Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
***
Football fever's hit the nation, with Engerlund having reached the finals of this year's European Championship.
However, that sport was also the talk of the day, fifty years ago this week, with West Germany defeating the Netherlands, 2–1, to win the 1974 World Cup. That event, just like this one, was played in Germany.
That may have been big news in all our lives but what wasn't news was that Charles Aznavour's She was sitting pretty at the top of the UK singles chart. That's because it had also been top of the pile the week before.
There was, however, change at the summit of the British LP listings, thanks to Elton John's Caribou entering at its very pinnacle.
I must have been hiding beneath a rock for the past half-century because, even though it was a Number One album - and by one of the biggest stars of the last sixty years - I've never even heard of it. Clearly, this matter deserves further investigation on my behalf.
I must confess that She is not really a song which massively fait flotter mon bateau but singles I did dig on that week's Hit Parade were:
One Man Band - Leo Sayer
Band on the Run - Paul McCartney and Wings
Wall Street Shuffle - 10 CC
Beach Baby - First Class
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me - Elton John
If You Go Away - Terry Jacks
There's a Ghost in My House - R Dean Taylor
When Will I See You Again? - The Three Degrees
and
Judy Teen - Cockney Rebel.
Should you wish to further probe the issues raised by this week's post, that UK singles chart can be found by clicking on this link.
While the accompanying LP chart dwells within.
Possibly of even more concern to the foliage-hued fighter of felons, fiends and freakish phenomena is that Iron Man's also in town and tooled up to smash his face in.
Daredevil's still lacking a strip of his own but, this week, as with last, he's a guest at the wedding of Reed and Sue which I suspect is coming to a startling conclusion in the Fantastic Four's strip when the Watcher defies all expectations by breaking his oath of non-interference, for only the thousandth time in two years.
But that's not all because, from completely out of the blue, we get a ten-page retelling of the origin of Captain America, as presented by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as reprinted from the depths of 1965's Tales of Suspense #63.
The bounder.
Needless to say, our hero's far too strong-willed for that to work and, instead, turns the tables on his foe by using their effects to inflict yet another dose of amnesia upon him.
There's again no sign of Iron Man, this week but Thor's very much present and correct and battling the murderous Man-Beast in the corridors of Wundagore.
I have no recognition of that cover. Therefore, I shall assume my habit of missing every other issue of The Avengers, during this period, ran true to form.
It would appear, though, that Shang-Chi finds himself up against the Slayer of the Sewer which is not a title I would have thought many self-respecting assassins would wish to lay claim to.
I do believe this is is the issue in which Hercules gets banished to Earth by Zeus who's clearly as big a moron as Odin, forcing the prince of power to join the Avengers.
And I also believe this issue's likely to wrap up Dr Strange's search for Clea.
Meanwhile, the back cover offers us the chance to win a Meccano set by designing a gadget worthy of Reed Richards himself.
I remember trying to complete that challenge but ultimately deciding that whatever it is I'd designed wasn't up to Reed Richards' standards.
In fairness, I was ten. What did these fools expect of me?
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27 comments:
Hey Gang, Bear with me...
Charlie is reading the latest issue of "Back Issue" from Two Morrows Publishing b/c Charlie is stuck in the past.
Anyhow, Sal Buscema is the focus and they are comparing his original Avengers covers to what appeared in the UK.
E.g., Avengers # 70 to the UK's Savage Sword of Conan #104. They do a few of these. (You don't suppose there are readers wondering why Avengers feature on the cover of the UK's SSOC???)
Also, Charlie notices in Mikes Amazing World of Comics (RIP - Mike) that Mike added all the UK Marvel covers. Charlie thinks that's a newer addition in the past year?
There still is that gent in the Overstreet Guide offering to pay fantastic sums of money for UK variants of early Marvels, too.
Any idea what the seemingly sudden interest is for the UK versions?
Go England! Looked more impressive yesterday! Made it hard to work from home!
CH-47
Lastly, Charlie is listening to the local Chicago talk radio WGN while he is working today. The station just wrapped upthe weekly food-health hour. Charlie wants to make sure everyone is getting enough fiber in their diet! 40 grams /day! Put down the Pixie Stick and eat an apple!
Charlie - I'm confused. SSOC # 104's cover's Joe Jusko, not Sal!
Why are Hulk & Shang's damsels both wearing red mini-dresses? Is it a theme, this week?
Class consciousness/snobbery - the slums & the sewer, as 'unpleasant/scary' settings?
That dude Shang's fighting's pony-tail makes him resemble (a bit) Zaran. But why's Shang kicking the spikes on Pony-tail's mace? Surely he'd cut his foot!
I've got that Spidey issue. Not particularly memorable, although the cover's eye-catching enough.
That hooded sewer figure could be the Masked Marauder, the Cowled Commander, or one of Marvel's myriad other hooded figures.
Phillip
Phillip, I'm pretty sure Charlie means the UK Avengers #104, or - to give the (by then merged) weekly its full title - Avengers & the Savage Sword of Conan #104.
https://www.comics.org/issue/537654/
-sean
Thanks, Sean - Gotcha! Comparing US & UK covers was an SDC pastime, too, a while back!
Phillip
I read somewhere that Marvel UK comics had become collectable mostly because of the UK originated covers that weren't available in USA etc . Not all of these ( some are dreadful) but the early Starlin covers in MWOM and a few others. Even in UK some of these issues attract what I consider to be high prices if it was the first appearance of a character like Morbius ( a Spider-Man weekly issue going for £12 in Glasgow) . Pmus thesexweekly issues are heating old so nostalgia may play a part.
Any of you remember when Mike’s Amazing World of Comics started featuring UK titles released in a given month?
Charlie (?), I must confess I was totally unaware it had started to do that.
Steve,
‘Foliage-hued fighter of felons, fiends and freakish phenomena.’ WOW.
I remember Sir Elton’s CARIBOU album and the single ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ because there was some discussion at the time that he was cranking out singles and whole albums so rapidly that they really couldn’t be any good, right? Reviews at the time were harsh, and it’s still considered one of his weaker albums of the period. But hey, CARIBOU was his fourth straight album in a row to hit #1 in the U.S. and ‘Don’t Let The Sun’ and ‘The Bitch Is Back’ were both Top Ten hits. So were the critics wrong?
b.t.
Oh, and I dig Sir Paul’s ‘Band On The Run’, The Three Degrees’ sparkly ‘When Will I See You Again’ and the last of Tony Burrows’ four one-hit wonders, ‘Beach Baby’.
b.t.
Once again I must echo b.t.'s song comments! We must have had very similar tastes. One other tune from Steve's link worth a nod: "Midnight at the Oasis" by Maria Muldaur. A one hit wonder, as far as I know. Kind of a strange song, with some quirky lyrics. " You won't need no camel, well, I'll take you for a ride"- totally didn't pick up on that at 13.
Charlie- not sure what's up with the recent interest in UK offerings 'over here'. Perhaps there's a burgeoning wave of potential emigres, escapees from a post-November storm...
I wonder if Marvel UK were planning to replace Daredevil with Captain America, in MWOM. Captain America hadn’t featured in Power Comics (oddly) and so there was a sizable volume of material not so far seen in the UK. Obviously Cap was appearing in Avengers (where I think his solo stories would have been an obvious back-up) and those WW2 stories avoided the usual continuity issues facing Marvel UK. The GCD suggests Daredevil returns next issue (sorry for the spoiler) and the Hulk/Daredevil/FF line up will remain mostly unchanged for a couple of years. Cap eventually turns up in Titans #1, a few years later, in glorious widescreen.
Not that it really matters as the Inhumans will shortly appear in MWOM signaling the commencement of the golden age of FF. I still hadn’t started obtaining regular Marvel comics at this time, but I remember a primary school friend who had this big pile of MWOM issues. I have a distinct memory of the scene where Triton is ‘drowning’ and Sue creates a force filed that is filled with water, to save him. We can’t be far off that. Probably why I recognize a lot of these covers.
DW
Force-field
My oh my…. Trying to map marvel’s original/US chronology with UK’s MWOM’s is a job for folks who actually lived through it? It just seems so random… impenetrable… how would an outsider like we dudes from the US ever develop a foundation to build on?
Anonymous (Charlie?), you're forgetting that the UK also got contemporary imports of the US Marvels.
While of course in America you had reprints too - for instance, a quick look at Mike's shows that instead of reading about Thanos in Avengers #125 this month you could have got Marvel Triple Action #19 in which the team face Dr Doom courtesy of Stan Lee and Don Heck - so I'm not sure the situation was that different really?
I mean, kids were only ever reading a (small) selection of the Marvel comics available, and all had their own starting point. So if you read your first Marvel comic in mid-'74, how would you have more of 'foundation' just because you lived in the US...?
Fortunately, the continuity wasn't rocket science! Maybe I was just a child prodigy brainbox, but I don't recall that it was that hard to pick up...?
-sean
Dang it, Red! I was trying to avoid falling down the Billboard Hot 100 rabbit-hole, but you had to mention Maria Muldaur’s silky and seductive ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ so I had to see what else was going on that week in July of ‘74. Predictably, there is a TON of great songs there, many of which give me the warm n fuzzies just by seeing the titles. But I’ll just mention one, in the spirit of your ‘I was so naive” admission : Roberta Flack’s “Feel like Makin’ Love” at #36, one of the all-time classiest pop singles about sex. At 13, I’m not sure I knew that “making love” was a euphemism for intercourse, but I think I got the gist ;)
b.t.
b.t
What's the hubbub, bub? Now you've got that darn song stuck in my head.
I mean, it is a great song, yeah, but I don't want it stuck there.
...along with everything else...
Isn't there a line where she sings, "The cactus is our friend"?
I've always wondered about that. Are there cacti in Arabia? There weren't in any movie I saw.
M.P.
M.P. — I never could understand what that lyric was — I thought it was something like “Can’t you see, mon frere?” Which is pretty stupid, admittedly — but “Cactus is our friend” is pretty weird too :D
b.t.
You can look up lyrics to songs on the internet!
I dunno how accurate it is.
I heard Steven Van Zandt say in an interview that he had been singing the wrong lyrics to various songs for years on stage before the internet came along.
But he also said he couldn't remember lyrics anyway, and that Springsteen was too cheap to spring for a teleprompter.
I always liked that guy.
M.P.
b.t. and M.P.- in the interest of full service to all followers if SDC, I checked up on "Midnight at the Oasis". Yes, the lyric does state "Cactus is our friend". And, apparently, there are indeed cacti in the Arabian desert. If you can believe the internet, that is...
BT, MP - Thanks for that! Now "Midnight" is stuck in my head too. And of course I went back and listened to it, so it is more stuck!
SEAN- bad wording on my part. I mean, for us in the US to track who appeared when, in the "MWOM" mags is impossible. Characters come and go with their respective reprints, the titles don't help (Avengers being in SSOC), and a cover with Conan could have an Avengers or whoever story inside, etc. I wasn't referring to the characters per se but what was featured in those MWOM's over time. Hope that makes more sense? B/c as I read the remarks and read "so and so's stories end in this title, then this title adds them, this title stops publishing so now so and so is in the mag... and they may not be on the cover. It's tough for a neophyte, man!
Charlie hopes he is not being patronizing on this venerable site but feels called to give a tiny bio on Aznavour who headed up the UK charts 50 years ago with “She.”
He was born in 1924 in France to Armenians and died in 2018 at 94. He was a tenor. He recorded over 1,200 songs in 9 languages and personally wrote or co-wrote 1,000.
Time / CNN awarded him “Entertainer of the Century” in 1999. Israel awarded him the Raul Wallenberg award for sheltering Jews and other anti-nazis during WW 2 Paris, France.
Numerous artists have performed his songs from Elvis Costello (She) to Dylan, Sinatra, and Pavarotti.
“She” was a #1 in the UK for a month. Charlie’s favs are “La Boheme” and “Emmenez Moi.” All this is easily You-Tubed.
He really was a giant though at this time I assume all but unknown?
Charlie - Avengers wasn't in Savage Sword of Conan, per se - SSOC was in 'The Avengers'! At one point, Avengers Weekly featured Conan as a back up strip (at other times, Avengers Weekly had different back up stories!)
With Marvel weeklies, in Mighty World of Marvel (MWOM) the Hulk was always the main title. Likewise, in Spider-man Weekly (later Super Spider-man, et al), Spidey was always the main title. Other titles pirouetted around the two main characters, but Hulk & Spidey remained stable, each in their respective comics.
At school, my French teacher had us do a French comprehension on Charles Aznavour. At the time, the name didn't mean much to me - but I did know 'She' ('the beauty & the beast, the famine & the feast', etc!)
Phillip
I’ve certainly heard of Charles Aznavour, and I have a vague feeling that I may have seen him on a variety show or two when I was a kid, but sadly I don’t think I paid much attention. I couldn’t pick him out of a line-up, and don’t know any of his songs.
b.t.
Charles Aznavour...? Not my tasse de thé, Charlie.
Come on, it was the first half of the 70s, the era of hairy electronic Frogprog -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS0WuJrp_4I
- and soixante-huitard Gallic jazz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RZYsl3Bjwo
Who was listening to Charles #@*&ing Aznavour? (Apart from the square Brits)
I think I'd prefer Roberta Flack.
-sean
Charlie never heard of Aznavour while living in the USA. Yet if one reads his wiki profile he was absurdly successful. Funny world. Idk why but it reminds of the civil war battles here in the forests… soldiers would literally walk along hearing absolutely nothing , turn the corner of a path, and suddenly discover a roaring battle in front of them.
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