Venu sent over a link to this song the other day, suggesting this be the next post on my blog…thanks Venu! I have a faint memory that the first ever song I heard on ‘Forces Request’ was “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”. I was about 12 or 13, and I had a little transistor radio (it was red I think), which I would hide under my pillow to listen when I should have been sleeping. This song has been an earworm for me for almost 40 years now, and I think when I heard it first, it was already 15 years old! I bet all of us in Delhi can identify this song from its first bars, not even needing the to hear the chorus or the hook! Hyland was still in high school when this song hit #1 in the US – imagine dealing with that in the school cafeteria 🙃. The song was perfectly timed – Bikinis were still new in the US  and the whole story was just a tiny bit risqué! What exactly was with that bikini -was she just too shy or was it a particularly flashy piece of swimwear? Alas we never found out, but boy did we have fun trying to imagine the scene🤓. The song took off like a rocket and hot #1 in about six weeks or so, giving Hyland cashflow for life – as an allied benefit, it also pushed the sales of bikinis through the roof, just when they were tentatively being accepted in prudish America😉. Incidentally, the song also featured in ‘36, Chowringhee Lane’ – do any of you remember the scene where Jennifer Kendal and Debashree Roy dance to this?

“Sealed With a Kiss” is my favourite Brian Hyland song. Yet another staple on Forces Request in the 70s, the first few bars of the song are enough to bring back a flood of memories! This song of High School romances, the first heartaches of separation and declarations of undying love….memories truly are made of this ! (we’ll talk about that song some other time☺️). For a period I think it was one of the most requested songs on Forces Request, with the line ‘though we got to say goodbye, for the summer’ becoming a perfect metaphor for any lover’s separation – “Gentleman Cadet XXX going away to the Academy” or “Miss So-and-So going off to college in Delhi”. You could hear the pathos in Philip Neelam’s voice when he read out these messages and for the longest time I always imagined him as an avuncular Cupid sitting in AIR’s studio 2 – and to be fair, when I met him, that’s exactly what he turned out to be like. 

“Ginny Come Lately” was the third song from the Brian Howland songbook that we heard on the radio often. A lovely little ballad, it’s an almost perfect example of the do-wop style of songs from the late 50s. It has been used a few times as the perfect scene-setter song for movies, including this video from Lemon Popsicle 5. Unfortunately, the British invasion of the US music scene in early ’61 – Beatles, Rolling Stones et al – rained very heavily on Brian’s parade. His style of soft, soulful expressions of undying young love became passe and he fell out of style. Still, we got three fantastic hits from him along with his extensive songbook. Interestingly, he still performs, touring internationally, with his son Bodi assisting him on the drums.

Enjoy!