Five minutes ’til Scratchy…
Buckle up your seat belts and make sure to remove all audio devices from your ear. It’s Monday morning and it’s time for The Nest to crank the engine on another classic earworm straight from the two-song garage we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy’s got her unicorn-themed unicorn helmet on, and is ready to burn rubber at 45 RPM’s. I hope for the sake of the Sponkies strapped into the backseat that she knows how to drive a stick…
There are plenty of artists out there who mistakenly and almost criminally get slapped with the dreaded “one hit wonder” label. It’s not their fault we conveniently forgot to remember the other songs that got some Top 40 love as well (Well…. usually not their fault). Then there are artists who really, honestly to Godly only struck gold once… and if there was ever an artist who fit the OHW bill to a T, it was the strangely named British band Sniff ‘n’ the Tears.
Sniff!
Worldwide, they had only one song that made any kind of a dent on the music charts… but it was a damn good one, and a song that deserves to be much better remembered and replayed four decades later. Peaking at #15 on the US Top 40 charts in 1979, here’s Sniff ‘n’ the Tears’ signature song, “Driver’s Seat!”
This was a strange, strange band that not too surprisingly didn’t stay together all that long. While they did come together to make this fucking awesome song, the personalities the members of SntT display in this very cheaply produced, pre-MTV video are impossible to ignore…
Lead singer Paul Roberts looks like he took half a bottle of valium before this video shoot. But hey, at least he can paint a killer album cover!
Hey! Killing the guy is OK, but Biskit says you can’t shoot the black cat.
Bassist Chris Birkin continually bobs up and down like a child in bad need of a Ritalin fix during the whole set… but at least he’s the definition of ADHD cool.
Sunglasses at night, tie tucked into the shirt… yep, he was ready for the 80’s.
Speaking of retro coolness, there’s this guy….
No, this isn’t where Bruno Mars got his start. He wasn’t born yet…
That’s guitarist Mick Dyche, who apparently forgot to bring something as important as his fucking guitar to the video shoot. So all he does the entire time is stand back and try to act like the most obnoxious background singer in music video history. At least the rest of the band didn’t punish his uselessness by making him play the dog harmonica…
The nonchalant keyboardist and barely trying lead guitarist are hardly worth mentioning. That leaves the most fucked up member of this band, which has to be the drummer… Luigi Salvoni.
No, not THAT Luigi…
Salvoni is drumming that shitty starter drum kit he’s got like the fate of mankind depends on it. His attention to keeping the beat and his focus on not fucking up are not going to be distracted by anything… and I mean ANYTHING!
Jenny was sweet. But Luigi’s gonna just….. keep….. drumming.
Come back next Monday for another Studebaker from music history….
I don’t remember this one *sniff*.
It was a borderline hit in an era when you had rock, soft rock, disco, R&B, punk and new wave all fighting for attention. It was easy to miss…
I remember this one………..and I can remember liking it but I don’t remember it “sticking around” all that long. But then back then not much did! 😉
Pam
That reminds me of when I was in college circa 1993 and the university radio station was playing a lot of 80’s songs, and I was blown away at hearing a lot of music I hadn’t heard since it was big. These days, the corporate variety radio format fills in the gap between “oldies” and Top 40 that always got forgotten about as soon as it fell out of the countdown…
I remember this one! Do you want to know something funny? For the longest time I misheard the lyrics and thought they were singing “Privacy”!
Well, that may be what he and Jenny wanted in the driver’s seat!
Hey, maybe you could do that, misheard lyrics of dusty vinyl. Just a thought. 🙂
Not surprisingly, I don’t remember this song, which is kind of a shame because it’s better than most of what I do remember from around that time!
It’s a great 70’s to 80’s transition song that fits in either decade! Not sure it’s better than disco, though… 😉
I don’t remember pretty much anything from more than 10 years ago. Okay, I remember big events, but nothing else. It’s all rather hazy. Probably better that way.
Have you noticed that EVERYONE thinks he/she is an excellent driver? Especially really bad drivers? You can insult their sexual prowess and tell them they are idiots and they will say “Yeah, whatever,” but tell them they are bad drivers and they get seriously upset. Just saying.
In Amurrica, driving is not a privilege, it is a right. Maybe only the right to obnoxiously use cellphones has surpassed the right to drive in any condition in any way at any age as our most God given right that we will fight to the death for…
WOW! Another one that we don’t remember… thank goodness. I just wanted to bite the singer on the ankle to give him a little ‘excitement’. Talk about lame with no emotions. And you know I gotta ask. Is this the same Jenny chick at 8675309? Dude, she gets around. Snorts with piggy laughter. XOXO – Bacon
Jenny got around quite a bit back then. She got a lot of mileage out of that phone number…
Mom has a friend that when asked for her number at the store, she will always give Jenny’s number with a straight face. The cashiers these days don’t have a clue. Now that’s some funny stuff. XOXO – Bacon
Sounds pretty good when you take a Valium first…
I’ll have to put the record player on 33 and see what that sounds like…
Wah wah wah wah….
I don’t remember this either, I do remember sunnies at night though. 😀
Even later than usual, here i am with my critique!
Never heard of them or their song, but it’s good! Some inspired keyboard plinking (how is that not a word, Chrome?) lifted this up from merely “quite good” to “pretty good”. What a travesty that this inspiring band never made it to blah blah etc etc.