One odd thing about revisiting the songs on my old mixtape is that I sometimes find myself thinking, "Why did I include that?" I guess because it didn't cost anything but twenty seconds of tape-splicing time, I threw in a number of tunes that I later fast-forwarded through or would have if the tape player had been within easy reach.
Case in point: "To Sir With Love," the title song from the 1967 movie starring Sidney Poitier and Judy Geeson. I had no affection for the film because I never saw it. I had no affection for the song sung by Lulu, who was also in the film. But it got played a lot on KHJ radio back then and I had it so I stuck it in.
I see on Wikipedia where "it made Lulu only the second British female artist to top the U.S. charts during the listing's Rock era after Petula Clark's 'Downtown.'" I remember at the time thinking that Lulu was being sold to American audiences as the next Petula Clark…which was fine. We then had eighty-seven thousand groups being marketed as the new Beatles so an extra Petula Clark didn't seem like too much duplication. Here's the song because it was on my mixtape, not because I loved it…