The One with the Huge Groodies

While we’re on the subject of crap music from the distant past…

Let’s all take a moment to wallow self-indulgently in our memories of the song, although more particularly the video of, Baby It’s You, by Promises. This featured a live performance by the band, who were fronted… yes, fronted… by an attractive woman wearing tight pants, a top, and braces. And those braces were sorely challenged by the local topography (refer also to your memories, if you were there, of Mandy Cunningham’s campaign speech in the Student Union Bldg in the early 80s, during her effort to become Women’s Vice President of VUWSA. She romped in. Mandy, if you get this message, put those braces on Trademe & I will bid.), so that years later, sitting in a pub with friends, struggling to remember this song, a lightbulb went on in the head of a mate’s bubbly girlfriend & she suddenly interjected, with a ready laugh & the volume switched up to 11… “You mean the one with the HUGE groodies!!”.

And we did, and I believe the word was coined by Anthony Burgess for Clockwork Orange. And you get the drift.

I’ve looked, I can find few references to this song, no pictures of the lead singer & really, it deserves its spot on YouTube. Find it & I will post it!

Which brings me to a band called Picketywitch. I have no recollection of the song, but they were fronted (not quite so outstandlingly as Promises) by a very attractive blonde woman. If you saw the video of their sole hit, you would remember it. I know that because a few years ago, I saw the video & I remembered it.

I saw the clip on a Channel 4 game show, whose name I cannot recall either. But it was along the lines of Game of Two Halves, except it was about music, not sport. The teams were made up of various well known & not so well known musicians & music journalists. And there were silly questions & shenanigans. Rick Wakeman from the band Yes was the indisputable star, 50ish physically, 11ish mentally. He was hilarious. And the other team members would publicly sympathise with his wife & family for what they probably had to put up with.

Anyway, in one segment in each show, they’d show an old clip of some one hit wonder – for instance, Picketywitch – and then they’d bring a dozen or so people who resembled each other closely, out on stage, and the teams would have to identify which of these now significantly (in most cases) older people were once the one hit wonder…

And the night they showed Picketywitch, fronted by that very nice looking blonde person, they wheeled a dozen or so older, but for the most part still very attractive blonde persons out on stage…

And when it came to Wakeman’s turn, he guffawed, announced to all of Britain that he remembered Picketywitch well “…and in fact, we shared a gig with them, and I remember in the hotel afterwards… in Cardiff…”

And at this stage even I knew which attractive blonde person used to be in Picketywitch – she was the one who’d just turned the colour of beetroot.

But it didn’t stop there, Wakeman was out of his seat, telling the dozen or so candidates to turn around, then cupping the cheeks of the beetroot one, turned back to the nation & crowed triumphantly… “I knew it! I NEVER forget an ARSE!!” Truly, he was a class act.

One of the other team members asked him “How old are your kids now Rick? You know that if they’re not old enough to leave home yet, they’ll be wishing they were?”

So.. YouTubers… the challenge is set.

Dare I also mention Afternoon Delight by the Starland Vocal Band? America? Bread? WTF was it with the 70s & Soft Pop anyway?

UPDATE!!

The same esteemed reader has noted that two Ts make all the difference... I give you Polly Browne of Pickettywitch!

Further Update!

Actually, it's an earlier update that I didn't post. Here is Ms Groodies herself.