2:21
single, 1960
Written by Johnny Kidd
Johnny Kidd is notable for being one of the few pre-Beatles English rockers to hit it big, and for wearing an eyepatch as a stage affectation. This song, a sparse early rocker, is centered on Kidd's vocal and a modest, almost tentative guitar solo. The song's premise is as basic as early rock gets: Kidd’s physical reaction to seeing a beautiful girl:: "Quivers down the backbone / I got the shakes down the knee bones / Yeah, the tremors in my thigh bone." This is not by today's standards a thrilling song, lacking the raw drive of Eddie Cochran's contemporaneous primitive rockabilly, but it has its own cool restraint. There's something almost proto-mod about its clipped rhythm and lack of bombast. It's an interesting historical artifact, a reminder of how British rock first learned to translate American excitement into something tighter, more self-conscious, and, oddly, more elegant.
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