Dec 14

The Dave Clark Five

THE DAVE CLARK FIVE
 
 
The Dave Clark Five  (also known as “The DC5”) were an English pop rock group.  Their single “Glad All Over” knocked the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” off the top of the UK singles charts in January 1964; it peaked at number 6 in the United States in April 1964.  They were the second group of the British Invasion on The Ed Sullivan Show, appearing in March for two weeks after the Beatles appeared three straight weeks in February 1964.  For some time the Dave Clark Five were more popular in the US than in their native UK, but had a renaissance in the UK between 1967 and 1970.  The group disbanded in late 1970.  On 10 March 2008, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
American teenagers (mostly white suburban kids) were also invigorated by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and all the rest; and they responded by launching a counter-assault, when seemingly every kid in America wanted to be in a band.  This era is now known as the garage rock era (that was the most available practice space for most of these would-be rock stars, hence the name); this time period also saw the beginnings of the psychedelic rock movement on both sides of the Atlantic.  I didn’t know exactly what I was hearing at the time, but the music by bands like the Seeds, Blues Magoos, the Electric Prunes, Question Mark and the Mysterians, the Standells, Count Five, and Strawberry Alarm Clock (among many other bands) was grabbing me almost immediately.  I don’t know that I even realized immediately how bizarre many of these American band names were, as compared to those of British Invasion bands like the Animals, Freddie and the Dreamers, and the Dave Clark Five. 
 
Thankfully, in 1972 (though if I’m not mistaken, the album was actually not released in the US until 1976), Lenny Kaye – later the guitarist for the seminal Patti Smith Group – helped assemble hit songs by all of these diverse bands plus plenty more into what is now regarded as one of the greatest compilation albums of all times:  Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968.  It remains one of my favorite records, and I have spoken of it several times before in these posts. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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“The Sounds of Silence” began climbing the charts and was the #1 single in the country for the first three weeks of 1966 (sandwiched between a Dave Clark Five song and a Beatles song).  Simon and Garfunkel began working together again and went on to have one of the most storied careers in American popular music.  “The Sounds of Silence” is among several Simon and Garfunkel songs that were used in the 1967 film The Graduate; using existing songs in a soundtrack was unusual in those days, though it is commonplace now.  In 1999, BMI said that “The Sounds of Silence” was the 18th most performed song of the 20th Century.  

 

(June 2013/2)

 

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Part of the reason has to do with the Liverpool music scene in the 1960’s:  Other than you-know-who, most of the big British Invasion bands came from somewhere else.  The Beatles’ early competitors on the American charts were the Dave Clark Five; their first big hit song “Glad All Over” hit the Top Ten in February 1964, though the Five wouldn’t make #1 until “Over and Over” came out in November 1965.  The Dave Clark Five were from North London and were being promoted as the progenitors of the “Tottenham Sound”. 

 

(July 2013)

 

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The final song on “Side 1” of Each One Heard in His Own Language is a rocking rendition of the well-known “Get Together”, though this was before the Youngbloods made a hit of the song in 1969.  The song dates from the early 1960’s and had been recorded by We Five (it was the follow-up to the 1965 hit song “You Were on My Mind” by this band, who as I recall style themselves as the first band in San Francisco to go electric).  Other versions were made by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys, Jefferson Airplane, Hamilton Camp, Carpenters, the Dave Clark Five, H. P. Lovecraft, and many others.  
 
(September 2014)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021