Listen: Birds And Bees / Warm Sounds WarmSoundsBirds.mp3
In May ’67, my Mom went off to Ireland to visit her sister for a few weeks, armed with my 45 want list. She came back with some life-changers (see my post from October 7th, 2008 titled: The Move / The Who / The Small Faces / The Cream). An added unexpected bonus were two pull-out Top 50 charts from RECORD RETAILER, the UK equivalent of BILLBOARD. If I could scan them for you, I would. They’re too large, purposely made to hang on your shop’s wall so kids can easily identify their purchases. Sliding gently back from a #26 peak (to #27, then #28) was ‘Birds And Bees’ by Warm Sounds. It was on Deram. It had to be good.
The psychedelic summer of ’67 was just about to happen, and the great music that would define it was in full tsunami mode. Every week handfuls of ‘must hears’ were arriving in stores, at the radio stations and in trade magazine listings.
Before I could even worry about it, one of my local Top 40′s, WNDR, was playing ‘Birds And Bees’ (see chart below). Occasionally, they or the more loosely programmed, UK and garage band leaning WOLF, would add a gem that never went on to national success. Unlike WOLF, WNDR wouldn’t stick with them too long, but at least we’d have a chance to get a taste – and usually one of the local shops (Walt’s Records in particular) would stock 5 or 10 copies. You had to move quick to secure one though, there was fierce competition amongst us sickos.
Despite it’s rather mainstream pop leanings, it was undeniably English on first listen, the string breakdowns were perfectly LSD’d out, and the lyrics, so blatant (“don’t be afraid, come with me please, that’s all there is to the birds and the bees”).
I was in. Yet how did the program director not notice those lyrics?
Tags: Billboard, Deram, Record Retailer, Walt's Records, Warm Sounds, WNDR, WOLF