 |
| They inspired this guy. Who cares what I think? |
Loathe as I am to essentially re-write a Wikipedia post, I simply couldn’t find a lot about this band. I also spent a week listening to music I did not care for and I can’t let that be for nothing. At least the song has a decent back-story.
The Hit
I have no memory of Jigsaw’s “Sky High.” I like the tense opening - e.g., pure 70s action movie gold with horns swelling above; sets a good mood - and then that clears to make way for the first verse. A bar or two passes before the song hits a 70s-pop trot for the rest of the first verse…and into the chorus. Apart from the semi-nude beginning, all of that repeats into a second verse/chorus. Without further investigation, all that counts as an odd choice for what amounts to a break-up song. Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl “blows it all sky high” by telling boy a lie. Seems awful standard…and yet…
As it happens, Jigsaw wrote the song for a 1975 “martial-arts action movie” starring George Lazenby - this was after his one-film spin as Bond, James Bond - which makes more sense of the musical choices (e.g., maybe the woman was a femme fatale). I don’t know that movie either (and neither does Netflix, as it happens), which makes all this seem extremely “period” - as in, a pure, perhaps wild animal of the mid-1970s.
And yet the song hit a solid No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, outperforming the single in Jigsaw’s native UK - though not in Australia (maybe the attachment to Lazenby goosed it?). It did even better in Japan, achieving the odd and notable feat of being a hit in consecutive years…
…but the undeniably coolest thing about “Sky High” is the fact that a lucha libre legend named Mil Mascaras used it as his theme music. I’d kill for that claim to fame. As would you…
The Rest of the Story
Jigsaw’s history pre-dates their hit by quite a lot, while also leaving a lot of unanswered questions. The band started in the Coventry/Rugby area in England circa 1966, and as a six-piece. The original line-up featured Clive Scott (keys/vocals), Dave “Biffo” Beech (drums/vocals), Barrie Bernard (bass), Tony Campbell (guitar), Tony Britnell (sax), and Kevin “Beppy” Mahon (tenor sax). The key change happened when they swapped out Beech for drummer and new lead singer, Des Dyer. He and Scott quickly became the Lennon/McCarthy of Jigsaw.
It was Campbell, however, who came up with the name. Part of the inspiration came from a Manchester venue called “The Jigsaw Club,” while the other part came from the way the band was cobbled together from different groups. To quote Wikipedia directly:
“Scott had been in a band named Scott and The Antarctics; Dyer had played in Rugby's Surf Siders and Clockwork Shoppe; Campbell, Mahon and Beech had worked together in The Mighty Avengers; Bernard had been a member of Pinkerton's Assorted Colours, whilst Britnell had worked with The Fortunes.”
For the record, Wikipedia had links to only about half those bands - and only The Fortunes entry gives the reader much more than name, time, and place (quite a bit more, too; there are some names in there). Now, here’s where it gets weird: again, I’ve spent a week listening to this band and what I’ve heard in absolutely no fucking way says “pyrotechnic afficionados.” Reading between the lines a bit, I gather they built their name on their stage show, one that featured burning drum kits, Scott blowing Marshall amps to smithereens, and a general love of fire and explosions, all of that backed by Britnell doing fire-eating. This information files firmly under, huh.
Reasonably big as they’d gotten, most of the band took the paying job of becoming Arthur Conley’s backing band for his 1970 European tour (and unlike Jigsaw’s hit, I know Conley’s, as do you). It was the horn section that pulled out - e.g., Mahon and Britnell - and so Jigsaw became a four-piece. They returned to touring, with Scott and Dyer writing on the side, and all that work came to fruition when they sold a song called “Who Do You Think You Are?” to Candlewick Green in 1974. They did less well with their own songs - e.g., “You’re Not the Only Girl” (my personal favorite) and “Baby Don’t Do It” (live performance, btw; audio's not the best) - but their fortunes turned with “Sky High.”
It’s here where the frustration sets in because, lacking other sources, I’m left, as I was above, with a lot of “then they did this, then they did that,” only with the question of “why” going generally unanswered. I can say, however, that they managed a couple more hits - e.g., “Love Fire” and “If I Have to Go Away,” which scored them another soundtrack (Home Before Midnight) - and they drew enough attention for 20th Century Records to fly the band to Los Angeles and give them three months to record an album and what sounds like healthy per diems throughout. And that album was only released….where? You guessed it, Japan.
Jigsaw lingered as an active band into the early 1980s and their stories become short, but separate ones from there. All the same, the fact they got four songs into the Billboard Hot 100 - and two, “Sky High” and “Love Fire,” broke into the Top 40 - makes them a poor fit for this series. Their longevity underscores it. Whatever I think of them…it’s not nice, Jigsaw had a career that most bands would take many ticks under a hot minute.
Scott and Dyer continued writing music, but Dyer had the more interesting second life. He got two cracks as England’s “champion” for the Eurovision song contest - the first time in 1983 fronting a band called Casablanca with a tune titled “With Love,” then again as a solo artist in 1985 with “Energy,” a song he dished to an artist named Nicki French the same year. He sang backing vocals for Scott Fitzgerald on the UK’s 1988 entry, “Go,” but Celine Dion stole first place for Switzerland by just one point with “Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi.”
Wikipedia notes that Bernard ran some nightclubs and performs as an “active magician,” while Campbell went back to a stimulating career in ophthalmic engineering. Now, I try to find something good about every band I review for this series - and it usually comes off, sincerely even - but I’d rather have someone tell me what ophthalmic engineering is, even at some length, than listen to another half hour of Jigsaw.
About the Sampler
After dabbling in Sky High and Pieces of Magic - the only original albums I saw in Spotify’s collection - I gave up trying to find that band that sounds like it blew shit up and settled for settled for their 1975 collection Anthology. And that’s what’s going up with the post instead of the usual sampler. I’d still like to flag a couple songs I haven’t mentioned yet that stood out, for reasons good and bad.
“Tell Me Why” possesses a dubious charm as a love song (something like, “you’re not hot, but I still love you”), and there’s the dad-karaoke slow jam, “Only Love.” The only other ones I want to mention are “I (Don’t Wanna),” which sounds like some of Styx’s worst decisions (I can't find it, dammit), and a song that contains most of what I hate about 80s pop/rock, “Brand New Love Affair,” at least on the version someone handed Spotify (normal mode, much better).
I don’t like crapping on bands, artists, or anyone who tries to create - and, in Jigsaw’s case, pretty much succeeded. I can’t write a nursery rhyme, so who am I to dump on Scott and Dyer, who’ve each written several hits together and separately? All the same, people like the music they like. To my ear, Jigsaw sounds like mid-century pop (e.g., square music in the late 50s/early 60s) updated to "70s sounds," i.e., the pop sensibility borrowed those influences, but also smothered them in their sleep. I know I’m not going to like every band in this series, but…damn, this was work.
Till the next one…
The Hit
I have no memory of Jigsaw’s “Sky High.” I like the tense opening - e.g., pure 70s action movie gold with horns swelling above; sets a good mood - and then that clears to make way for the first verse. A bar or two passes before the song hits a 70s-pop trot for the rest of the first verse…and into the chorus. Apart from the semi-nude beginning, all of that repeats into a second verse/chorus. Without further investigation, all that counts as an odd choice for what amounts to a break-up song. Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl “blows it all sky high” by telling boy a lie. Seems awful standard…and yet…
As it happens, Jigsaw wrote the song for a 1975 “martial-arts action movie” starring George Lazenby - this was after his one-film spin as Bond, James Bond - which makes more sense of the musical choices (e.g., maybe the woman was a femme fatale). I don’t know that movie either (and neither does Netflix, as it happens), which makes all this seem extremely “period” - as in, a pure, perhaps wild animal of the mid-1970s.
And yet the song hit a solid No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, outperforming the single in Jigsaw’s native UK - though not in Australia (maybe the attachment to Lazenby goosed it?). It did even better in Japan, achieving the odd and notable feat of being a hit in consecutive years…
…but the undeniably coolest thing about “Sky High” is the fact that a lucha libre legend named Mil Mascaras used it as his theme music. I’d kill for that claim to fame. As would you…
The Rest of the Story
Jigsaw’s history pre-dates their hit by quite a lot, while also leaving a lot of unanswered questions. The band started in the Coventry/Rugby area in England circa 1966, and as a six-piece. The original line-up featured Clive Scott (keys/vocals), Dave “Biffo” Beech (drums/vocals), Barrie Bernard (bass), Tony Campbell (guitar), Tony Britnell (sax), and Kevin “Beppy” Mahon (tenor sax). The key change happened when they swapped out Beech for drummer and new lead singer, Des Dyer. He and Scott quickly became the Lennon/McCarthy of Jigsaw.
It was Campbell, however, who came up with the name. Part of the inspiration came from a Manchester venue called “The Jigsaw Club,” while the other part came from the way the band was cobbled together from different groups. To quote Wikipedia directly:
“Scott had been in a band named Scott and The Antarctics; Dyer had played in Rugby's Surf Siders and Clockwork Shoppe; Campbell, Mahon and Beech had worked together in The Mighty Avengers; Bernard had been a member of Pinkerton's Assorted Colours, whilst Britnell had worked with The Fortunes.”
For the record, Wikipedia had links to only about half those bands - and only The Fortunes entry gives the reader much more than name, time, and place (quite a bit more, too; there are some names in there). Now, here’s where it gets weird: again, I’ve spent a week listening to this band and what I’ve heard in absolutely no fucking way says “pyrotechnic afficionados.” Reading between the lines a bit, I gather they built their name on their stage show, one that featured burning drum kits, Scott blowing Marshall amps to smithereens, and a general love of fire and explosions, all of that backed by Britnell doing fire-eating. This information files firmly under, huh.
Reasonably big as they’d gotten, most of the band took the paying job of becoming Arthur Conley’s backing band for his 1970 European tour (and unlike Jigsaw’s hit, I know Conley’s, as do you). It was the horn section that pulled out - e.g., Mahon and Britnell - and so Jigsaw became a four-piece. They returned to touring, with Scott and Dyer writing on the side, and all that work came to fruition when they sold a song called “Who Do You Think You Are?” to Candlewick Green in 1974. They did less well with their own songs - e.g., “You’re Not the Only Girl” (my personal favorite) and “Baby Don’t Do It” (live performance, btw; audio's not the best) - but their fortunes turned with “Sky High.”
It’s here where the frustration sets in because, lacking other sources, I’m left, as I was above, with a lot of “then they did this, then they did that,” only with the question of “why” going generally unanswered. I can say, however, that they managed a couple more hits - e.g., “Love Fire” and “If I Have to Go Away,” which scored them another soundtrack (Home Before Midnight) - and they drew enough attention for 20th Century Records to fly the band to Los Angeles and give them three months to record an album and what sounds like healthy per diems throughout. And that album was only released….where? You guessed it, Japan.
Jigsaw lingered as an active band into the early 1980s and their stories become short, but separate ones from there. All the same, the fact they got four songs into the Billboard Hot 100 - and two, “Sky High” and “Love Fire,” broke into the Top 40 - makes them a poor fit for this series. Their longevity underscores it. Whatever I think of them…it’s not nice, Jigsaw had a career that most bands would take many ticks under a hot minute.
Scott and Dyer continued writing music, but Dyer had the more interesting second life. He got two cracks as England’s “champion” for the Eurovision song contest - the first time in 1983 fronting a band called Casablanca with a tune titled “With Love,” then again as a solo artist in 1985 with “Energy,” a song he dished to an artist named Nicki French the same year. He sang backing vocals for Scott Fitzgerald on the UK’s 1988 entry, “Go,” but Celine Dion stole first place for Switzerland by just one point with “Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi.”
Wikipedia notes that Bernard ran some nightclubs and performs as an “active magician,” while Campbell went back to a stimulating career in ophthalmic engineering. Now, I try to find something good about every band I review for this series - and it usually comes off, sincerely even - but I’d rather have someone tell me what ophthalmic engineering is, even at some length, than listen to another half hour of Jigsaw.
About the Sampler
After dabbling in Sky High and Pieces of Magic - the only original albums I saw in Spotify’s collection - I gave up trying to find that band that sounds like it blew shit up and settled for settled for their 1975 collection Anthology. And that’s what’s going up with the post instead of the usual sampler. I’d still like to flag a couple songs I haven’t mentioned yet that stood out, for reasons good and bad.
“Tell Me Why” possesses a dubious charm as a love song (something like, “you’re not hot, but I still love you”), and there’s the dad-karaoke slow jam, “Only Love.” The only other ones I want to mention are “I (Don’t Wanna),” which sounds like some of Styx’s worst decisions (I can't find it, dammit), and a song that contains most of what I hate about 80s pop/rock, “Brand New Love Affair,” at least on the version someone handed Spotify (normal mode, much better).
I don’t like crapping on bands, artists, or anyone who tries to create - and, in Jigsaw’s case, pretty much succeeded. I can’t write a nursery rhyme, so who am I to dump on Scott and Dyer, who’ve each written several hits together and separately? All the same, people like the music they like. To my ear, Jigsaw sounds like mid-century pop (e.g., square music in the late 50s/early 60s) updated to "70s sounds," i.e., the pop sensibility borrowed those influences, but also smothered them in their sleep. I know I’m not going to like every band in this series, but…damn, this was work.
Till the next one…
No comments:
Post a Comment