathers of pop out there—in music notation, “Because” has not just one but 2 “augmented” chords. Every white boy who ever played a guitar–at age 12, every Caucasian American male has been issued either/and/or a baseball glove and a guitar—knows D and Dm [D-minor] and even D7 [seventh].
Still, few have ever seen D+. D-augmented. Freaky deaky. D+? That’s what they gave me in math. And of course in physical education because I’m neither smart nor athletic. I’m like, normal.
G G+ G6 G+
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
Verse 1:
G G+ G6 G7
It’s right that I should think about you
Am D D+
And try to make you happy when you’re blue
I’m not going to go into what a “sixth” is, except to say that on guitar, they’re even harder to play than a +.
(Cheers, Sam. Great to see you again. 😉
As you can see from the video, you can’t even tell who the singer is, and if it weren’t written on his kick drum, which one Dave Clark is. Which is cool.
Pardon my Wiki, but:
Personal life
Clark has never married but he was once romantically linked with television presenter Cathy McGowan. He was a close friend of Queen singer Freddie Mercury whom he had known since 1975. Clark had taken over the bedside vigil of Mercury when he died in November 1991.
Honours
In 2008, marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the band, the Dave Clark Five was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Clark, making a rare public appearance, and the two other surviving band members accepted the award on behalf of the group.
Cheers, mate.