Hello and welcome to yet another edition of Vinyl-O-Matic. I am your old pal Will. Once again we embark upon a journey through singles, this time with a-sides beginning with the letter O as in Oscar. Are you ready? You know it's going to be a good show when we kick things off with a monkey song.

I know what you're thinking, "Will, what the hell was that?" Duh, it was a single from the 80s musical Chess, penned not only by musical theater stalwart Tim Rice but also Bjorn and Benny from ABBA. No really, it's true! We heard Murray Head providing rhythmic spoken word to "One Night in Bangkok", and the flipside is a song called "Merano". If you've ever wanted to experience a musical about the high stakes world of international chess competition, perhaps Chess is for you. Me? I'll stick to Chess Records singles. Fortunately, we got things started off with Honey Cone and their 1971 hit "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show" parts one and two. That is on Hot Wax records, the label that the excellent songwriting team Dozier, Holland, and Dozier started up when the left Motown in the late 60s.
Let's keep the show rolling along with a little something from down under.

Welcome back to Vinyl-O-Matic. If you cast your minds back, you will recall that we began that last set with INXS and their hot 1983 single "The One Thing", and the b-side "Phantim of the Opera" spelled Phan-Tim as in INXS guitarist Tim Farriss. Pretty clever, eh? We followed that up with a 1981 re-release of The Damned's second single "One Way Love" and "Don't Cry Wolf". The original 1977 version had the sides flipped around. That is of course on Stiff Records. Interestingly enough, The Damned initially sought out the reclusive Syd Barrett to produce what would be their sophomore album, but due to said reclusion ended up having Nick Mason producing. In the 2015 Damned documentary "Don't You Wish We Were Dead", Nick Mason mentions that in the one day it took The Damned to record all their backing tracks, Pink Floyd will still be selecting microphones and tuning drums.
Before we continue with the music, let me remind you that KWTF is an all-volunteer non-profit community radio station and we rely entirely upon the generation of folks just like yourselves. Now more than ever we could use your help. Please consider pointing your browser in the direction of kwtf(dot)net(slash)donate and giving what you can today.
Next up, first there was Palace and all its iterations. Then briefly there was Will Oldham. And then, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.

Dang. Some hot stuff and some cool stuff. A double shot of awesomeness from Brenton Wood. We heard his 1967 single "The Oogum Boogum Song" backed with "I Like the Way You Love Me". That is on Double Shot Records naturally enough. We preceded that with one of the first singles of Will Oldham's outing as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. That was "One with the Birds" and the flipside "Southside of the World". That is on Palace Records (PR20 for those of you playing along at home) from 1998.
And now from something Glaswegian.

We got that set started off with The Marmalade and their radio single "Otherwise It's Been a Perfect Day" and the wonderful psyche-pop b-side "I See the Rain" from 1967 on Epic Records. That was followed up with bubble gum confectioners Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart with their single "Out and About", or as they say in Canada "Oot and Aboot". The flipside was a nostalgic vaudevillian tune called "My Little Chickadee". That style of song will prep you for the Sonny & Cher single "Podunk" that will be coming up in a few episodes. Here's a fun fact: Boyce and Hart appeared on I Dream of Jeanie performing this very single with Jeanie on drums and the illustrious Phil Spector nodding in approval. If you want to know what the heck I'm talking about, I've provided a link in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at vinylomatic(dot)com(slash)s04e46.
If you have any questions or comments about what you have heard, please drop me a line: will(at)vinylomatic(dot)com, and as I mentioned you can find show notes and archived episodes conveniently located at vinylomatic.com.
Next time we will continue our journey through singles with a-side that begin with the letter O as in Oscar, and venture into a-sides that start with the letter P as in Papa. Join me, won't you?