The One, the Only, the Edison Lighthouse!

Edison Lighthouse!

So you miss the Seventies? Or you missed the Seventies? Come with us for a brief return to the most fabulous decade of the late 20th Century!

Somehow, "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" has acquired a life of its own. It was a great song in 1970, did well on the charts, but then, a lot of songs were great back then and did well on the charts. However, "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" endures. I can't explain it. Sure, it's catchy, but there were a lot of catchy tunes. But people continue to love it! Anyway, on to a classic music video from before the time of music videos.
I love this music video of "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" by Edison Lighthouse, which was made way back in early 1970. Edison Lighthouse was a one-hit-wonder band, but "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" is an undeniable classic and one of the greatest songs of the '70s despite also being one of the first.
You may remember that "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes) was featured in the Jack Black comedy "Shallow Hal" (2001). Great film, I loved it, it gets five stars, go see it some time. But we're dealing with the song here, not the film.

The song is great, but the videos are even better. The guy they portray as being the lead singer (Andy Locke) in the "performance" video actually wasn't, it was another guy (Tony Burrows) who they didn't think was photogenic enough. In fact, it doesn't look like anyone in the video is actually playing.
Have to admit, the guy they feature looks like he should be the lead singer (Locke had a very slight resemblance to David Cassidy). In fact, there was no "group," it was just a bunch of talented session musicians who were guns for hire and decided to put something out themselves. That's how they did it in the old days. And it worked, as this song proves.

Who is she? Nobody knows. But there is endless speculation.

Oh, the other video with the dancing girl is by far the most popular music video from any song released in 1970 and much more popular than the performance video. Well, I'm not absolutely sure of that, but I defy anyone to find me a pure music video deriving from that year that has more views (15 million at last count). Who is the girl? Nobody is sure. There is lots of speculation. The dancing scene comes from a brief clip in an Army Training Film. Yes, a US Army training film. Yes, you read that right. Army. Training Film. I've seen the training film and, no, there are no other dancing girls in it and the only reason you should try to dig it up is if you really want to join the Army. And no, the dancing girl is not listed in the credits.

Now, some people think they know who the dancing girl is. I've seen various names thrown out, such as Kam Nelson, Kameron Nelson Seagren, and various other permutations on the same theme. Others claim that it is just some random WAC soldier named "Marilyn" or some chick they picked up in a bar once back in 'Nam. Nobody, but nobody, is sure.

But people are interested. I'm sure someone somewhere is hot on the case. Some guy is hunched over his pc right now trying to hack into the US Army database to see if there's a call sheet in some forgotten file from 1970 listing the actresses for that training film. (Oh, you think I'm kidding, some guy finally in 2019 finally dug up a dusty old call sheet from "Star Trek" and cracked the case on who played the cat character in the 1968 episode "Assignment: Earth," I kid you not.) This is the kind of thing that occupies fellows when they're not in the office trying to figure out the right flyby orbit past Mars or cracking the DNA of some Denisovan bones. You think they spend the same amount of time trying to decipher the Voynich Manuscript? Think again!

"Shallow Hal" features "Love Grows" (Where My Rosemary Goes)."

But back to the performance video. They really were shameless back in the day.

Then there are the repeated butt shots, and just to drive the point home they switch to close-up on the final pass.

Word is that this was filmed in the English town of Bristol, but don't hold me to that. The group - the musicians - were English, and some are still active in the business. It was for a tv program, perhaps the 1970 John Byner pop music show "Something Else." But don't hold me to that, either. An awful lot of top songs in those days never had any videos at all, so this one is kind of special.

In those days, they only did music videos (called "promotional films" before MTV) when a band was asked to perform on someone's tv show. Well, unless you were the Beatles, who did them sometimes anyway.

And if that weren't enough, there's the guy with the briefcase about halfway through who gets caught going home for the day, immortalized forever in a music video and he may never even have known it.

Featured only a few years ago in "Shallow Hal," this is one tune that does deserve to be remembered. If you were alive when this was on the charts, you didn't need to be reminded.