13
Dec 04
BRIAN POOLE AND THE TREMELOES – “Do You Love Me?”
“Do you love me – now that I can dance?” The way the band ask the question, you feel the answer had better be yes.
Two-and-a-half sore throat minutes of hollering, pounding and screaming, this is unadulterated club music. A desultory hook, a crude grab at the hips, that’s all and that’s enough.
6
I can only guess at what this sounds like, and how The Contours did it first and best…
The way Poole enunciates “I can really shake ’em down” at the beginning is so hopelessly Ealing Studios British that it deflates the rest of the record. They also had the UK hit with “Twist And Shout” since the Beatles didn’t release their version as a single (though it was the lead track of one of the EPs).
Blimey what a desultory review!
It’s not as good as the Contours but it’s probably only a mark or two off. I like ‘Ealing Studios British’ sometimes – brings to mind that rather sweet archive footage of teens frugging on ToTP. But I think this has a bit more balls than that implies.
I think there is something quite noble about Poole going back to his old job as butcher after the hits dried up.
I remember him on ITV’s Whose Baby? gameshow in the early ’70s with both of Alisha’s Attic!
By Ealing Studios do you mean he sounds like Peter Sellers? Because then it would be kind of cute. Mashed Potato and the Twist in a bowler hat!
:-)))))))
I was thinking more of young Dirk Bogarde in The Blue Lamp when he blurts out “You’ll never catch me copper!” and sundry other Anglo-Saxonisms… ;-)
This is (currently) Tom’s highest scored track in the reader’s bottom 100
Girl group apocalypse behind this at number two – http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2011/06/apexes-real-and-imagined-crystals-then-html – thanks as ever for reading!
it’s a good job that this is a great song, competently played because the lead vocal sounds like drunken uncle karaoke – not without its charms but a little wearing
Just saw a clip of Brian and the Trems on BBC4’s Sounds of the Sixties, doing an extraordinary number called ‘Do The Uncle Willy’. On Blue Peter. Gloriously naughty.
I was playing an old mixtape and realised two tracks had oblique references to this :
Lou Reed’s “I love you Suzanne” has the intro the same but beatier, and Jowe Head has the “Watch me now” in “Cake Shop Girl”
I first heard this via Rik Mayall’s Comic Relief version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3NiKO8hYBk
Alisha’s Attic’s dad!! Wonder what they’re up to now?