Friday, August 23, 2013

Song of the day

"Do The Helicopter", by Frank Savage and the Citizens.

I spent much of yesterday evening helping to shift an unfeasibly large quantity of seven-inch singles from point A to point B.

"Ordinary Persons Rock And Roll", by Frank Savage and the Citizens, wasn't amongst them.



Frank Savage and the Citizens might best be described as a footnote to a footnote to the Melbourne pub rock scene circa 1980. I don't know if they ever released anything other than this one record. I have a copy of it, which for unexplainable reasons makes me feel kind of special. I have a vague notion that Frank Savage himself either hailed from, or spent time in, Toora, which was one of the feeder towns for my high school. There were Savages (savages too, heh heh) at my school but they weren't from Toora. (Of course it may well not even have been his real name.)

I never understood why "Do The Helicopter" was relegated to the B side. It is totally catchy, so much so that it has lived in my head for the last 30-odd years without me having felt the need to actually play the record in the interim.

It seems not to be on the Tube at present, but as we sit here now you can listen and/or download it from here. What are you waiting for?

(Trivia note: Rod Hayward, on guitar, played with Dave Graney in the White Buffaloes and the Coral Snakes.)