Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 10-7-23

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One night in December 1994 my friend Kathy and I attended the WDRE Acoustic Xmas show at New York City’s Beacon Theater. There were multiple artists on the bill, each getting a short slot to perform three or four songs. The acts were The Go-Go’s, Big Audio Dynamite, Jesus and Mary Chain, frente!, Love Spit Love, Black 47, G. Love & Special Sauce, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. I looked up online who performed, as the only act I recall seeing there were the Radiohead guys. The band had one album out at that time, 1993’s Pablo Honey. Kathy and I just wanted them to do their hit – “Creep” – and then skedaddle. They didn’t play “Creep.” They played some song about plastic trees and one about an iron long and some other mess. Kathy and I knew this band would never be heard from again.

Oops.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was born on this date in 1968. Lots of Thom’s work on today’s playlist.

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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 10-20-22

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Today’s playlist celebrates the October 20 birthdays of Snoop Dogg, Tom Petty, Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, Wanda Jackson, The Cribs’ Gary & Ryan Jarman, The Tokens’ Jay Siegel, Eddie Harris, and New Vaudeville Band’s John Carter; and the October 21 birthdays of Dizzy Gillespie, The Cramps’ Lux Interior, The Go-Go’s’ Charlotte Caffey, The Teardrop Explodes’ Julian Cope, Manfred Mann, The Skyliners’ Jimmy Beaumont, Elvin Bishop, Kathy Young, Doja Cat, and Industry’s Jon Carin.

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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 8-17-22

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Today’s playlist celebrates the August 17 birthdays of Dexys Midnight Runners’ Kevin Rowland, The Go-Go’s’ Belinda Carlisle, Phoebe Bridgers, Mark Dining, Luscious Jackson’s Jill Cunniff, The Revolution/Wendy & Lisa’s Lisa Coleman, Maria McKee, The Pack’s Lil B, and Robert DeNiro; and the August 18 birthdays of Arcade Fire’s Régine Chassagne, Aphex Twin, the xx’s Romy, Wu-Tang Clan’s Masta Killa, The Orioles’ Sonny Til, Clairo, House of Pain’s Everlast, The Primitives’ Tracy Tracy, The Move’s Carl Wayne, Mika, The Toys’ Barbara Harris, Johnny Preston, Maxine Brown, The Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg, Martin Mull, and Denis Leary.

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Winston + Soft Cell

Throwback Thursday – 1982

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As a songwriter, Gloria Jones charted with Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “If I Were Your Woman,” the Four Tops’ “Just Seven Numbers (Can Straighten Out My Life),” and Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross’ “My Mistake (Was to Love You).” As a producer, Gloria Jones hit the top ten on the disco chart with Gonzalez’s “Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet.” But as a lead singer, Jones failed to make the pop, r&b or dance charts.

In 1973, while on a trip to the United States, British DJ Richard Searling purchased a copy of a Gloria Jones single from 1965. The A-side was a song called “My Bad Boy’s Comin’ Home,” but it was the B-side that really got Searling’s attention.

Northern soul music (uptempo American soul music in a sixties Motown vein yet without commercial success) had a large cult following in the northern England at that time, and Searling played the Gloria Jones b-side during his sets.

Northern soul fan David Ball loved the song. When he and his musical partner, Mark Almond, who together comprised the duo Soft Cell, were looking for a song to cover, they went with the Jones song, thinking it would be interesting for a synth band to cover a soul tune. Their record label asked them to add guitar, bass and drums to the track, but the duo refused. Despite this, the label put out the singer. Almond told Rolling Stone magazine “We thought if we were really lucky, we’d scrape into the top 75 in Britain. We didn’t think anything would happen over here [in the US].”

Soft Cell’s recording of “Tainted Love” became a smash worldwide. In the US, it spent 43 weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100, a record at that time. Said Gloria Jones of the Soft Cell recording “Their version was far better than mine.”

Winston + Soft Cell
This week, Tunes du Jour celebrates Throwback Thursday with twenty great tunes from 1982, kicking off with Soft Cell’s version of “Tainted Love,” but first, check out Gloria Jones’ original:



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