THE TREMELOES – "Silence Is Golden"

Forgot the date.

Sorry for this squib of a piece being so delayed.

As a wildly generalized rule, I’d say the difference between the two, and the reason for the different levels of critical respect accorded each, is that boy groups are about simpering and girl groups are about sass. Not only does that make the latter much more enjoyable than the former, it also causes me to instinctively believe that the singers on even a middling girl group record are trying to get across something true about their lives, while the singers on all but the very best boy group records are probably lying.

wwolfe

Oh, and the Bee Gees are cool of course.

I’d say the Beach Boys, but they were so much more than a vocal harmony boy-band and basically made their name in the early years by being determinedly uncool.

Odd thing about this:

A song everybody knows, but few have worked out what it actually is all about.

Actually one of three tangential and one actual appearance at number one by the Four Seasons. Ironically their only UK number one single was one which didn’t have Frankie Valli on it…

Hmm, I’d give it a somewhat higher score–not brilliant but better than that. I agree that “Here Comes My Baby” is a lot more fun, though.

I think the issue of “wimpiness” is a bit anachronistic here. There were a lot of male harmony groups in the 60s–dare I say the Beatles were incredible with their three-part harmonies?–that surely didn’t seem wimpy at the time. Granted, there were some truly uncool male vocal groups from the 50s that were still lingering around in the 60s (i.e., the Four Lads, the Sandpipers, etc.), but this has always seemed an American phenomenon to me. The Beach Boys managed to rise above this by being a “band” (i.e., they played their own instruments) and managed to seem cool to their followers by singing about things (cars, surfing) that now seem a bit dweeby. The Association bettered the Beach Boys (but only a bit) by singing about politics and marijuana (some of the time).

But I think our critical negativity about male harmony groups and their triteness (if not wimpiness) comes from later pre-fab models (e.g., NSync, Backstreet Boys, Take That, etc., etc., ad nauseam) whose wimpiness lies in their feigned sincerity and their lack of anything original in their material. (Ergo, they appeal to a wide audience who doesn’t want to be challenged by music they have to think about.)

In retrospect, though, the Tremeloes weren’t bad, and I think the recording is an interesting example of cultural exchange. A group of Brits took a song from one of the most generically American groups of the time (the Four Seasons) and improved on it–at least to my way of thinking. Personally, I never really found Frankie Valli et al. terribly convincing. Come to think of it, perhaps we should blame them for the “Boy Bands” we must endure to day.

I do, though, thoroughly agree with wwolfe about the difference between boy groups and girl groups as a general rule.

Awwwwwww. Poo. I have fond memories of this one.

Mind you, I was adolescent at the time. You’re probably right.

There is a great version of ” Here Comes My Baby ” by The Mavericks.

About the 4 Seasons. More than being about a Boy Band , The 4 Seasons are more from an age that had The Temptations & The Miracles and that’s where they were coming from musically, but without the Motown connection ( not sure waht label they were on , maybe Capitol in Canada ).

They seem to be a bit of white stuff ( or Olive in FRankie Vali’s case ) for a mass audience , who didn’t get the soul side of things. But they still had many hits of likeable, falsetto driven, middle of the road stuff like ” Walk Like A Man “, “Sherry”,
” Big Girls Don’t Cry ” and ” Silence is Golden “.

Not sure how these fared in UK but all top 10’s in Canada.

Brian

Four Seasons and Dion etc. weren’t considered wimpy in their time (any more than Sinatra was to the older brothers and sisters of the Four Seasons’ fans). But there’s a class difference between those who revived the girl groups (NY Dolls et al.) in the ’70s and those who revived the Boy Harmony Groups (Billy Joel, for instance), and the class that’s writing the history likes to pretend to toughness and daring. Interesting that genuine street punks – the Italo-American harmony boys – never became part of the def’n of “punk.” I’m sure that in a street fight, Dion and Valli and crew could have cut the Seeds and Shadows of Knight and Remains and Leaves to shreds. (Not that this is necessarily anything to be proud of, mind you.)

Also, rhythmically the Backstreet Boys make Beatles and Hollies and Byrds seem like total dinkboy wimps in comparison – though by “Backstreet Boys” I mean their rhythm section too, i.e., Martin and Rami, and it’s not a fair comparison, of course, since technology has changed the game. But still…

“In fact it’s picked (all down strokes, no sliding notes) at a sedate pace on a jangly (possibly even a 12 string) guitar. “

Somewhere on a Todd Rundgren album is a spoken observation before a song that says something like ” make it sound like the Beatles. It sounds fast but they play it slow”.

For the earlier Beatles being wimpy, you have to remember, too, that there was no heavy metal ( or even powerful amps – see the stage set up to play at Shea – 4 tiny amps & 50,00 people) at the time and really as far as the music sounding tough , ” The Stones” sounded a bit wimpy, too. Although they compensated by pissing on service stations, not washing, and lyrically emulating the blues musicians they loved.

I don’t think the Beatles achieved the sonic umph until , say, Revolver.

Somewhere on a Todd Rundgren album is a spoken observation before a song that says something like ” make it sound like the Beatles. It sounds fast but they play it slow”.

…which helps explain why folk say the Oasis are Beatles-y, which I can’t normally hear. Oasis are certainly a verrrrry sloooooooow band.

Like I said, it’s only white vocal harmony groups that are perceived as being wimpy (until RnB and BoyzIIMen et al). Usually because they are.

RE ,HARMONIES,,(SEASONS,,TREMELOES,BEE GEES,ECT,,WHAT ABOUT ,, HARMONY GRASS,,, THE ASSOCIATION,, SPANKY AND OUR GANG .,,, FOUR FRESHMEN ,,,THE LETTERMEN.,,,,MANHATTON TRANSFER,,,FRIENDS OF DISTINCTION ,,,,,,NEED I GO ON ???

I like both the Four Seasons’ and The Tremeloes’ versions of “Silence Is Golden.”

It is incorrect to say that Frankie Valli was not on December, 1963 (Oh What A Night). He actually has two 20 second long solos in the single, comprising 20% of the length of the song. Gerry Polci had the lead on the rest of vocals on the song, though there is a substantial part that is instrumental also.

The record is about something; it’s about a guy who doesn’t know whether to tell a girl that her guy is cheating on her.

Ok, it ain’t very deep, but still…

As for girl v guy groups; in the last ten to fifteen years all the decent guy groups have pretty much vanished, they all have one demographic group they appeal to; young girls. Which pretty much means they have no nuts. Yes, they can do some heavy sounding dance, but it’s all producer built and lame. Ever since the New Kids on the Block guy groups have been either dance / ballad combos, or just ballad groups (Westlife). The girls groups’ ‘sass’ is just symptomatic of modern culture appealing to a sense of girlie injustice. But even then; they are usually performed by the kind of girls who cry when their nails get broken, and all the music is written and made by the producers anyway. Can anyone in the Sugababes actually play a guitar… or a piano? And that’s the real problem; at both ends of the spectrum, neither the girls or the boys are responsible for the music ‘they’ make – they just front it (a few lyrics don’t count as songwriting). Take The Spice Girls – “Girl Power” – they were auditioned to form the group and selected by a guy – they were nothing more than ‘The Monkees’ – only they couldn’t even play!

Much as I love the Four Seasons, I’m intrigued by the lack of any debate on the odd career of the Tremeloes here.

They weren’t really a harmony act; Silence Is Golden was just a faithful cover of the flip of Rag Doll (and thus close to being a cover of a Popular b-side which would surely have been a first). It was atypical of the “Trems” sound. Here Comes My Baby was more their style – goodtime singalong stuff which (Cat aside) was frequently European in origin. In this way they are groundbreakers, anticipating the Sylvia/Shag/Demis R package holiday hits of the seventies. Also, it was a lot more fun than the cod-serious, E-numbered 60s Europe of This Is My Song or Where Do You Go To My Lovely – which admittedly ain’t saying much.

Come 1969 they decided to switch tack, and came up with the belting Anglo country rocker (Call Me) Number One – which stalled at number two – then provided the soundtrack to an Oxford-set sex-murder-mystery movie called May Morning a year later. They were also very rude about their own run of Euro-poppy hits which seems to have killed their career stone dead after four straight years of Top 10 hits.

Silence Is Golden meantime is VERY odd subject matter for a number one, and I’ve never been quite sure why it got so big.

No, DO start, Punctum! I’d like to hear about that.

“Here comes my baby” is an oddity inasmuch as the version I had as a kid had a fairly ranshackle intro with clapping, whooping, and a big “1-2-3-4” start. It was a promotional single for Pepsi, with Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th street bridge song feeling groovy” on the other side.

I eventually got a copy of the normal CBS single, and found it started immediately after the “1-2-3-4” intro, which seemed a shame.

A bit like when playing “Eloise” Barry Ryan around a mates house and finding that his copy didn’t fade at the ‘screaming’ bit but carried on for another minute or so.

Some of the “glam” Trems was OK, although even in their “glam” period they drifted between light pop, 50s updates, Mungo Jerry-type party music, and Blackfoot-Sue-lite “rockers”.

I quite enjoyed “Right Wheel, Left Hammer, Sham”, without even trying to understand what it was about, but I could happily do without hearing “One Of The Boys” or “Blue Suede Tie” again. From memory, they kept cropping up on “Lift Off!” way after the hits stopped.

And what should have been #1, according to the Tremeloes: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2011/10/across-bridge-kinks-waterloo-sunset.html

Thanks for reading everyone!

TOTPWatch: The Tremeloes performed Silence Is Golden on Top Of The Pops on four occasions;

20 April 1967. Also in the studio that week were; David & Jonathan, Manfred Mann, PP Arnold, Sandie Shaw and The Move. Pete Murray was the host.

18 May 1967. Also in the studio that week were; Englebert Humperdink, Jeff Beck, The Troggs and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Jimmy Savile was the host.

25 May 1967. Also in the studio that week were; Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch, Dusty Springfield and Procul Harum. Alan Freeman was the host.

25 December 1967. Also in the studio that Christmas were; Petula Clark, Sandie Shaw, The Foundations, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Tom Jones. Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman and Pete Murray were the hosts.

None of these editions survive.

Even though I would have liked to see the Kinks at #1, I still think this is a good record. 7/10.