WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
Welcome to another fine, upstanding Monday everyone! Need a little pick me up to help you face another week at the grindstone? Well, have I got the perfect little musical stimulant for you that’s almost as wonderful as coffee! It’s time for the next song that went back Jack and did it again in my Top 30 Cover Songs of All Time countdown. DJ/Barista Scratchy and her two little K-cup Sponkies are ready to play the sounds that are aromatically sealed, and guaranteed to be the best part of waking up. It’s time for the percolator!
#11. “Working My Way Back To You” – The Spinners
Late December back in ’67, Frankie Valli and his Four Seasons (Who were not named Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme) recorded a delightful little number about some prick of a boyfriend who treated his woman like spare change, then had the nerve to get all sad and stalkerish when she dumped his ass. Oh what a night, indeed. The Jersey Boys version of “Working My Way Back To You” is just about as blah as can be to my ears, as is most of the rest of their 60’s crap. Thankfully, Frankie went to Hollywood and made some really golden shit in the 70’s…
Grease is the word!
The Spinners are a Detroit-based R&B vocal group that have been around for 60 years and are literally as old as rock and roll itself. They had their moment in the pop chart sun back in the 70’s with a whole string of groovy hits… and at the conclusion of the decade, they pumped a lot of funked up soul into the old Four Seasons hit and were merely “Another Brick in the Wall” short of reaching #1 in early 1980 with this amazing version of “Working My Way Back To You”…
They even got a little crazy and added a little “Forgive Me Squirrel Girl” onto the original to make it a medley. What else would you expect from the group that named themselves after those classy looking spoked hubcaps you’ll see rotating about on many cars in the urban jungle…
My Spinners have been retired.
You may have heard the group referred to as The Detroit Spinners before, and that has nothing to do with civic pride… Their hometown was added to the band name for all albums sold in the UK since the name was apparently already taken by a group of unfab Liverpool hippies.
I think The Detroit Spinners could kick the Liverpool Spinners’ arses…
This is one of my favorite contemporary covers of a well known song, though even that wasn’t enough to get it into my Top 10. Just what lies ahead as the countdown ventures into even more rarified air next week!?!?!? Well, there’s only one way to find out!
OMG!!! I am, like, so totally there next Monday!!!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I love this song even when we completely misunderstood the lyrics… we always thought he WALKS the way back :o) ok we were very young and our ears weren’t sensitive enough …
Hey, it works, so I’d keep singing it that way! When I find out I’ve been singing a song wrong for a long time, I don’t succumb to the facts, I just keep singing it the way I always heard it.
Blinded by the light! Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night…
Now, see, I don’t mind this song (either version) and now I have “Rubberband Man” in my head. Funny how those associations work…
Easy just made me laugh with “walking my way back to you…” 😀
I don’t think I’ve heard that song since it was in the Staples commercial. Now it’s in my head!
Happy to help spread happy heroin-addict songs any day!
You apparently have a great memory for the stuff. I’m impressed. I forget everything, especially names of songs and groups, so where that stuff should be, there’s a big empty hole. Oops.
Other than remembering this song and its original existed, most of the rest of what’s in this post is stuff I had to look up. For example, I was surprised to find out how long The Spinners had been around. It took them 20 years to have a hit, then all of a sudden, they couldn’t stay off the charts for a decade…. weird career track.
I would have to agree that the Detroit Spinners could kick the Liverpool Spinner arses. That Liverpool Spinner on the far right looks like his mom still cuts his hair.
They look like a typical wussy hippie folk band. I’ll bet it’s hard to cut hair when you are stoned…
dont bogart the scissors man!
It’s also not advisable to be walking your way back to anyone with scissors in hand…. or does that only apply to running? 😉
LOL!
Great post and great music. 🙂 Thanks for bringing back the memories. ^_^ Although I have to laugh at myself because with my hearing issues, I never could understand all the words in either of those songs, so 1) I never knew that “grease” was the word LOL and 2) I didn’t realize the featured song was talking about how bad of a guy he was to her because all I could ever understand was the words in the chorus. And not even all of them. lol
Still, both songs have a fun beat so I have done a lot of dancing (badly I might add since I have no real balance or coordination haha) to them through the years. 🙂
It’s amazing how I never gave a thought to the lyrics of most songs I grew up with… they were just fun to sing along to, and like you, I usually only knew the chorus. Oh, the hidden messages so many of them contain!
Glad to know I at least am not the only one lol
I’m going to cast my vote in favor of the original on this one.
That’s OK with me. Just pay no attention to the aggressive squirrel you’ll find stalking you now…
Very mellow and groovy. That’s actually the version I know.
I’m a bit devastated. When you wrote “The Spinners” I thought “Wow, Dad used to play their records all the time when I was a kid! But I thought they were from the UK…”. Turns out, as you mention, it’s a different “The Spinners” :-(.
I think the Detroit Spinners and the Liverpool Spinners should get together and form a supergroup. R&B meets folk music…. Geez, that sounds awful just thinking about it!
The Spiinners would play the free court every year when I worked at the big daily, and those dudes sang and danced their way from the 90s into the new millennium, Bill. I pick their version of the stale Four Seasons by a big bunch. And the Detroit wheels had a lot of really good songs from my Wonder Bread years.
I do like that one, and many of their other super hits of the 70’s. But like those who admitted to mishearing “Working My Way Back To You”, I swear I originally thought they were saying “Carnival Time” instead of “One of a Kind”. Detroit meets Rio…
You know it’s a great lyric when it can mean different things to different people, literally, my friend. 🙂
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