Kicketty Koo

I hadn't heard the name Carl Wayne for years, until the other day, when Silverback reminded me of his name, which I couldn't recall. Carl Wayne was the lead singer in The Move, whose single Flowers in the Rain was the first record played on Radio One. Or maybe wasn't, if you want to be picky about it, which I don't, and I don't care: I just like Flowers in the Rain.

Now, as anyone who knows me well will tell you, I'm not good at hearing the words of songs, and Olli is always saying "but you must know the words!" to various things, and I so don't, because I just don't hear them properly.

Also, to be fair, in our house in those days there was no pop music: the Communist simply didn't believe in it and it would have been too much like hard work to try to listen to any of it on the radio with him grumbling along about "What's that rubbish?" all the time.

I just heard things in passing, on friends' radios, or friends' record players, at their houses. There was of course no internet in those days so I never learned much about what I was listening to. I never really caught up.

So it was only fairly recently - perhaps five years ago - that I worked out that some of The Move, with pianist Jeff Lynne, evolved into The Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO, which was another favourite of mine, and still is.

And it was at about the same time that I worked out that Carl Wayne was not singing what I'd always thought he was singing.

Here he is, singing it.



So what comes after "Feel the power of the rain" then? I could never hear it and always thought it was some Sixties flower-powery too-much-dope inspired line "Kicketty Koo."

Then, years and years later, I heard it again. A moment of revelation.

He's singing "Keeping me cool."

And so it remained until a brief moment of panic when I googled the lyrics tonight and found that someone else thinks he's singing "Keeping me good."

But they're wrong! Surely they're wrong! Then I found that another site had "Keeping me cool" too. Phew.

Sadly, Carl Wayne - whom I always rather fancied with his Sixties hair and that moustache - is dead now. But you know how it is on Youtube. Once you start with Flowers in the Rain you're on to Blackberry Way and then off onto ELO and then it's two hours later.

One thing I know is, I still like that music. It's music to be happy to. Kicketty Koo.