The Dave Clark Five: "At the Scene"

March 14, 1966 (1 week)

Though the charts didn't quite reflect it in the first part of the year, the music of 1966 proved to be considerably darker and tougher than previous years. Though considered to be a seminal album from 1967, The Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico had been recorded nearly a year earlier — which perhaps goes some way to explaining how it managed to stand out so starkly up against all that lovey-dovey flower power. A rougher edge took hold of The Rolling Stones as they really began to come into their own. The Who's Pete Townshend crafted some magnificent pop but with some questionable themes while their hits were being played live at increasingly louder volumes. Even The Beatles began moving toward the dark side on Revolver cuts like "Eleanor Rigby" and "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Yet, there was still a place for bubblegum pop. While they were becoming increasingly irrelevant back in Britain, Herman's Hermits and Peter and Gordon continued to find success in North America as younger kids turned their backs on much of that dark stuff. (With The Beatles having failed to sell out Shea Stadium in the summer of '66 for their second show at the famed venue, CBS interviewed some youngsters at the concert to see if they felt the Fab Four might be fading away. Older teens still spoke highly of them while a little girl admitted that she preferred 'Herman and the Hermits'; as an aside, I'm not sure that asking kids at a concert really proved anything: they ought to have gotten the perspective of some adolescents who weren't in attendance instead) While Canada remained loyal, they were but a taster for what was to come in the late sixties. The Monkees were on the horizon, The Bee Gees weren't far off and American pop was soon to take over from the British Invasion. It seemed like everyone had to take a side.

As if trying to place themselves on the right side of the divide, The Dave Clark Five returned with their roughest number to date. Lead singer Mike Smith is in fine sandpapery form, Clark pounds the drums with his usual ferocity and their bandmates even sound energetic — and not just because they've been cajoled into stomping their feet on a wooden stage the entire time. The DC5 always played with a booming presence but they found a new level here. Too bad, then, that "At the Scene" is feeble and smacks of throwaway pop played at maximum volume to hide just how empty it is.

Though not terribly great, "At the Scene" isn't a total disaster. Not nearly as fun as "Over and Over" but a modest improvement on "Bits and Pieces". Ultimately, this third and final Canadian number one from the DC5 sort of sums them up. While they may have aspired to be ranked alongside The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, they lacked talented songwriters and were unable or unwilling to explore musically. On the other hand, they couldn't quite grasp how to craft truly great pop either, as if pandering to commercial demands was below them or something. What they did they did reasonably well but they could never quite rise above being a dance band from London's East End. Merseybeat may have faded away but they were going to drive the Tottenham Sound into the ground.

Score: 4

The Dave Clark Five: "Over and Over"

December 27, 1965 (1 week)

Bloody Americans. Amazing how they make everything about themselves and still manage to act aggrieved all the time. But enough about that ghastly, disgusting fool in the White House. 

The Dave Clark Five had a respectable eight Top 10 hits in the United States. They had the same number of hits in their native Britain though only four of them managed to do so on both sides of the Atlantic. Meanwhile in Canada, no less than fifteen of their singles made the upper quadrant of the charts, including three numbers ones (yes, there's still one more to go). The DC5 did solid business in many territories around the world but Canada was certainly their strongest market. Yet you'd never know it given their tour itinerary.

Out of curiosity, I looked up The Dave Clark Five's tour schedule for 1965. According to Setlist.fm, they played seventy shows that year. Not bad but I would've expected closer to double that, not unlike the one hundred and fifty-four they played in '64. Assuming the records are complete (and that's by no means a guarantee), they only played once in their native Britain during that twelve month period and it happened to be at the Royal Variety Performance in November (The Beatles having once again turned down their invitation to perform after having stolen the show in '63). They started the year off with a five day residence at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Philippines before returning to the UK presumably to rest and do some recording — and possibly to play more gigs that haven't been accounted for over on Setlist. They returned to the Far East in May, doing one off shows in both Singapore and Hong Kong and then headed Down Under. They did seven shows in Australia and then nine in New Zealand. Hey, if you're going to go that far you might as well make it worth your while.

The DC5 finally made it to North America on June 18 with a show in New York. Two days later they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Soon after that they were north of the border in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada's mining capital and the place that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were sent prior to their mission to the Moon so they could experience something approximating Lunar conditions. The next day, they were in "nearby" Sault Ste. Marie, a border town where Lake Superior and Lake Huron meet. (Actually, it's a pretty nice place considering much of northern Ontario is so bleak) They then headed back down south before playing a show in my hometown of Calgary just as the city was hosting its annual Exhibition and Stampede. After that it was back to touring the shit out of the USA.

Considering all the chart success they were having, it's worth asking why they never went on a lengthy Canadian tour. I know it's never been an especially lucrative market, particularly back in the sixties, but still they would've cleaned up. And with singles like "Over and Over" it was as if they were begging fans to go out and see them. While just a reasonably good rock 'n' roll song, you've got to think they would've torn the roof off of every arena they played from Victoria to St. John's.

Looking back at the last time they came up, I'm struck by how I could've stood to have been a little more generous towards the DC5. Then, I gave "Bits and Pieces" another listen and I stand by every word of what I wrote. Clark could pound the crap out of a drum kit and the stomping is a nice touch but there's nothing else worth mentioning about it. Fortunately, they got better over the previous two years. Clark's bandmates stay out of his way for the most part, keeping a steady, rumbling pace during the verses and allowing their beloved leader to make his case for being the British Invasion's finest drummer. Mike Smith sounds a great deal more confident in his singing too.

Critical consensus agrees that the original by Bobby Day is much better but I'm not so sure. While the message of the song about being a giant party pooper is better communicated by the more mellow Day, I quite like the fact that the DC5 are undermining their point. The song they're playing suggests everyone's having a good time and that Smith doesn't even seem all that bothered that the girl he's been chatting up isn't digging his moves. Rather than wallowing in teen angst, these guys are just going to show up at another party the next night and try to impress the shit out of everyone all over again. I wouldn't have the nerve to do the same myself but I applaud them for their spirit. It's just a pity they chose not to share this spirit with a few more of their devoted Canadian fans.

Score: 6

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