Friday, March 1, 2013

Friday Nuggets - "Pictures of Matchstick Men", The Status Quo

Psychedelic rock from the 1960's was hardly exclusive to American bands, with great stuff also coming from the UK.  One of the most popular UK bands of all time, the Status Quo had many chart topping hits at home, but only scored one top 40 hit in the US, "Pictures of Matchstick Men" in 1967. It's a  distinctive song with a particularly memorable opening guitar line. Here is a terrific video from the Top of the Pops TV show:

The Status Quo were famously name dropped by one of WYMA favorite bands, Teenage Fanclub, in the opening line of their breakthrough song "The Concept" from 1991 (She wears denim wherever she goes, Says she's gonna get some records by the Status Quo...).

"Pictures of Matchstick Men" was covered by Camper Van Beethoven in 1989, in a manner quite faithful to the original.


2 comments:

Frank Fahey said...
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Frank Fahey said...

The music of Status Quo namedropped by Teenage Fanclub is not represented by "Pictures of Matchstick Men." In the early 70's they dropped psychedelia and embraced hard rock boogie. They became very successful in the UK with many top 10 records achieved by recording variations of the same song again and again. Teenage Fanclub was was making a musical and lifestyle statement about boogie. And a s Paul Harvey said "That is the rest of the story.