Sometimes choices made turn out to be real duds. Witness, for example, the comment by the Emperor Franz Josef to Mozart about The Marriage of Figaro: “Too many notes, Mozart, too many notes.” No one remembers what else he did, only that he told Mozart there were too many notes.
Sometimes the Streaker’s Defence applies. That defence comes from the words spoken by one of the first streakers to be prosecuted in Sydney, back in the 1960’s. On being asked by the Magistrate why he had done it, the young man mumbled that “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
So it is with music: what seemed like a good idea at the time can turn out to be a real loser because events or attitudes change, or because it should have been thrown out at inception.
I mention this because in the early 1960’s there was a girl group known as the Crystals, who had hits with He’s a Rebel and Da Doo Ron Ron. Early in their career, after some initial limited success and before their later hits, they recorded a clunker called He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss).
