Burt Macho writes about Sandie Shaw

Jesus i love morrissey. You would have known that it was written by morrissey from a mile away. On a curious note, didn't Sandie once have a crush on moz? I think i read it somewhere or atleast someone said it in a interview
 
via Dave Haslam on Twitter...

Morrissey ("Burt Macho") writing about Sandie Shaw in the Manchster fanzine 'City Fun' Oct 1983

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I'm sure Morrissey has realised by now the epochal impact of 'Puppet On A String' on world continue. It resonates to this era and is the basis/template for the indescribably hilarious and beautiful 'Alfie' by Lily Allen. Morrissey would be #fabolous on Eurovicious. Sadly, he lacks the inner strength face that Ordeal by Nil Pointes that is the likely fate of the UK entry until Eternity. Still, BB will step up to the plate soon and mash Puppet On A String and Alfie into another crazed morph. Sandie's artistic legacy is indeed profound, but POAS is as much a part of it now as anything else. This reminds me of the inanity of Led Zepp trying to disavow Stairway To Heaven, the greatest song about the rise and fall of Industrial Civilization and Heroin ever. But they don't even realise it. Such is life! A serous artist like Lily transposes and transforms POAS. Is Morrissey still trapped in a cerebral dead end about this wonderful, joyful song by Sandie? How sad, but then, being a saddoe has tragically become his career modus operandi and motif. Lighten up. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. Etc.

best
BillundBoy in Copenhagen

 
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It should have been pretty obvious who 'Burt Macho' was, seeing as the article was reprinted in Sounds a mere 2 months or so later under Morrissey's name. It also appeared a couple of years after that in the UK girl group 'zine That Will Never Happen Again.
 
we've just had had an item that Morrissey liked A-Ha on the Smiths-Morrissey facebook group

and they say he's mentall...housemartins too, and the dire ...eh level 42 :lbf:

I know Wikipedia has an entry for a-ha. It said Morrissey and the singer were friends I think.
 
oh, you're cute...

in my language 'a-ha' is 'yeah!' :D


'burt macho' rules :rofl:
 
Here is the whole fantastic thing:
TRAGICALLY, it is mainly for the disturbingly pleasant 'Puppet On A String' (No. 1, 1967) that most people remember Sandie Shaw for. Handcuffed to the laughably inane Martin-Coulter romp, Sandie was conscripted to the Eurovision Song Contest and won it with a runaway victory unseen since. It would be the first time Britain had won the contest, and 'Puppet On A String' became Sandie's third number one, charting for over five months and selling seven million copies throughout Europe.

The great tragedy of these impressive figures is that they belonged to the record which payed no compliment of any kind to Sandie Shaw as a symbolist. Embroidered around the resistable 'Puppet' there lay a litter of the most vital and inspirational singles ever produced in the history of popular music. Shaw had fallen on 1964 like a thunderbolt.

As the year began she was bespectacled Sandra Goodrich, a factory worker from Essex, who managed to slip backstage at an Adam Faith concert and burst into song for her dreamboat. Faith's manager Eve Taylor was impressed enough to shove Sandra on to the right contacts.

Seconds later, re-christened Sandie Shaw, she was launched into orbit with 'As Long As You're Happy Baby' on the Pye label, which swiftly sashayed out of view. The record was violently followed by 'There's Always Something There To Remind Me' which snatched the number one spot as the year came to an end. It was all enough to have Sandie voted the Best Singer Of 1964.

Without supernatural beauty, Sandie Shaw cut an unusual figure, and would herald a new abandoned casualness for female singers. The grande dame gestures of the late 50s had gone, the overblown icky sentiment had gone, and in its place came a brashness and fortitude; girls with extreme youth and high spirits who were to boldly claim their patch in a business which was obviously a male domain.

1961 had been hallmarked by 14-year-old Helen Shapiro whose below-the-belt thump of 'Don't Treat Me Like A Child' (No. 3) struck a monumental chord in the hearts of repressed teenage girls. Shapiro's voice was deep and threatening, and the implications ran through loud and clear. But for Shapiro, the year that followed sensed a hasty eclipse, and after a clutter of mainstream mumbo-jumbo she deflated with extraordinary speed.

Elsewhere, heavy-lided Dusty Springfield chiselled a new, exciting sexiness; the mountainous platinum beehive, the floor-length eyelashes, the eyes firmly cemented by acres of coal-black make-up. She surfaced like a voluptuous Venus from the waves, while the hard-edged screech of daft Cilla Black won hearts with a down-to-earth chirpiness.

Black mocked her huge nose so often that the self-abasement was refreshing - no, she didn't have the beauty, but so what, she would make it anyway.

Petite, plump and pallid, Lulu was the blunt, bawdy 'bird' in a pop culture which had previously employed Doris Day to voice feminine collective rage. Lulu broke sound barriers with the boyish charm of 'Shout', and like Black, became willingly trapped in the mums 'n' dads telly show spot (often seen, seldom listened to).

Without effort, Sandie Shaw managed more consecutive hit records than the voices around her. 1965 had her foremost without question, beginning with 'Girl Don't Come' (No. 3) which was sinfully pressed as a b-side to the daffy 'I'd Be Far Better Off Without You'; the sides were skilfully reversed when the original a-side instantly floundered.

Apart from her first hit, most of Shaw's songs would be written by Chris Andrews, who had also worked closely with Adam Faith. Similarly, Ken Woodman would conduct the orchestration of each song. It would only be when Shaw, in a fit of mental abstraction, disposed of either Andrews or Woodman, that an artistic slump would arise.

Throughout '65, Shaw did everything exactly right causing critics to scratch their heads and wonder. Andrews at the quill caught the tensions of the times with 'I'll Stop At Nothing' (No. 4), 'Long Live Love' (No. 1), 'Message Understood' (No. 6) and 'How Can You Tell' (No. 21).

Failure seemed impossible, and Sandie steered her destiny with uncommon precision for one so young (she was still only 17). Detractors balked at her "gimmick" of always appearing barefoot on television, and Sandie often explained that due to virtual blindness she had frequently tripped over camera wires whilst performing, therefore, without shoes she could feel her way along and avoid catastrophe. Besides, it would hardly do for the purveyor of a new teen energy to be hidden behind enormous spectacles.

Sandie's mode of dress was not profound; she was the carefree girl of no stunning intellect who nonetheless knew what she wanted. 1966 began well with 'Tomorrow' (No. 9), Andrews on peak form, Sandie making the words sound even better than they actually were: "I don't like what I must do tomorrrrrowww"...

'Nothing Comes Easy' (No. 14) limped where others had sprinted: "Nothing comes easy/I had a hard time getting him/And I'm regretting it now..." The failure of 'Run' (No. 32) seems sinful in view of its great charm. Andrews took the most fundamental language and produced poetry. Chart wise, Sandie seemed suddenly down a hole, from which 'Think Sometimes About Me' (No. 32) was no rescue.

If the lights dimmed by the close of '66, then '67 began with a total blackout. Edgy, Sandie tried her luck elsewhere, disposed of Andrews, and the results were lame as 'I Don't Need Anything' (No. 50) written by Vance and Pockriss nipped the chart for just one miserable week.

Consumers would take refuge in its reliant b-side 'Keep In Touch', written, unsurprisingly, by Chris Andrews. Why Sandie became her own cuthroat by dumping 'Keep In Touch' for 'I Don't Need Anything' defies logic. It seemed that she suddenly lunged for a more mature audience, and she would pay severely for the change in style.

At the expense of her artistry, cutesy 'Puppet On A String' rode ripshod over the chart, and could quite easily be dismissed as a desperate attempt by Shaw to keep her foot in the door had not the same cuckoo mode of writing been repeated with the utterly oafish 'Tonight In Tokyo' (No. 21), a vulgar moan of no earthly value, and written by the same duo Vance and Pockriss.

This time there could be no escape hatch for Sandie, whose sanity had surely left her, who willingly surrendered her tempestuous reputation for the too painful 'Tokyo', the most abortive release of her career, and one which entirely rode on the success of 'Puppet On A String'. Not for the first time, Andrews rescued an inept disc with a distinctly listenable b-side, 'You've Been Seeing Her Again', which proudly stood with previous Andrews flips so sinfully shoved out of view, all of which equalled the perfection of their a-sides, such as 'Stop Before You Start', 'You Can't Blame Him', 'Hurting You', 'Long Walk Home' and 'Don't You Know'.

By the close of '67, Sandie re-chiselled her priorities, regained her consciousness, and lay herself at Chris Andrews' feet, and, prophetically, what was produced was surely enough to restore faith in the most faithless.

'You've Not Changed' (No. 18) crushed Sandie's prized exhibits of the past, punching vividly with heavy brass, leading to lashings of Shaw sentiment: "I do like your hair/And the clothes you wear/But if you wore rags you'd still look good to me.."

If time seemed against Sandie after the morass of 'Tonight In Tokyo', then 'You've Not Changed' cemented the cracks and justified any previous disappointments, as would her only hit of '68 'Today' (No. 27) which rang even more convincingly; the gliding strings of Ken Woodman turning a simple love song into opera: "Today - I can do without Today/Tomorow may be better..."

But of course it wasn't. Sandie's longest absence from the chart (a full year) lapsed between the delightful 'Today' and the impossibly flat-footed 'Monsieur Dupont' (N0. 6) which had Sandie aging 40 overnight. The sub-Euro romp 'Think It All Over' (No. 42) violently followed, ending the glittering assemblage of hits. It was 1969. The 60s were over, and Sandie Shaw would exist with them.

What trailed behind were a batch of vivacious records unmatched in standard by any other female voice in popular music. When her dignity wavered (with 'Puppet') the string was softened by three weeks at number one.

Shaw did not lapse into the papier mache momism of Cilla Black, or the Dick Whittington trivialism of Lulu. From 1969, Sandie married dress designer Jeff Banks, gave birth, got divorced, re-married (this time to Virgin brain Nik Powell), meddled lucklessly with Heaven 17 on a rework of 'Anyone Who Had A Heart', and for the coming year she plans a violent return to the fold amid producing her own television documentary on women in music, and hurling out the odd self-penned children's book. Whatever, Sandie's return to centre stage should thrill all individuals with ears.
 

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