Customer Reviews

Silence Is Golden: Best of

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If you think you're going to get the original hits of the Tremeloes from the 1960s, think again. This CD is a 1988 re-recording of their greatest hits, in every way inferior to the music you heard on the radio decades ago. Unless you're a completist, you'd best avoid this one. You'll be disappointed.

The previous reviewer is exactly correct. It was not the original recordings. I wish I had seen the previous review before I ordered.But that's show biz as they say.

Wow was I disappointed when I realized these were not the original recordings! Like the other reviewers, I should have read the reviews. Don't get this if you are looking for the original recordings you heard on the radio.

The Trems in 1967 and 1968 were one of the few British bands who kept up the pop traditions of the early Beatles, ironic as they were signed to Decca and the Fab Four were rejected. But that's another story.

Chip Hawkes was a charismatic lead vocalist and a bassist in the McCartney tradition. Ever see the video of him singing "Silence is Golden" with Ricky West(wood) singing the Frankie Valli falsetto bit? He was involved with at least two of Britain's loveliest actresses, and his son Chesney became a pop sensation in Britain in the early 1990s while his daughter too, became a major singer in her own right.

Sadly enough Hawkes parted ways with West(wood), Dave Munden, and Alan Blakely - even more sad because this recording is the very last one Blakely made before he died of cancer. The Blakely-Hawkes songwriting team may not have written "Here Comes My Baby" (Cat Stevens) or "Silence is Golden" but they were responsible for the majority of the Trems very substantial hits.
When music audiences drifted off towards Zep, Traffic, Jefferson Airplane, Spirit, Hendrix and other bands, both Blakely and Hawkes tried to reject their pop image - bad career choice - as their core audience still loved the pop band. The Trems influenced a lot of Brit pop bands, including Christie (in fact, Blakely's brother played in that band, and the Trems later recorded "Yellow River" in a salute to them)and Paper Lace.

The Trems soldiered on, with Hawkes till the late 1970s, then again from 1981 to the end of the decade, and then brought in Davey Freyer and Joe Gillingham to replace him.

It is the Freyer-Gillingham Trems on this recording, and that might have bothered a few folks. Still, while Freyer might not be a fresh or major songwriter as Hawkes was, he sounds so uncannily like Hawkes. Sort of a chip off the block.

Besides "Here Comes My Baby"< "Silence is Golden", and "Even the Bad Times are Good", Freyer nails down Buddy Holly's "Someone Someone", (an old Hawkes-era Trems favorite),"I Like It That Way", "Hello World", and Blakely's swansong to the group, "African Lullaby".

Granted, this ain't no Chip Hawkes recording, and with Blakely gone, the chances of the hitmaking band reuniting is slim to none. Yet, Freyer and Gillingham are master musicians, as are Westwood and Munden...and this is a record (available mainly in the U.K.) worth having...I only wish that the Trems - and Chip solo, would tour the U.S.A.