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The Wombles (band)
The Wombles were a British novelty pop group, featuring musicians dressed as the characters from the children's TV show ''The Wombles'', which in turn was based on the children's book series by Elisabeth Beresford. Songwriter and record producer Mike Batt wrote and also performed many commercially successful singles and albums as 'The Wombles', including the TV series' theme tune. ''British Hit Singles & Albums'' jokingly referred to them as the "furriest (and possibly the tidiest) act... are natives of Wimbledon Common, London". In 2011, the band played at The Glastonbury Festival. History Filmfair acquired the television rights to ''The Wombles'' and commissioned Batt to write the theme song. He waived the flat fee for writing a single song and instead secured the rights to write songs under the name 'The Wombles'. The band released several albums and singles. All four studio albums went gold, and four of the singles reached the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. The Wombles w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novelty Song
A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and with musical parody, especially when the novel gimmick is another popular song. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s. They had a resurgence of interest in the 1950s and 1960s. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music; the other two divisions were ballads and dance music. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. Novelty songs are often a parody or humor song, and may apply to a current event such as a holiday or a fad such as a dance or TV programme. Many use unusual lyrics, subjects, sounds, or instrumentation, and may not even be musical. For example, the 1966 novelty song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival (formally Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts and known colloquially as Glasto) is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret, and other arts. Leading pop and rock artists have headlined, alongside thousands of others appearing on smaller stages and performance areas. Films and albums have been recorded at the festival, and it receives extensive television and newspaper coverage. Glastonbury is attended by around 200,000 people, thus requiring extensive security, transport, water, and electricity-supply infrastructure. While the number of attendees is sometimes swollen by gatecrashers, a record of 300,000 people was set at the 1994 festival, headlined by the Levellers who performed on The Pyramid Stage. Most festival staff are volunteers, helping the festival to raise millions of pounds for c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hapshash And The Coloured Coat
Hapshash and the Coloured Coat was an influential British graphic design and avant-garde musical partnership in the late 1960s, consisting of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth. It produced popular psychedelic posters, and two albums of underground music. The silkscreen printed posters created by the pair advertised underground "happenings", clubs and concerts in London, and became so popular at the time that they helped launch the commercial sale of posters as art, initially in fashionable stores such as the Indica Bookshop and Carnaby Street boutiques. Their first album of psychedelic music, produced by a collective in early 1967 and including many famous names, is now seen as being influential on the early works of Amon Düül and other pioneers of German Krautrock, as well as inspiring sections of the Rolling Stones' ''Their Satanic Majesties Request'' album.Shirley, Ian (2007) ''Can Rock and Roll Save the World?: An Illustrated History of Music and Comics'' (pp.45&ndas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steeleye Span
Steeleye Span are a British folk rock band formed in 1969 in England by Fairport Convention bass player Ashley Hutchings and established London folk club duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior. The band were part of the 1970s British folk revival, and were commercially successful in that period, with four Top 40 albums and two hit singles: "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat (song), All Around My Hat". Steeleye Span have seen many personnel changes; Maddy Prior being the only remaining original member of the band. Their musical repertoire consists of mostly traditional songs with one or two instrumental tracks of jigs and/or reel (dance), reels added; the traditional songs often include some of the Child Ballads. In their later albums there has been an increased tendency to include music written by the band members, but they have never moved completely away from traditional music, which draws upon pan-British traditions. History Early years Steeleye Span began in late 1969, when London-born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Top Of The Pops
''Top of the Pops'' (''TOTP'') is a British Record chart, music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each show consisted of performances of some of the week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Top 30 was used from 1969, and the Top 40 from 1984. Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want to Be with You" was the first song featured on ''TOTP'', while the Rolling Stones were the first band to perform, with "I Wanna Be Your Man". Snow Patrol were the last act to play live on the weekly show when they performed their single "Chasing Cars". Special editions were broadcast on Christmas Day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Cribbins
Bernard Joseph Cribbins (29 December 1928 – 27 July 2022) was an English actor and singer whose career spanned over seven decades. During the 1960s, Cribbins became known in the UK for his successful novelty records " The Hole in the Ground" and "Right Said Fred" and for his appearances in comedy films including ''Two-Way Stretch'' (1960) and the ''Carry On'' series. His other screen roles include the astronaut Vincent Mountjoy in ''The Mouse on the Moon'' (1963), Albert Perks in ''The Railway Children'' (1970), the barman Felix Forsythe in Alfred Hitchcock's ''Frenzy'' (1972) and the pretentious hotel guest Mr Hutchinson in the ''Fawlty Towers'' episode "The Hotel Inspectors" (1975). On television, he was a regular and prolific reader for the BBC series '' Jackanory'' from 1966 to 1991, he narrated the children's programme ''The Wombles'' (1973–1975) and he played the title role in the CBeebies series ''Old Jack's Boat'' (2013–2015). In the 1966 film ''Daleks' Invasion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cilla Black
Priscilla Maria Veronica White (27 May 1943 – 1 August 2015), better known as Cilla Black, was an English singer, actress and television presenter. Championed by her friends the Beatles, Black began her career as a singer in 1963. Her singles " Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "You're My World" both reached number one in the UK in 1964. She had 11 top 10 hits on the UK Singles Chart between then and 1971, and an additional eight hits that made the top 40. In May 2010, new research published by BBC Radio 2 showed that her version of "Anyone Who Had a Heart" was the UK's biggest-selling single by a female artist in the 1960s. "You're My World" was also a modest hit in the U.S., peaking at No. 26 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Along with a successful recording career in the 1960s and early 1970s, Black hosted her own BBC variety show, '' Cilla'' (1968–1976). After a brief time as a comedy actress, she became a prominent television presenter in the 1980s and 1990s, hosting hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billboard Hot 100
The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming in the United States. The weekly tracking period for sales was initially Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in July 2015. This tracking period also applies to compiling online streaming data. Radio airplay, which, unlike sales figures and streaming, is readily available on a real-time basis, is also tracked on a Friday to Thursday cycle effective with the chart dated July 17, 2021 (previously Monday to Sunday and before July 2015, Wednesday to Tuesday). A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by ''Billboard'' on Tuesdays but post-dated to the following Saturday. The first number-one song of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 was " Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'', which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1966. In general, the political position of ''The Times'' is considered to be centre-right. ''The Times'' is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as ''The Times of India'', ''The New York Times'', and more recently, digital-first publications such as TheTimesBlog.com (Since 2017). In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as , or as , although the newspaper is of nationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wombling Merry Christmas
"Wombling Merry Christmas" is a Christmas song written by Mike Batt, and recorded by British band the Wombles. Released in November 1974, the song rose to a peak of No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart in December that year, spending 8 weeks in the chart. The song was also released in West Germany, but failed to chart. Music video The video was recorded in 2011 as part of a re-release that year and shows the Wombles dancing to the song. The band also appeared on ''Top of the Pops'' performing the song over Christmas 1974. Reception Despite significant success, the song was widely mocked on release. However, the song, labelled as 'innocent', and likened to 'golden tears falling from heaven' was liked by many, and was described in 2011 as 'actually sound nggood this time around'. Bob Stanley described it as having 'more bonhomie than a dozen boxes of crackers'. Later on, Mike Batt remarked on this criticism of the song, saying '...I wrote Wombling Merry Christmas, so I'm not scared o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-selling Single (music), singles in the United Kingdom, based upon physical sales, paid-for downloads and music streaming, streaming. The Official Chart, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and MTV (Official UK Top 40), is the UK music industry's recognised official measure of singles and albums popularity because it is the most comprehensive research panel of its kind, today surveying over 15,000 retailers and digital services daily, capturing 99.9% of all singles consumed in Britain across the week, and over 98% of albums. To be eligible for the chart, a Single (music), single is currently defined by the Official Charts Company (OCC) as either a 'single bundle' having no more than four tracks and not lasting longer than 25 minutes or one digital audio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Top 40
In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or " contemporary hit radio" is also a radio format. Frequent variants of the Top 40 are the Top 10, Top 20, Top 30, Top 50, Top 75, Top 100 and Top 200. History According to producer Richard Fatherley, Todd Storz was the inventor of the format, at his radio station KOWH in Omaha, Nebraska. Storz invented the format in the early 1950s, using the number of times a record was played on jukeboxes to compose a weekly list for broadcast. The format was commercially successful, and Storz and his father Robert, under the name of the Storz Broadcasting Company, subsequently acquired other stations to use the new Top 40 format. In 1989, Todd Storz was inducted into the Nebraska Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame. The term "Top 40", describing a radio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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