THE MARCELS – "Blue Moon"

See also Unchained Melody by Vito & The Salutations. Not as funny as the Marcels, but just as pantheon-trashing. And better than Jimmy Young of course.

Blue Moon could also be seen as the death knell for the Doo Wop revival – scenes always seeming to curl up in a ball of self-parody and nov. Luckily a new wave – the Frankie Lymon inspired Girl Groups – were about to take group harmonies and teen pop to the next level.

Is the start of this actual parody? Or is it more like a fore-runner of what happened to some other musical scenes the longer that they went on? Horribly rockist of me to compare to rock/metal, but it strikes me that the opening of this is an equivalent to Van Halen or Dave Mustaine: OK, you’ve got this doo-wop thing down, now let’s go as fast and as hard and as full of notes as we possibly can.

Where this wins is that it’s still in service of the song, making it memorable and, as Tom points out in his review, tying in with the sentiments of the lyrics, whereas the gunslinger route in rock produced stuff like Ywingie Malmsteen that just sounds like a pointless, Fastest Gun in the West competition and never really engages me to listen beyond the “blimey” moment.

VH, like this record, also much more goofy and tongue in cheek than their classic rock predecessors.

Re 80s soul/RnB, just like the 60s girl groups what happened with RnB was of course the rise of a new phase of the genre driven more by drama and street attitude and cutting edge production than vocal histrionics.

Critic watch:

1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die, and 10,001 You Must Download (2010)
Bruce Pollock (USA) – The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944-2000 (2005)
Dave Marsh (USA) – The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made (1989) 513
Greil Marcus (USA) – STRANDED: “Treasure Island” Singles (1979)
Life (USA) – 40 Years of Rock & Roll, 5 Songs for Each Year 1952-91 (Updated 1995)
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (USA) – 500 Songs That Shaped Rock (1994?)
Zig Zag (UK) – Gillett & Frith’s Hot 100 Singles (1975)
Hervé Bourhis (France) – Le Petit Livre Rock: The Juke Box Singles 1950-2009

The success of the Marcels’ drastic re-write led to some less successful, hyper doo wop covers of oldies – Vito & the Salutations version of Unchained Melody is pretty daft.