THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,980) The Sunshine Trolley — “Cover Me Babe”
Man, I cannot live by Bread alone! Sure, Bread recorded this Randy Newman (see #174 and #1,168, 1,298, and 1,854 (performed by Harry Nilsson)) and Fred Karlin-composed song for the soundtrack to the ’70 film Cover Me Babe, but the Sunshine Trolley’s A-side cover is “PURE MAGIC!!” (liner notes to the CD comp Fading Yellow: Volume 6: Another Rich Smorgasbord of Timeless US Pop-Sike & Other Delights), “simply superb sunshine pop with mind melting harmonies and a melody that suggests late 60s” (monocled alchemist, https://monocledalchemist.com/2024/05/18/1960s-music-discoveries-unveiled/), “obviously the better of the two [versions] being more cheerful and summer sounding!” (pigshitpoet, https://pigshitpoet.livejournal.com/1341177.html) “I actually kind of love the horn-accented cover version (not in the film) recorded by the Sunshine Trolley”. (theironcupcake, https://letterboxd.com/theironcupcake/film/cover-me-babe/) I kind of love it too!
John Lindquist says that the Trolley’s version is “very heavily-arranged (quite ‘un-Breadlike’ with lots of echo) production with a lead singer who sounded quite a bit like David Gates (but apparently wasn’t) . . . . produced by Tommy Cogbill & Chips Moman.” (https://jlindquist.com/bread/index.html) JasonMuga-gt7xd says “[It was r]ecorded in 1970, at American Sound Studios, Memphis Tennessee. The studio band, the 827 street band, Aka The Memphis Boys were the studio personnel.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFC8Ei6hqVE)
As to the movie, Vincent Canby wrote in his October 2, 1970, New York Times review that:
[It] is the sort of movie that needs the words of a critic less than it requires the services of an analyst, displaying, as it does, a compulsive need to ridicule itself, to deny its basic intelligence and to fail. It accomplishes all of these things with an idiocy that should warm the neurotic heart. The film is the second feature to be directed by Noel Black, the young man who gained a worthy reputation in some circles for his first feature, Pretty Poison . . . . In Cover Me Babe, Mr. Black and his scriptwriter, George Wells, are presenting a portrait of an artist as a student filmmaker. The movie opens with a long excerpt from a surreal short made by the hero, Tony Hall, and it’s so terrible, so full of the clichés of the avant-garde, that it seems — at least at first—that Mr. Black and Mr. Wells have some perspective about their subject. However, it’s quickly apparent that they didn’t.Tony is a rude, quarrelsome fellow who refuses to knuckle under to Establishment procedure. He turns down a chance to work for a major company, saying they’d probably want him to make movies with plots and characters. Instead, Tony seeks to capture reality on screen by running around town with a hand-held camera, shooting such things as a couple making love in a car, which he then juxtaposes with a shot of a mother trying to revive her drowned child, accompanied by a laugh track. . . . When his girl says that his new script makes no sense, Tony comes back with: “Does war make sense? Does cancer? Does a freeway smashup?” Lines like these prompt Melisse to go to bed with Tony: “He makes me feel alive. He shows me the way things are.”
OK, I gotta see this flick!
Here is Bread:
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