I get the hate for Calling Occupants but if you remove the insanely ridiculous spoken word bits, there's a great song there. I've always adored KLAATU's original and Karen's voice is sublime on the cover but that DAMN alien!!!
Allright guys...I was too young to know the answer to this when it was new, but in all seriousness was that album suppose to be a real album or a joke/parody? That is absolutely ridiculous rubbish to my ears, but if mean’t as a parody maybe not?
It tanked on the pop chart but it was a top ten country hit, which is pretty impressive for a crossover act at the time. I remember it being all over country radio in Northern Minnesota.
Shatner has always had an enormous ego so since this was done in the Star Trek 60s, I'd gamble on the serious side of things. I'm sure in his mind he was giving a performance and the album he released had something to do with Shakespeare and the pop songs of the day. Remember, it was the 60s and experimentation was the order of the day. Now this. This has the definite stink of parody and I'm hoping Bernie Taupin was in on the gag.
I think it's a sign we're almost ready for the next chart-topper (or as Bill Engvall would put it, "There's your sign"). Other than that observation, I'm keeping out of the way.
I lean toward the "real album" camp. All the songs on the album are paired with dramatic soliloquies and other serious ACT-AHH jive. Shatner was a trained Shakespearean, after all.
As for other Carpenters' records post "Postman": Insofar as "There's A Kind Of Hush (All Over The World)," for me it's Herman's Hermits or nothin', thank you . . .
I have soft spots for both versions. The Carpenters version was out when I was 9. HH was much earlier, and the only time I have heard that version is by me playing it.
"Sweet Sweet Smile" was a major hit on Easy Listening and Country radio up here as well. It just missed the Top 40 on the RPM Singles Chart which indicates that some top 40 station picked it up while others didn't.
Ok... now it is time for "Laughter In the Rain": by Neil Sedaka, #1 from January 26 - February 1, 1975.
"Laughter In The Rain" was a relative oldie at this point. It had been recorded during Mr. Sedaka's very short-lived stint with MGM Records, in L.A. on Nov. 6, 1973, original mx. #73 L 5887 (per Michel Ruppli's excellent tome The MGM Labels: A Discography - Volume 2: 1961-1982). Neither this nor the U.S. B side, "Endlessly" (recorded in L.A. on Dec. 7, 1973, original mx. #73 L 5979, likewise per the Ruppli book), saw any release in the States on MGM at the time (how would either track have looked on MGM's cyan and tan label design, I ask?). But because PolyGram by then owned MGM, that meant UK Polydor had access to his masters - and thus were the tracks released "across the pond." "Laughter" already had a British issue in mid-'74 on Polydor (c/w "Kiddio"), but MGM had already cut Sedaka loose by then - which made him open to being snapped up by Elton John's The Rocket Record Company label, which first issued this as single #MCA-40313 on Sept. 23, 1974. (Notice Polydor International was credited with the (P) on the label.) U.S. lacquers were cut at MCA's Universal City studios by Don Thompson. "Laughter..." was the only track of Sedaka's made after his late 1950's/early '60's heyday to see any presence on the 1979 edition of WCBS-FM's New York Top 500, reaching #254. (At least two 1970's Paul Anka tracks - "(You're) Having My Baby" and "Times Of Your Life" - managed to be represented in that same chart; with both these guys, their earliest hits had the most representation - and, on subsequent charts, the only representation. Can't speak for the 1975 or 1977 Top 500's, though.)
Laughter in the Rain is one of those songs that I misheard. I thought he was singing: "Ooh, how he left her in the rain..."
I think it's a nice song and was a bit of revival in Neil's career right? I mean 10 years earlier he was complaining about The Beatles ruining his career so a #1 in 1975 definitely must've meant something.
I think Valli et al has two other number ones after this "upcoming" one. Sedaka has more upcoming too. But not Anka.
I could see how that could be misheard - especially, later in the chorus, how he croons: "Ooh, how I love the rainy days . . . "