Harvest time is always celebration, mon.
It’s time to start off another week with some good stuff that’ll be sure to begin your Monday on a high note. That’s the day The Nest rolls up another splendid spliff out of that home stash of lost hits we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy’s your dealer of high quality audio enhancing drugs, while the Sponkies sit idly on the sidelines in their D.A.R.E. shirts. If all goes well, this post will go live at 4:20 AM….
The concept of the one hit wonder seemed to emerge from the boom in 80’s nostalgia that started early, just before the turn of the millennium. And when it comes to acts well known for just one song, that decade certainly holds a plurality of the OHW club. That certainly doesn’t mean one hit wonders are exclusive to the 80’s…. no, far from it. There were plenty of flashes in the pan from the 70’s as well…
What the typical one hit wonder of the 70’s might look like.
By virtue of having his only hit song released in 1970, a singer/songwriter by the name of Bobby Bloom became one of the decade’s first OHW’s. Bloom was a co-writer of Tommy James & the Shondells’ 1968 hit “Mony Mony,” and two years later he recorded one of his own songs he wrote with producer Jeff Barry, which made it up to #8 in the U.S. That would be the Caribbean flavored “Montego Bay.”
You should know from these posts that I love songs with a nifty and prominent bass line, and Montego Bay certainly delivers on that. It’s a great song that has become almost as forgotten as its singer has. Bloom didn’t accomplish much after hitting it big with “Montego Bay,” not that he really had much chance to. He died just four years later in 1974 at the age of 28… not from an overdose of drugs or choking on a ham sandwich like other famous musician deaths of the 70’s, but from what was ruled an accidental self-inflicted gunshot. He had apparently shot himself while cleaning his gun…
It could happen to anyone…
Join me next Monday for another song that went up in smoke…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
oooh this is the song for having a weedstock festival at home :=)
All of the “good stuff” without all of the smelly hippies…
Or rain and mud.
I remember this one – what a shame about his demise. I agree with easyweimaraner by the way….. 🙂
Pam
Who could turn down a weedstock festival? It’s probably wise not to light up until AFTER you’ve cleaned your gun, though…
I DO remember this song. Snappy little tune. But whoa…who knew cleaning your weapon was so dangerous?? Yikes!
Note to self…yet another reason not to own a gun.
Anyone stupid enough to clean a loaded gun is tempting karma…
No recollection of this song…you’ve stumped the self-proclaimed human jukebox! It’s catchy. Poor dude. Hugs, not guns and all that hippy dippy shit!
The song must have been really good for you to not rag me about the ham sandwich reference!
Ah, shit. Yeah…um, it was a heart attack that killed Mama Cass, she DID NOT choke on a ham sandwich that is just a rumor people started because she was a chunky lady, like me. Well, I think she was a bit chunkier than I am, but that’s beside the point. 😛
People would never start rumors like that! Besides, she wouldn’t have choked if she’d have washed it down with some soda…
Yes, people suck, therefore that rumor persists after so many fucking years…
You mean soda pop, right? Meet me in the middle, you punk ass squirrel, or I shall be forced to slap you!
I haven’t had soda pop since Pepsi came in glass bottles. And I can hold the empty bottles up to my eyes and say you can’t slap a man with glasses….
You’d be as blind as a ham sandwich!
I do know this song, but Amazulu’s remake, not the original.
I guess poor Mr Bloom realised that he’d reached the pinnacle of his career…
If only he knew how much money there was to be made on nostalgia tours in his old age…