My band covered a Sweet song.
I have a long love for the bubbleglam tunes by this group.
Then I went to a record store and they had inherited someone's Sweet collection. He was an inveterate fan. Clippings. Hand written lyrics. 17 unopened copies of Off The Record (I only needed one).
I decided to pick up where he left off.
Let's look at the more than 30 Sweet records I have.
Sweet - 10 Years On Top - 1978
I recently gave a lecture about Glam Rock, tracing it's modern roots from the Beatles, through The Monkees, The Archies, T. Rex, Bowie, Elton, Queen into Sweet and culminating with Motley Crue.
And the throughline was advertising because once The Beatles hit, finding a way to capitalize on their success was a priority, which is how we got The Monkees.
The Archies made a song about Sugar and got a Saturday Morning cartoon show. Or it was the other way around.
One of the best at writing that sort of sugary bubblegum confection was the team of Mike Chapman and Nikki Chinn and in the late 60s, they teamed up with producer Phil Wainman and an up and coming band called The Sweetshop. Incidentally, 10 years later, Wainman would produce the New Wave classic "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats.
Sweet's origin story goes back to a National contest highlighted on BBC1 and featured Ian Gillan on vocals.
But, once they put the actual lineup we would come to know together and start working with Chinn and Chapman, they started releasing a bunch of bubblegum singles.
Their first album, Funy How Sweet CoCo Can Be, was not released in the US, which is why we are starting here, 10 years after their formation. 10 Years on Top is essentially Funny How Sweet, minus 2 tracks and adding one.
And that's something Sweet would do a lot: Put out compilations that were missing a track or two. So completists like myself would have to buy more and more and more.
Let's listen to the origins of The Sweet, which is the name they would go by until they dropped the definite article "the".
This is The Sweet Spot. A reflection on the original Bubblegum Glam band.
So, Funny How Sweet Coco Can Be is basically a collection of singles that the band put out when they connected with upcoming songwriters Chinn and Chapman. Funny Funny is basically their version of Sugar Sugar. And it was hit.
Peppered in among the pre-fab hits were some songs written by the band themselves, like Honeysuckle Love. And some misfires, like their cover of Reflections.
But, when you listen to Santa Monica Sunshine, it's obvious, this is the sound of the 70s. It's influenced by the Southern California aesthetic, hence the title. That was the nexus of rock music and hollywood and Sweet, led by Chinn and Chapman were basically writing the songs that would influence just about every TV show from dramas to cop shows to kids programming for the next few years.
I don't think you get any memorable Sid and Marty Krofft shows without these songs (and tracks like them).
While this album contains a couple later "hits" like, "Wig Wam Bam" and "Man from Mecca" and is missing the b side "Jeanie", this is the place to start with Sweet if you can't get a copy of Funny How Sweet, which is really difficult to find outside of Europe.
3.75 out of 5
A Side: Co-Co, Funny Funny
Blind Side: Santa Monica Sunshine, Tom Tom Turnaround
DownSide: Reflections
