Shane "Saint Paul" The Very Best Of Shane 1968-71 rem. 2001

...‘Leaving On A Jet Plane’ bubbled under on the national charts and went Top 5 in Auckland. By the time of the next series of C’mon, Shane was hot property and was offered a record contract with HMV. Shane’s first single for HMV was ‘Cuddly Toy’, which he recorded under duress; after all, The Monkees’ version had been out for 16 months. What was the point, he asked his new record company, only to be told in no uncertain terms “do as you are told.”..
...If HMV were a little haphazard and played safe with Shane’s previous record then they came up trumps for the follow-up. ‘Saint Paul’ was an obscure Terry Knight track based on the “Paul McCartney is dead” rumours that were circulating at the time.
With a headful of ideas but only four tracks at his disposal, producer Peter Dawkins quickly ran out of tracks and was forced to have Shane record his vocal at the far end of the studio while squeezing as many HMV staff members into the other end of the studio as he could, as backing singers.
Within three weeks ‘Saint Paul’ had stormed to No.1 on the national charts where it stayed for six weeks. Shortly afterwards ‘Saint Paul’ won the Loxene Golden Disc Award for the best local record of 1969.
Shane’s debut album Rainy Day Man and his follow-up single ‘Lady Samantha’/‘The Drifter’ were recorded and released before the end of 1969 with ‘Lady Samantha’ debuting in the Top 20 in the last week of the 1960s and eventually reaching No.3 in the new year.
Shane’s second album Natural Man was released in 1970 with the title track as a single. Two more singles were released in 1970 – ‘Heya’ by the Shane fronted studio-only group Zonk! – and the upbeat ‘Get It Together’/‘Tired of Running’...to be continued... - Grant Gillanders and AudioCulture
trax:
01 The Town Of Tuxley Toymaker 02 I'll Take You With Me 03 Leaving On A Jet Plane 04 Something To Shout About 05 Cuddly Toy 06 Go Ask Your Man 07 Saint Paul 08 Too Late For Tears 09 Lady Samantha 0 The Loner 11 Guess I'll Have To Let You Go 2 Isn't It Lonely Together 13 Natural Man 14 Meet On The Ledge 15 For The First Time 16 Maybe 17 Sister John 18 Heya (Zonk!) 19 Along Life's Road (Zonk!) 20 Get It Together 21 Tired Of Running 22 No Regrets 23 Song Inside Me 24 John Hope 25 I Didn't Get To Loving You 26 Sixteen Seasons
…served by Gaius…