Radio London - Big L Fab Forty 65

Sunday 25th April 1965

New in at £29 – the song with the indecipherable lyrics

Last	This	*Presented by Tony Windsor*
Week	Week	*Presented by Tony Windsor*
7	1	King Of The Road	Roger Miller
5	2	Bring It On Home To Me	Animals
1	3	Ticket To Ride	Beatles
6	4	Little Things	Dave Berry
10	5	Pop Go The Workers	Barron Knights
17	6	Oh No Not My Baby	Manfred Mann
12	7	A Little You	Freddie & the Dreamers
14	8	A World Of Our Own	Seekers
19	9	Something Better Beginning	Honeycombs
2	10	Here Comes The Night	Them
3	11	Stop! In The Name Of Love	Supremes
9	12	True Love Ways	Peter & Gordon
4	13	I Can't Explain	Who
28	14	Wonderful World	Herman's Hermits
–	15	Once Upon A Time	Tom Jones
36	16	Not Until The Next Time	Jim Reeves
25	17	Make Me Know You're Mine	Swinging Blue Jeans
11	18	The Times They Are A-Changin'	Bob Dylan
15	19	Nowhere To Run	Martha & the Vandellas
38	20	Come On Over To My Place	Drifters
13	21	Catch The Wind	Donovan
40	22	Blood Red River	Silkie
16	23	The Minute You're Gone	Cliff Richard
29	24	Casting My Spell	Measles
8	25	For Your Love	Yardbirds
–	26	I've Been Wrong Before	Cilla Black
32	27	Don't Get Off That Train	Tony Blackburn
37	28	Satisfied	Lulu & the Luvvers
–	29	Subterranean Homesick Blues	Bob Dylan
20	30	Concrete And Clay	Unit 4 + 2
–	31	Poor Man's Son	Rockin' Berries
–	32	I'm Gonna Get There Somehow	Val Doonican
–	33	Come Back	Tony Rivers & the Castaways
–	34	Comin' On To Cry/That's the Way it Goes	Mojos
31	35	I Want That Boy	Chantelles
–	36	Turn Your Eyes To Me	Cannon Brothers
30	37	I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry	Frank Ifield
–	38	Hello Faithless	Dora Hall
22	39	Three Rooms With Running Water	Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers
26	40	The Kind Of Boy You Can't Forget	Little Frankie

Something Better Beginning

Honeycombs

PYE 7N15827

Something Better Beginning was the third attempt by the Honeycombs to follow up the international success of their Joe Meek-produced Have I the Right.

The band was formed in 1963 by Martin Murray – described on his own website as looking "more like an accountant than a guitarist and the leader of a chart-topping rock & roll band". Martin managed a London hair salon where Ann Lantree, known as Honey, was his assistant. Honey's brother John came in on bass, with Alan Ward on lead and Dennis D'Ell (aka Dalziel) taking lead vocals.

Offshore radio aside, none of the follow-ups to Have I the Right reached the Top Twenty, apart from the next release after Something Better Beginning – That's the Way.

Martin had already become disillusioned with the band by the end of 1964 and left, to be replaced by Peter Pye. The feature from which this photo is taken - it appeared in Teenbeat Annual 1967 - unfortunately does not identify any of the band members, but is presumably the Peter Pye line-up.

–

Subterranean Homesick Blues

Bob Dylan

CBS 201753

Kenny and Cash had endless fun with Subterranean Homesick Blues, running a competition for listeners to try and translate its indecipherable lyrics.With Knees Club Official (and friend) Mozz, I spent ages playing back a tape recording of the song that we'd made from the Kenny and Cash show, and unsuccessfully attempting to work out the words. I recall that all we ever managed to get out of the line, 'must bust in early May' was 'mus bus moolie may'.

With the Seekers and Silkie also riding high in the Fab, the Dynamic Duo responded to the current folk trend by running a Dylan vs Donovan competition, to determine which of the singers was the hero of the discerning Kenny and Cash audience. I'm prepared to stand corrected if anyone has evidence to the contrary, but I believe Donovan won.

Note that the pic sleeve at the top of the chart (kindly supplied by Gert), depicts Subterranean Homesick Blues b/w The Times They Are A-Changin'. In the UK, The Times... was the first Dylan release (CBS 201751) b/w Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance. Subterranean... was the second single (CBS 201753) b/w She Belongs To Me.

The Essential Bob Dylan is a double CD, 36-track compilation, which has all of the songs mentioned above, with the exception of Honey... as well as Bob's original versions of Mr Tambourine Man, The Mighty Quinn, All Along The Watchtower and You Ain't Goin' Nowhere. Click on picture for full track listing. The album The Times They Are A-Changin' (with the same cover photo as the one at the top of the page) is also available on CD.

DJ Climber:
Don't Make Me Over	Dowlands	Duncan Johnson
Climbers:
Tommy	Twinkle

Alan Field remarks: "Twinkle must have been boy-crazy in those days. As well as Terry and Tommy, she also released a song called Poor Old Johnny, and another called Micky!"

Seems she had a thing about boys with names ending in 'y'. Hopefully, the others met happier fates than Terry.

(Right), Twinkle models the 1965 Big L teeshirt. Sadly, she died in May 2015.

'UK Tops the World'
Hans Knot has kindly provided a clip from 'UK Tops the World', aired during the Dave Dennis Show for today, April 25th 1965 and with the help of Martin van der Ven, has identified the show's theme tune. Swingin' 'Round the World by jazz trumpet player Jonah Jones introduced the 15-minute pre-recordedprogramme, which was sponsored by Miners Make-up and presented by Martin Locke.

Miners is a budget cosmetics range, still popular in the 21st Century. In the Sixties, the company targeted young, female music fans by not only sponsoring pirate radio programmes, but advertised on the back of EMI's Columbia, HMV, Parlophone and Stateside paper record sleeves. With bestsellers the Beatles, Elvis, The Dave Clark Five, Cliff and the Shadows, Herman's Hermits, Billy J. Kramer, Gene Pitney, the Fourmost, the Hollies and Manfred Mann all signed to EMI labels it was a smart move.

Promotions for 'Miners' Hit make-up' featured close-up images of 'dolly bird' faces resembling the top fashion icons of the day, with long fringes and massive eyelashes - er sorry, that should be 'lashes with dizzy dimensions'. The groovy Miners slogans include:
'Big hit now, lips all softly sheeny, POPSTICK's great new colours'.
'Miners for Pop pickers,switched-on colours, lots for eyes, extra hair-wise.'
'Hair goes wild, rich and beautiful. Miners Hair Colour Shampoo.'
and
'Big hit now, lashes with dizzy dimensions, Lash-on fibre mascara with spiral brush.'

One of the adverts featured 'Big M' - "big new shiny lipsticks' (left). Might the Big M (for 'Miners') name have been inspired by Big L?

Morphy Richards had a similar EMI record sleeve campaign promoting their hairdryers via a cartoon strip featuring a character called 'Fran the Fan' a teen obsessed with styling her hair and following a band called The Frantics.Thank to her skills with her hairdryer, Fran gets invited backstage to meet her heroes. Morphy Richards also ran monthly competitions to 'Design a Hairstyle' and win a Marconiphone stereogram worth £55. (I suspect most girls would have preferred a trannie, so they could carry their favourite watery wireless stations around with them.)

Tune in next week for another Big L Fab 40!