The week of April 20, 1965, saw Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘The Game of Love,’ a song that had reached #2 in their native UK six months earlier.
Frontman Fontana left the band in the middle of a concert later that year, leaving the Mindbenders to continue as a trio. They bounced back nicely, making it to #2 with ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’ the following year.
Today’s song isn’t like most of the others I’m featuring, in that it was never officially released in its original form. It has that in common with ‘If I Were a Boy,’ the song that kicked off this series on ‘Covers You Didn’t Know Were Covers.’
‘The Game of Love’ is best known as a 2002 song by Santana featuring Michelle Branch on vocals. The track reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, a great showing, though somewhat in the shadow of Santana’s 1999 #1 singles ‘Smooth‘ and ‘Maria Maria.’
The ubiquity of Daft Punk, and their new album Random Access Memores, carried over to Amoeba Music. Versions of the album on vinyl and CD were prominently displayed.
This was just the latest example of the Daft Punk deluge I discussed in a post a month and a half ago.
In my regular life, I would probably never buy this album, regardless of its critical acclaim and ownership of the pop culture moment. I’m just not into electronic music.
Meet Me In Montauk 