![]() ![]() There were only a couple of hours per week that featured rock ‘n roll music, and those programs tended to be broadcast in the middle of the night.Īs a result, the 60s saw a proliferation of “pirate radio” stations. Since the BBC covered news, weather and sports in addition to music programs, the coverage of rock music was terrible. However, a few months earlier the BBC had formed BBC Radio 1.Īt that time, the BBC had a monopoly on radio broadcasting. They had released a single record, Baby Now That I’ve Found You, that seemed headed for obscurity. While the income from the patrons covered their rent, the band members often subsisted on leftover food from the club.īut in 1967 the Foundations had a stunning piece of good fortune. ![]() While they were the house musicians at that venue, they also managed the place and did the cooking and cleaning.Īpparently the Butterfly Club would open at 8 pm, and The Foundations members would typically finish up at 6 or 7 the next morning. At that time the band members were literally starving artists. The group first came together in 1967, when they ran a basement establishment in Bayswater, London called the Butterfly Club. In addition to the usual rock combo of guitar, bass and drums, The Foundations also featured keyboards, two saxophonists and a trombone player. The Foundations were inspired by Motown, and they were attempting to produce a home-grown British sound that might compete with Motown. Lead singer Colin Young is second from left. Here is a photo of The Foundations from around 1968. In addition, one original member of the band was trained at a music conservatory, while others had prior experience in jazz ensembles. The oldest member of the group was saxophonist Mike Elliott, who was 38, while the youngest member, drummer Tim Harris, was just 18. The Foundations were also diverse in the age and experience of their members. They had British members, West Indians, and a Sri Lankan. The Foundations were the first multi-racial group to have a #1 hit in the U.K. The first interesting aspect was their diversity. In the U.S., they were essentially “two-hit wonders,” however the band was noteworthy in many respects. The Foundations were a 60s-era British R&B band. The Foundations and Build Me Up, Buttercup: Then we will discuss covers of this song by David Johansen and by McBusted. Next we will consider how the song features in the closing credits of the movie, There’s Something About Mary. We will first review the original song by The Foundations. This week we will discuss a tremendously enjoyable tune, Build Me Up, Buttercup. “Yeah, but your cruise boyfriend hasn’t rubbed your body down with oils,” I said.Hello there! This week we will return to our occasional series, Tim’s Cover Story Goes to the Movies, where we feature a song that plays a part in a major motion picture. Incidentally, when we first discovered Paul O’Shea, after a day of me pining over Aihnoa, Alex declared, “Well, it looks like now I have a cruise boyfriend to match your cruise girlfriend.” It made for a tense two-and-a-half minutes each time this song came up on the tracklist.Īnd that’s a tension that could only be assuaged by the prettiest Spanish masseuse on the high seas. This is a song that has several ‘hey hey heys’ and ‘ooo ooooos’ and ‘bah-dah-dahs’ and I was wholly unprepared to deliver any of them, even when prompted. Such was the case with The Foundations’ ‘Build Me Up Buttercup,’ a song that sounds incredibly familiar in the way a lot of oldies do but one that was at the same time utterly foreign to me. One of the perils of the piano bar is getting caught singing along to a song you don’t really know. If not, please disregard the previous paragraph. I write these posts in advance, so I’m guessing that my wife, Alex, might have broken her Internet silence to comment on yesterday’s post and reveal that while, yes, she did have a crush on piano man Paul O’Shea, it paled in comparison to the crush I had on massage therapist Aihnoa Gallardo. ![]()
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