“Is this caravan pop?” enquired my wife of whatever song had popped up on iPod shuffle mode, en route to Wales the other week. Further enquiry ascertained she was actually referring to yacht rock, as celebrated in the recent Katie Puckrik doc. But never mind: a new genre was born! The low-budget, crap-rainy-seaside-holiday UK answer.
Long story short: here’s an excellent primer for all things caravan pop compiled by the great BBC Tees presenter Bob Fischer, who has very much run with the concept. But feel free to post your own contributions…
Forget yacht rock, here’s caravan pop!
Interesting idea. I reckon caravan pop has to be pop which has no context or musical hinterland, so if you say to someone ‘Trevor Horn started as keyboard player and bassist for Tina Charles’, the reply is to look at you as if you are mad, as the music is to heard in the background or is to grudgingly dance to, but has no other role – like cheap burgers. A later album by the The Shadows doing cover versions, Quo in their nadir (not the grebo Gods phase), Robson and jerome, jive bunny … Basically stuff even below ‘end of the pier’ tribute band levels, moving into a whole new level of mediocrity. Which is my way of saying “should Pilot and Sailor be in there? Weren’t they too good?”
I don’t think ‘too good’ should preclude inclusion. There were some great, memorable pop singles that would seem to qualify (for this made-up genre!) by groups/artists who never attained the veneer of ‘respectability’. As long as no one mentions the dreaded phrase ‘guilty pleasure’…
I like the look of those few tracks on show here, I will see if I can find it when I get home.
Racey didn’t have much success, but the 2 hit singles they did have were excellent IMHO. If they had put them out in 73 they would have been huge hits.
Love a bit of racey.
I too am a regular listener and correspondent to Bob’s show, and I may even have suggested a couple of those songs (I’m sure Mississippi was one of mine, but I forgot Daniel Boone’s Beautiful Sunday until it was too late). So, nice to see you here too @Eyesteel 🙂
We did also get into a discussion about how Racey recorded the original version of Toni Basil’s Mickey, and it’s a slightly more creepy listen in these post-yewtree times. But then, what do we expect after Some Girls!
But caravan pop basically has all the nostalgic rush of the smells of caravan site chippies, teenage sweat mixed with Brut in campsite discos, cheesecloth, Brutus Gold jeans, and rainy days on caravan holidays in a misty northern coastal resort (think Whitby, or Skegness)
Bob’s a stand-up guy and – self-regarding nonsense alert – was good enough to interview me on his show about my album earlier in the year (he’s a big Clay Pipe Music fan).
All of this is true. Though I suspect he must inwardly groan whenever he sees another one of my tweets…
And very good you were too 🙂
Ooh, which Clay Pipe record is yours, @eyesteel ?
@minibreakfast Nightscapes by D Rothon (that be me!)
Amazing!
I slept on that release. Meant to get the cassette but missed out due to my own incompetence.
Congrats, it was really well received wasn’t it.
Aha, ol’ Palamino D(avid) Rothon, then, poster in the old place? Peesteel, tho’, I thought 😉
@retropath2 As far as I recall I’ve always been eyesteel aside from a brief stint as myself. Not that I’ve been an habitual poster in either incarnation…
@minibreakfast It all came as a bit of a surprise, really! (A nice one)
I had little knowledge of Clay Pipe Music, until now, having looked it/’em up.Looks my bag, as, indeed, sounds Mr Eyesteels rekkid. So thanks for the pointer.
Your Caravan Pop is basically mid-seventies MOR “nice” pop – nowt wrong with most of that – I admit to owning and still playing some of those tracks.
It also has a whiff of Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 Breakfast Show playlist about it.
My Caravan reference years would be 1980 to 1983.
Things that got played a lot include: Sky – Toccatta, Adam & The Ants, Shakin’ Stevens, Dexys Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen, KC and The Sunshine Band – Give It Up, and Modern Romance (who if you believed the local radio stations in Devon and Dorset were the biggest band in the world and seemed to be played every 45 minutes)
I’ve only stayed In a caravan a couple of times, also in the early 80s and the bands I associate it with are Joy Division, The Distractions and The Specials (especially Ghost Town). The playlist above would be nearer a School Disco list for me but that seems to be a genre normally containing songs from the 80s that are too new to even associate with University!
I would add any of the singles from No Parlez and Heartache Avenue by the Maisonettes. Harlech, 1983, was my last caravan holiday and Radio Dragon ? was the soundtrack.
Isn’t this just a rebrand of “Guilty Pleasures” ?
My vote would go to The Fortunes Storm in a Tea Cup – Lynsey de Paul’s inspiration for the “Pitter, Patter” bit was The Tams Hey Girl don’t bother me.
There IS a lot of crossover I guess, but guilty pleasures is an awful term.
I quite agree. We’re not 12 anymore. It’s a pop song. I like it.
NO. no guilt involved in this at all.
I despise the “guilty pleasure” label. I either like something, or I don’t. No shame attached.
If I could do it again, I would do it all over you.
Last holiday in a (static) caravan I remember as a kid (well 13, which almost counts) was in 1991 – most frequently heard things that summer were “More Than Words” by Extreme and “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred (oddly not Bryan Adams).
Just looked through the playlist and it’s brilliant – much of it you can probably still hear between rounds of Popmaster on Radio 2.
Caravan Rock or Rocking Caravan?
This is what you need.
Greatest. Episode. Ever.
Small … Far away
My thinking is related to this.
Isn’t Caravan Pop the kind that goes “Bmm-thh, bmm-thh, bmm-thh, bmm-thh, bmm-thh…” at extremely fast rate of bpm with the bass so loud the whole caravan shakes?
Came across this a couple of weeks ago. This is the sound of my teenage years. Not the cool Clash Jam Stranglers years, just a bit before that. Going to some girls house during the school holidays while her parents are at work, smoking cheap fags, denim jackets, Sailor and Abba. Love it.
Great another Caravan thread but I think this is the nearest they got to a pop single
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pqW49ETl6oI
Is this obsession with rather naff old records just because they’re easier to find and hear these days, or is it evidence that there’s not a great deal perceived to be happening in music these days?
I can’t recall people in their ’40s-’60s doing that in the 1960s, ’70s or ’80s.
In HMV yesterday, I saw a young lad, I’d say twelve years old, with his mum, buying a vinyl copy of Disraeli Gears. I resisted the temptation of telling him it’s shit.
It’s not Shit, but it’s not Great Music either.
The youth must be allowed to make their little mistakes in order to prepare them for the big ones that will surely come later.
I think more the former. Stewart Lee did a riff on his last tour where he talked about the joy of being a record collector before the age of digital, and almost everything being available damn near on demand. There was a certain pleasure to be had in the effort, and delayed gratification of getting hold of things you’d not heard in a while, and sometimes they’d even be as good (or almost) as you remembered. The instant gratification that comes now removed that frisson of expectation of having to wait.
Take last night, when I was listening to the above mentioned Mr Fischer’s show, and enjoyed the long interview he did with Mike McCartney about the reissue of his McGear album (and very good it is too). But within a few minutes of him playing some old Scaffold stuff, I was able to pull down and listen to a bunch of their stuff I’d not listened to in a very long time, no effort. And there’s some good stuff in the back catalogue (see Charity Bubbles, for example). The material’s not naff at all, and I didn’t even have to get out of the chair: no effort.