My Top 1000 Songs #901: New York Groove

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Look, I could try to be cool and claim I was hip to little-known UK pop/glam band Hello--kind of a less aggressive Sweet--when they released this single back in 1975. But I was 9 and only knew the songs they played on my local AM radio station, Chicago's WLS--and this was not played on the radio.

So, like most kids, I heard it for the first time three years later when the members of Kiss each put out a solo LP, and Ace Frehley's cover version did make it onto the radio. I loved it immediately, a lot more than anything by Kiss proper, who even as a pre-teen I found pretty dorky. Loved that Bo Diddley stomp and the shout-along chorus, recognizing that at the time I don't think I'd ever been to New York.

Didn't realize it was a cover until a few years later. I suppose I prefer the slightly poppier Hello original, but Frehley's cover was pretty faithful, though he hams it up a bit, and can't really fault it one bit.

Hello on tv:

Ace Frehley:

Kiss live 1996:

Colorful new wave update by Swedish singer Tove Naess, 1983: