Dance: Ten; Looks: Three (A Chorus Line)

As I've previously mentioned, I have a thing for musicals that, like most of my early musical education, comes from my dad. He would regularly watch film musicals on TV and take us to many West End shows. 'A Chorus Line', however, was not one of them - both my parents loved it but I guess that the subject matter was not appropriate for their kids. This did not preclude them from playing the soundtrack in the car and the reason that this song in particular is a Guilty Pleasure stems from one particular incident.

It was my friend Simon's bar-mitzvah and my dad had been asked to give 2 girls from school a ride to and from the function. Although I knew these girls, they were not part of my social circle. Anyway, en route my dad decides that we need some music, grabs the 'A Chorus Line' soundtrack and first song on side 2 starts: Dance: Ten; Looks: Three. Now for the uninitiated, this song is about a female dancer who is not getting any job offers and thus has some, um, surgical enhancements and it has a chorus that mostly utilizes the phrase 'Tits & Ass'. Well, this hormonal adolescent just about died and wished the car seat would swallow him up whole! We never spoke about this again...

Bonus Fact: When 'A Chorus Line' debuted, this song was not getting the audience reaction the creators had anticipated. They realised that it had been printed in the playbill under it's original title 'Tits & Ass' and therefore the audience has been expecting the setup! (Another example of this is in the mostly obscure Heather Brothers musical 'A Slice Of Saturday Night' where the song 'P.E.' has nothing to do with Physical Education...)

While Pamela Blair's original performance on the cast recording is stellar, here she is from the original Off-Broadway run at The Public Theater in 1975. The song actually starts at 2:45; the video quality is awful but the audio is amazing for being almost 50 years old (Note: NSFW lyrics obviously).

Bonus Clip: Here's Audrey Landers performing the same song in the fairly awful 1885 movie version of "A Chorus Line'

Betty Boo - Where Are You Baby?

Another one to file in the 'I think I only liked it 'cos I fancied them' file! Betty Boo (Alison Clarkson) first appeared as a member of the all-female rap crew She Rockers and then guested on The Beatmasters 'Hey DJ'. Her first solo single was the classic(!) 'Doin' The Do' which was followed by this and the album 'Boomania'. After her second album flopped, Betty Boo effectively disappeared. Alison, however, did not - she turned her hand to songwriting and has written hits for the likes of Hear'Say, Girls Aloud, Dannii Minogue & Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Bonus Clip: Doin' The Do... wouldn't you too!

OMD - Dazzle Ships

This much maligned album was always a Guilty Pleasure of mine but it seems to have been reappraised my the critic community on its 25th anniversary re-release in 2008. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark were the first band I was ever a fan of. In 1981 they released of 'Architecture & Morality' which included the hits 'Souvenir', 'Joan Of Arc' & 'Joan Of Arc (Maid Of Orleans)' and sold by the bucket load. It took the band 2 years to produce a follow and when 'Dazzle Ships' was released in 1983 to say their audience was a tad confused is probably an understatement. Gone were the choral loops and heavily melodic Mellotron-laden tracks of 'Architecture & Morality' and their singles, replaced by far more chaotic singles such as 'Genetic Engineering':

and 'Radio Waves':

If that wasn't enough for most of their fans to start scratching their heads, interspersed amongst the songs on the album were tracks of musique concrete and short wave radio tape collages such as 'ABC Auto Industry' - check this live performance from 'The Tube' and note the audience not quite sure what to do at the end (and the misspelling of Frankenstein's monster!):

and 'Time Zones':

'Dazzle Ships' was a critical and commercial failure at the time and OMD reverted to a far poppier sound with 1984's 'Junk Culture' and the likes of 'Locomotion'. Although the inclusion of 'If You Leave' on the soundtrack to 'Pretty In Pink' gave the band their biggest US hit, the band would not have another Top 5 entry until 1991 and by then OMD just consisted of Andy McCluskey, the rest of the band long since departed. Recently, the original lineup has reformed, toured the entire 'Architecture & Morality' album and performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic!

Bonus Clips: Here's Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy performing the first 4 tracks of 'Dazzle Ships' on solo violin!

and here's a new video created to accompany the unreleased track 'Dazzle Ships (Parts I, IV, V & VI) from 2014 (Parts II, III & VII were included on the album as the 1st track on Side 2).