The Dave Clark Five: "Bits and Pieces"

April 27, 1964 (4 weeks)

There's something a bit off about bands with pushy drummers. I mean, if you yearn so much for the spotlight then why would you play the instrument most closely associated with musicians who ought to know their place. Your average pop-rock percussionist plainly isn't going to have even a thimble-full of the showstopping skills of a Gene Krupa or a Buddy Rich so the vast majority don't even deserve an outsized amount of the attention anyway.

During the Second British Invasion of the early eighties, one of the leading bands was Culture Club, a rag tag quartet made up of a London club scenester with little experience fronting a pop group, a guitarist-bassist duo who perpetually looked just happy to be there and one very serious drummer. Jon Moss was all business, the sort of figure who was determined to get ahead no matter what happened to his bandmates who might as well have been — in the words of Trainspotting's Renton — the "most useless and unreliable fuck ups in town". Culture Club's drummer couldn't possibly overshadow tabloid favourite Boy George but he would nab an undue amount of the publicity. The man ended up on the cover of the great British music mag Smash Hits and would eventually lead his own, ultimately unsuccessful, post-Club outfit Heartbeat UK. (Amazingly, this was their actual name, rather than a North Americanized alteration a la Charlatans UK, The London Suede or The English Beat) (I highly recommend Dave Rimmer's excellent book Like Punk Never Happened if you wish to learn more about Culture Club and the role Jon Moss played)

But at least Moss was good enough to operate within a band. Boy George was a very capable singer, his bandmates could play Lover's Rock (like "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?") or Motown-esque pop ("Karma Chameleon", "Church of the Poison Mind"). And, indeed, the remaining four in The Dave Clark Five may well have been competent enough in their roles too. But you'd never know it judging by "Bits and Pieces", an appalling mess of percussion, stomps, some chanting and the feeling that they had as little joy in recording it as you'll no doubt have listening to it.

"Glad All Over" had been a breakthrough UK number one for The Dave Clark Five at the start of 1964, usurping The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and making some in Britain wonder if that whole Fab Four fad was winding down. To play off of the supposed changing of the guard, their percussion-heavy style was dubbed the 'Tottenham Sound'. Do a simple Google search and AI will inform you that this style is "most closely associated with the shouty and stompy East End outfit but that "other London-based bands like The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Yardbirds also benefited from the beat boom of this era", a statement that tells us precisely nothing. Certainly all four groups owed a lot to the beat boom caused by The Beatles but there's nothing to suggest that Mick Jagger, Ray and Dave Davies, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jeff Beck had anything to do with drummer Dave Clark and his band. (In truth, many of them didn't have that much to do with one another. London being a far larger city than Liverpool developed a variety of scenes over differing locations)

While "Glad All Over" had been a spirited number which utilized the talents of the Five, there's little evidence that, say, saxophonist Denis Payton had much to contribute to "Bits and Pieces" beyond pounding his boots on a floorboard and maybe some shouting (oh, and he might just be playing some sax buried in the mix as well). Its predecessor had been a remarkably artless work but the group took it to the extreme here. The middle eight with its unexpected burst of melody and something approximating a real song should act as a welcome relief but it feels tacked on, as though part of some dodgy eighties' megamix of the group's hits. (Aidan Curran speculates that it could be "from a random other song lying around" which seems about right; fusing separate tunes together was yet another thing The Beatles had on the competition)

British Invasion acts will be heavily featured in this space for the time being — and it's worth pointing out that many of them were dismal. A great many figures of note emerge but it isn't always just the cream that rises to the top. An oafish band playing within a mostly imaginary scene featuring a drummer who had to make everything about himself isn't how most UK bands made their way in the music industry so I guess it takes all sorts. Yet, at this point I'd sooner have theatre school pretty boys like Peter Noone or Davy Jones than this lot who somehow or other managed to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And you'd think that they're proximity to The Beatles, Stones and the rest would have only exposed them as frauds.

Score: 3