The number one on this key date in Canadian pop history was "Listen People" by Herman's Hermits, a group who the kids just couldn't seem to get enough of. Having had RPM chart toppers with covers of "Silhouettes" and "Wonderful World", it was perhaps time for them to go back to recording some original material. I say 'original' in the loosest possible sense since lead singer Peter Noone and his bandmates who may or may not have been playing had nothing to do with its composition. No, this task fell to a young Graham Gouldman, a Mancunian who was still just nineteen but who had already racked up a seriously impressive songwriting resume.
"Listen People" isn't one of his top tier compositions but it does just about manage to make Herman's Hermits seem like a real band capable of more than novelty pop and crummy covers. It makes me think of nineties' boy bands and girl groups moving in the direction of R&B in order to come across as more serious but inevitably failing miserably. What groups like The Spice Girls failed to take into account was that becoming serious squeezes out whatever charm and spirit they had to begin with. That's good news for the Hermits since they didn't have any charm or spirit to begin with; the bad news is their music remained as useless as ever.
I'd like to think that a genuinely good singer could've done more with Gouldman's song but I'm not so sure that's the case. While Noone is clearly way out of his depth as he strives for profundity, I think his sweet, endearing nature gives the song a little more gravitas. No one's going to take this clown's advice seriously, a point that manages to make the singer's earnestness all the more effective. He ought to be doing more novelty pap which makes his go at being the voice of his generation all the more laudable — even if it still can't quite rescue yet another lame Hermits' "effort".
While music nerds like to yammer on about "influential" acts like The Velvet Underground and Patti Smith, they conveniently leave out the fact that virtually everyone with a recording career of at least two or three years is bound to influence someone. Take Herman's Hermits: budding musicians jamming on guitars in a garage in Albuquerque or Winnipeg weren't learning anything from them but a pre-fab group was being groomed to move directly into the space they were occupying. If it hadn't been for Peter Noone laying the groundwork for cutesy hopelessness, what would have become of Davy Jones? The Monkees were soon to take to the airways and their lengthy run of singles was about to commence. But they didn't even play their own instruments! Well, neither did the Hermits for the most part. Unfortunately, The Monkees fluked a handful of good-to-great singles which means they couldn't quite recreate the Hermit blueprint.
Score: 4
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Can Con
With the chart being expanded from forty entries to a hundred, there was ample opportunity to include some Canadian talent. The Guess Who? and Little Caesar and the Consuls are both present and correct, as is Terry Black who I previously covered in this subsection. A couple of acts I'd never previously been familiar with also appear. At a respectable number twenty-seven is Toronto's The Big Town Boys with "Hey Girl Go It Alone" and it's rather good. A bit like a minor Byrds track, it won't blow anyone away but it's solid and even a little inventive. One to look out for, assuming they ever did anything else of note. The same cannot be said for fellow Hogtown group The Shays. The only thing interesting about them is that their number sixty-seven "smash" is that it's called "This Week Has Seven Days", which they obviously stole from the popular news discussion CBC TV show of the same name. Too bad they didn't have the same quality control and/or influence.
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