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Fab (and not so fab) & nostalgic 80's and other naff music videos thread


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  • 2 weeks later...

Agadoo

 

 

New version ahoy!

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

As if soaring unemployment and shrinking pensions were not enough, further misery is soon to be unleashed on the unsuspecting British public.

 

Twenty-five years after its chart success, Agadoo – mindless, ruthlessly catchy and voted the worst song in pop history – is to be re-released, afflicting a whole new generation.

 

Once banned by Radio 1 because it simply wasn't "credible", Agadoo, or "Aaaaarghadoo" to its many critics, peaked at No2 and refused to leave the Top 75 for some 30 weeks.

 

The 1984 hit, by the Yorkshire band Black Lace, represented a nadir in holiday-hit pop, its very awfulness celebrated in Spitting Image's The Chicken Song, with the Black Lace duo immortalised as "those two wet gits with their girly curly hair".

 

"That was a real highlight," said Dene Michael, the 52-year-old ex-Black Lace singer who is releasing a new, uptempo version of the song at Easter.

 

But is it morally right to inflict this on the nation once more?

 

"Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the dance floor? With all the doom and gloom in the world at the moment, I think it's just what we need," said Michael, who is from Leeds but has lived in Benidorm for the past 15 years.

 

The new mix has now been recorded, and a video shot at Albir, on the Costa Blanca, featuring former Coronation Street actors Bruce Jones, who played Les Battersby, Kevin Kennedy, who was "Curly" Watts, and stars from the ITV series Benidorm.

 

Few have attempted to analyse Agadoo's banal lyrics. With its chorus of "Agadoo-doo-doo, push pineapple, shake the tree/Agadoo-doo-doo, push pineapple, grind coffee", Michael admits: "Oh, it's complete nonsense."

 

"We once did an interview on Whistle Test and the presenter asked us: 'So, what's it all about?' And we said: 'It's a protest song about cruelty to fruit.'"

 

Cruelty to music might be more apt, according to industry experts who voted it the worst song of all time in a 2003 poll for Q magazine – just one of several it has topped.

 

Describing it as "magnificently dreadful", the panel concluded: "It sounded like the school disco you were forced to attend, your middle-aged relatives forming a conga at a wedding party, a travelling DJ act based in Wolverhampton, every party cliche you ever heard."

 

It narrowly beat horrors including Orville's Song, by the ventriloquist Keith Harris and his puppet duck, and the toe-curlingly schmaltzy There's No One Quite Like Grandma, by St Winifred's School Choir.

 

"As long as it puts a smile on people's faces," said Michael.

 

Unfortunately, that has not always been the case. One birthday party at a club in Hailsham, East Sussex, ended with police breaking up a fight between 50 brawling guests after a row over whether the DJ should play Agadoo.

 

Three men were arrested and a police officer hurt.

 

Black Lace had a string of similar hits, including Music Man, Superman, and Do the Conga.

 

The fact that their own record company published a book of cartoons called 101 Uses for a Black Lace Record indicates how seriously they took themselves.

 

There are hopes, too, of a pumped-up version of Agadoo aimed at Ibiza, undoubtedly stripping the Spanish island of any last vestige of clubbing cool.

 

"If Black Lace think they have a chance in Ibiza, that really says more about Ibiza these days," Garry Mulholland, the pop critic and author of the acclaimed This is Uncool and Fear of Music pop chronicles, said.

 

"As for Agadoo, if you are silly, or drunk, or a little kid, and all you want is something that sticks in your head, it's fine.

 

"My idea of a terrible record is Another Brick in the Wall Part II by Pink Floyd. That whole quasi-intellectual, vapid, hippy rubbish is really annoying."

 

The Radio 2 presenter Paul Gambaccini, nicknamed the Professor of Pop, said: "Once you get past one's initial tendency to reach for garlic and crucifix, one's got to ask what so many people got out of it.

 

"And that's Black Lace's considerable achievement. They must have known it was, at least, simplistic. Were they tongue-in-cheek?"

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got to wonder what these people thought of the music they were making? Were they in the studio thinking yep this is a cracking song, really or sniggering wondering why fools would go out and buy it and just look forward to snogging girls?

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He said that he loved me

never would go, oh oh, oh oh.

Now I find I'm sitting

here on my own, oh oh, oh oh.

 

Was it something I've said or done

That made him pack his bags up and r'un?

Could it be another he's found? -

It's breaking up the happy home.

 

Mister, can you tell me

where my love has gone?

He's a Japanese boy.

I woke up one morning and

my love was gone

Oh my Japanese boy

ooh I miss my Japanese boy.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Human League

Heaven 17

ABC

 

Live (in one concert) at Tatton Park on August 2nd!

 

Any of the NW UK-ers up for that?

Sounds like it could be a fun time - and no extra cheese needed!

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