My bestest most favouritest songs ever ever - part 5

Time for another one of these!  I was shocked to find the last time I posted one was nearly two years ago; it feels like about three months...

Anyway, this is another one of those songs which sounds absolutely brilliant every single time I hear it and never loses its status or appeal (which is the point of this series!) but in particular it takes me back to an exciting period when I was discovering new old music.  As I was working in the record shop it was easier to order all sorts of obscure items from all sorts of obscure labels, plus get a staff discount -  suffice to say it seemed I was bringing home a new album just about every week.

Up until that point I'd always most enjoyed music that was current at the time of listening, so it was quite an adventure to explore an unfamiliar genre from the past. I first heard this particular song around 1985 I think, by which time it was nearly 20 years old.  To my 22-year old self, that meant it was bloody ancient.  Now, of course if I spool back 20 years, a mere blink of an eyelid ago, I realise it's me who's bloody ancient.

But never mind all that, because this is timeless.  My first awareness of its existence in the '80s was thanks to a brilliant compilation album: 'Perfumed Garden Vol 1' , put out by the Psycho label.  It grabbed me right from the off with its dirty, grungy, overdriven guitar intro.  The vocals are nicely rough too, and that insistent riff just keeps on going.  I had no idea until then that anything in the sixties could sound quite this punk; I thought the Stones and the Kinks were about as hard as it gets, so it came as a revelation.

'You're Too Much' was originally put out as a B-side in May 1966 (the A-side, 'Man With Money' still sounds fine to my ears but is not a patch on this).

As for the band - I wrote a piece about them in a fanzine in 1986 (shocking to think that is now longer ago than the original gap between the record's release and my hearing it).  So my research has already been done and I'll just reproduce it here...

The Eyes were a young band from Ealing who picked up a culty mod following in the mid sixties.  They supported such bands as The Action, The Kinks and The Move.  Their 'gimmick' was to wear colourful, amusing clothes - stripey Rugby shirts, bleached jeans, pink parkas with tyre tracks inked on the backs and red or yellow boots.  (Also for added decoration - big eyes sewn onto their tops!)

After 4 singles (the last one of which was a flop), an EP, and a disguised album, the band split up, and vocalist Terry was the only member to pursue a serious musical career.  He joined 'Andromeda' for a while but never recorded with them, then became vocalist for 'The Entire Sioux Nation' with Larry Wallis (who later became a Pink Fairy), Jim Taylor and Paul Nichols.

Anyway - onto the song.  It would be an understatement to say I just fucking love it.

The Eyes:  You're Too Much
(originally released May 1966)

The Eyes in rugby shirts and bleached jeans (1966)

The whole piece from the fanzine (1986)

Once you pop you can't stop

I recently went for a trip on the tube and I didn’t want to get off!  YouTube, that is, not the Central Line…

That’s the thing about YouTube though, isn’t it?… A desire to satisfy a nagging curiosity about something or other starts me off on a journey that I could never have predicted.  Just because, after finding what I originally searched for, I glance over at the right hand side (oh, those fateful ‘Suggestions’) and something catches my eye.  And then something else.  And something else.  And so it goes on.  From then on I’m enslaved. Next thing I know I’m miles away from where I began and going down Google side-streets too, amassing a load of probably useless information but feeling strangely satisfied at having crammed a few more pieces of music trivia into my poor, overcrowded brain.

Well, this time it started off with The Eyes (as so many things do…!)  The Eyes were a great ‘60s mod/freakbeat band who I’d discovered during the ‘80s when a lot of obscure beat and psychedelia was gathering renewed interest and being reissued on some brilliant and fascinating compilation albums.  Well, I fancied hearing ‘You’re Too Much’ again – it’s so good… 

Then, looking over at the right hand side, I spotted something unexpected… a track by the Nerves, who I vaguely knew to be a ‘70s band, and the song was ‘Hanging On The Telephone’.  The original.  It appeared on a Nerves EP back in 1976. I don’t know why it was a suggested track but I’m glad it was there.  I just had no idea that Blondie’s excellent chart-topping single from 1978 was a cover version, I’d always thought theirs was the first.  It’s such a great song so I was intrigued to find out a bit more about the Nerves….

To cut a longer story short, I found out that the songwriting talent behind ‘Hanging On The Telephone’ is Jack Lee, who also wrote ‘Will Anything Happen’ – again, a song I only know from hearing Blondie, as this is the B-side of their 'Hanging On The Telephone' single and also appears with that on the album ‘Parallel Lines’.  (For trivia fans, Jack Lee also wrote ‘Come Back And Stay’, covered by Paul Young – he of '80s chart fame, who had great success with it.  Lee's original is on his solo album 'Jack Lee's Greatest Hits' and is far more emotive.)  But the best part of this journey was that I found, totally unexpectedly, two other songs that I’d never before heard and now love.  I had no idea that I would fall for this '70s power pop quite so much.  So here they are for you too.

The Nerves: When You Find Out.

The Plimsouls (a later offshoot from the Nerves): A Million Miles Away

And just so you can set off on the same trip too if you like, travelling on a parallel line perhaps - although your final destination may turn out to be somewhere quite different, here's where it all started...