Saturday, July 17, 2010

Hand Claps: My Boyfriend's Back


The Angels: My Boyfriend's Back

[purchase]

I've always been a fan of the girl groups of the 60's: The Shangri-Las, The Dixie Cups (as mentioned below), the Ronettes, to name but a few - how could I resist the 2-disc compilation I found in the cut-out bin years ago, "whose words and music", the liner notes state, "were all about first dates, teenage crushes, dance crazes, parties, boyfriends good and bad, and parental concerns about daughters growin' up too fast"...

A bit of research
speculates the form wasn't all fluff - the liner notes also suggest "girl group music influenced British Invasion bands, paved the way for the mass entry of women into rock and roll, and helped tear down color barriers on radio, on the charts and in concert venues."

Even more digging unearthed this wonderful article of how My Boyfriend's Back came to be written, recorded and performed - "the sassy spoken-word, punctuated by firecracker handclaps, is arguably the most famous song intro in popular music"...

P.S. Although the songs are no longer available for download, I posted others previously which qualify for this theme: Unsquare Dance by Dave Brubeck... and What I Like About You by The Romantics - I also thought about posting Moxy Fruvous' Spiderman this week, but saw Darius already did a while back...

blog comments powered by Disqus