Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll: the Very Best of Showaddywaddy
Hey Rock ‘n’ Roll: the Very Best of Showaddywaddy
Customer Review: The very best of the “Greatest Hits” CDs available for SWW
This collection was released in November 2004 and spent 10 weeks in the charts over Christmas & New Year 2004 / 2005…and has sold around 100,000 copies to date according to the band's official website: www.showaddywaddy.net
It's the most comprehensive collection on a single CD of the band's singles released between 1974 and 1982, and only misses out five: “Take Me In Your Arms” (1976), “Doo Wah Diddy” (1980), “Good Timing” (1982), “Goody Goody” (1982), “(You're My) Soul & Inspiration” (1983).
None of these were chart hits, and only Soul & Inspiration is truly indispensable, but you can get this on “Living Legends” or “The Arista Singles Vol.2″ anyway. Anyone wanting to get a complete overview of the band's chart story should check out all three 7Ts CD collections:
“The Bell Singles 1974-76″ / “The Arista Singles Vol.1″ / “The Arista Singles Vol.2 plus…” which are great value and feature EVERY A-side and B-side recorded up to 1983.
Releases after 1983 were sporadic and the only 3 singles released were as follows: Under The Moon of Love (1986 remix) / Why? (1987) / Rockin' & Rollin' With Santa Claus (1990)
The new track on this CD “Whoo Hoo” is an instrumental, and is good but it would have been even better to have some previously unreleased SWW recordings such as “Old Habits Die Hard”, “Dot Dot Dot” etc. or a DVD of promo videos instead.
Maybe we'll see this happen on future releases - until then this is a great collection to pop into the car CD player and simply enjoy.
Customer Review: Rock’n'roll revivalists
Showaddywaddy began their career writing their own material and this yielded four UK top twenty hits, their debut single (Hey rock’n'roll) peaking at number two in 1974 while the next three (Rock’n'roll lady, Hey Mr Christmas, Sweet music) all peaked in the teens.
For their next single, Showaddywaddy covered Three steps to heaven (Eddie Cochran). This became their second number two hit and the first of several major hits with covers of rock’n'roll oldies, the other UK top ten hits being Heartbeat, Under the moon of love (a number one hit), When, You got what it takes, Dancing party, I wonder why, A little bit of soap and Pretty little angel eyes. After 1978, their fortunes declined gradually. They had a further eight UK hits between 1979 and 1982 but none of them made the top ten.
Critics didn’t like their music at all, but the British public bought their records in vast quantities. The problem for the critics was that Showaddywaddy were something of a lightweight group who presented rock’n'roll in a semi-easy listening style. Of course this doesn’t suit everybody but a lot of people didn’t know the songs in their original form Some of them, including Under the moon of love, hadn’t charted in Britain at all before Showaddywaddy recorded them. In any case, music is meant to be fun and that’s what Showaddywaddy provided.
If you want authentic rock’n'roll, buy the original artists. If you just want entertaining music that sounds like rock’n'roll, you might enjoy the music of Showaddywaddy. While I generally prefer the original stuff, I like Showaddywaddy too.
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