One Music Video Screen Shot Tells A Thousand Tales

While this blog primarily deals with Chinese American food topics, I do occasionally go off topic with sports related topics.  Another interest of mine is pop music, starting from the mid-1950s when I was a little tyke, lasting all the way until about 10 years ago, when I finally lost connection with the music of the day.  But I do have nearly 4,000 music videos on my computers, dating from the mid-1950s until about 2010.

My first, and perhaps only posting on music videos was triggered by this screen capture I took of a song called Beach Baby by the singing group First Class from 1974.  And while there may not actually be a thousand interesting tales derived from this picture, there are what I consider to be a number of different intriguing storylines.

 

The premise of the song Beach Baby is a look back at the Los Angeles surf culture of the 1960s, with an infectious song talking about the days in "old LA" at the beach, in musical harmony reminiscent of the Beach Boys or Jan and Dean.  Of course, since MTV didn't popularize music videos until 1980, and it took a while for clips of pre-manufactured music videos songs to get into circulation, I didn't see the video performance of Beach Baby until the mid-1990s, and the singers certainly could have passed for surfer dudes a decade later.  So, it was to my shock to find out that First Class was a British vocal group, and it's possible that none of them had ever been to California in their lives.

All of which explains the T-shirt worn by the lead singer.  Upon first glance it appears to say University of California, but looking closer it only says "University California," which makes no sense.  Plus the school colors of the University of California are blue and gold, not black and white.  Note that while these days, school and team paraphernalia may come in other than official colors, something like that would never had existed in 1974.  Needless to say, shirts of this design have probably never been seen anywhere in California.

And speaking of the lead singer, it turns out he actually didn't sing the song Beach Baby in the recording itself.  Rather the song was recorded by a studio group, and when the song became a hit, a live version of the group was needed to do tours and television show appearances.  So a bunch of guys were hired to lip sync the song.  The real lead singer on the record was a guy named Tony Burrows.

And speaking of Tony Burrows, he has the distinction of being the only recording artist to be a one hit wonder five different times.  That's because he was lead singer for five different alleged recording groups, singing also "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes," for Edison Lighthouse; "United We Stand" for Brotherhood of Man; "Gimme Dat Ding" for the Pipkins; and "My Baby Loves Lovin" for White Plains.  I remember all those songs in the 1970s, and had now idea at the time that they were studio groups and all had the same lead singer.

So indeed a music video screen shot is at least worth a thousand words.