POP-A-LOOZA: The Dave Clark Five

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is a reminiscence about an album that I wanted but never owned: Glad All Over Again by The Dave Clark Five.



It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that the subject of the DC5 nearly got me into fistfights when I was in college in the late '70s. Some of my peers weren't shy about expressing their disdain for the simple, uncluttered charm of the Tottenham Sound of The Dave Clark Five (and for The Monkees, punk, power pop, or anything else that wasn't, y'know, The Grateful Dead); I, in turn, wasn't shy about offering them a variety of colorful two-word retorts. 


I have written previously of how I first heard the DC5's music:

One of my siblings owned a copy of the "Bits And Pieces" 45, so my Tottenham Sound adventure starts there. We also had some kind of DC5/VO5 tie-in, a cardboard Dave Clark Five record promoting VO5 shampoo, but I can't remember anything about it. (Well, other than the fact that li'l me, at four or five years old, would look at this record and point at the first three members of the DC5, reading left to right, and insist, "That's Dave, that's Clark, that's Five;" I think I was joking.)

I remembered it as VO5 rather than Pond's, but this looks about right

In my massive 2005 power pop history "The Kids Are Alright!," I mention the group as part of my discussion of the British Invasion's influence on power pop's creation:

Another often-neglected early influence was--wait for it!--The Dave Clark Five. Yeah, yeah, nobody takes this one seriously, but hear me out here. The Tottenham sound of the DC5 was dismissed, then and now, as crassly commercial, gimmicky and artless, but the group’s best singles—“Glad All Over,” “Bits And Pieces,” “Do You Love Me,” “Any Way You Want It,” “Catch Us If You Can,” et al.--were loaded with meaty hooks and AM radio savvy, and they rocked like hell. Sounds like a legitimate power pop prototype to me, mate.)



My forthcoming book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) includes a chapter about the DC5's "Any Way You Want It," plus a bonus interlude about The Beatles imitating the DC5 ("The Tottenham Sound Of...The Beatles?!"). And an edition of 10 Songs earlier this year summed up my ongoing affection for the group:

The mid '60s British Invasion is my most prominent prevailing touchstone in music; as a flashpoint in time, only '70s punk even comes close to rivaling the importance of that era for me. I was four years old in 1964, and although I already loved music (of course!), the impact of Beatlemania and its aftermath had both an immediate and an everlasting impact on me. From soul to bubblegum, glam to power pop, rhythm and blues to folk rock, ska, new wave, metal, or what have you, my taste in pop music is firmly rooted in that giddy, transcendent moment of yeah, yeah, YEAH!

But when I think of the British Invasion, the first songs that come to my mind aren't Beatles songs. I think even my subconscious mind puts The Beatles into their own separate and exclusive class. No, mention of the British Invasion instantly conjures two songs before all others in that swirling mess o' everything I call my brain: "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks and "Glad All Over" by The Dave Clark Five.

I don't really remember either song contemporary to their release. I remember the DC5's "Bits And Pieces," and I remember The Searchers' "Needles And Pins," Herman's Hermits' "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter," and The Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud" from that impressionable time when I was four and five in '64-'65. And of course I remember The Beatles. Awareness of The Kinks, and of DC5 songs that weren't "Bits And Pieces," came later, when I was a high school student in the '70s. And both of those songs took over as my enthusiasm for the British Invasion reached a fevered zenith that has never subsided, and likely never will.

Rule Britannia. I'm feelin'--WHOMP! WHOMP!--glad all over. And a Dave Clark Five collection called Glad All Over Again is the subject of the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.



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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

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Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 155 essays about 155 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).